operamission will present ‘Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required’ at the Gershwin Hotel in New York, August 17-22, 2010.

For this one-of-a kind event, the operamission returns to the Gershwin Hotel at 27th & 5th at the invitation of Neke Carson, this time bringing along dramaturg Cori Ellison and a number of other Mozart ‘instigators.’

Please join us for any or all of the sessions:

postcard

press release

To join in the discussion of the pre-preparation, look for operamission on twitter. People are traveling in from all over the U.S. to play in the orchestra. If you’re interested in playing, please see next entry (below) — we still have room for more.

The cast will change for each session:

mezzo-soprano JENNIFER BERKEBILE – Dorabella (Parts 1, 2 and 3) / baritone JAMES BOBICK – Guglielmo (Parts 1 & 2) / soprano KERRI MARCINKO – Fiordiligi (Part 2) / baritone DENNIS BLACKWELL – Don Alfonso (Parts 1 & 2) / tenor BRIAN ANDERSON – Ferrando (Part 1)

tenor ASITHA TENNEKOON – Ferrando (Part 2) / mezzo-soprano TOBY NEWMAN – Dorabella (Part 4) / soprano JENNIFER AYLMER – Despina (Parts 2 & 4) / tenor JOHN CARLO PIERCE – Ferrando (Parts 3 & 4) / soprano KRISTEN PLUMLEY – Despina (Part 3)

baritone GREGORY GERBRANDT – Guglielmo (Parts 3 & 4) / soprano CAROLINE WORRA – Fiordiligi (Parts 1, 3 & 4) / bass-baritone ANDREW NOLEN – Don Alfonso (Parts 3 & 4)

Cori Ellison has graciously allowed me to post her fantastic and fun Così program notes here, thanks Cori!

operamission is presenting Così fan tutte August 17-22.

A reading orchestra is being assembled for four sessions to jam through Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte with a spectacular cast of singers at New York’s Gershwin Hotel on 27^th St & 5^th Avenue.

Qualified players of the following instruments are invited to sign up:

(UPDATE: we still need violins! and one oboe for Fri/Sun)

Players may participate in any number of sessions. We will cover 30-40 minutes of music in each session.

Four hosts – a conductor (Jennifer Peterson), a stage director (Ned Canty), a dramaturg (Cori Ellison) and an Italian language master (Marco Nisticò) will lead the audience through the musical and dramaturgical assembly of the work.

Parts will be available in advance. Final seating & chair assignments are at the discretion of the conductor.

Four three-hour sessions

To sign up, contact Jennifer Peterson at operamission in one of the following three ways:

Facebook event ‘Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required’ displays full details, but a facebook RSVP is unofficial if not confirmed via one of the above three media.

Click to view the postcard.

Please join operamission for this event!

Visit Classical Revolution NYC’s facebook event page, RSVP to participate.

To participate as an innocent audience member, just show up!

7 East 27th Street, just east of 5th Avenue, 7-10 pm

$10 cover – food, wine & beer available just off the lobby at Birch Coffee

followed by a mid-August Mozart escapade, not to be missed . . .

Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required

Mozart’s Perfect Italian Comedy, Presented in Four Parts

4 hosts in 4 evenings will take a sublime cast and an unrehearsed orchestra through the process of putting a Mozart opera together before a live audience. This will not only show how it’s put together, but it will show how it’s put together. Y’see? Plan on coming.

And you can even bring your laptop – wifi at the venue (the Gershwin Hotel) will allow us to share scores, manuscripts, Mozart’s letters, not to mention some live-tweeting and other participatory media adventures.

The concept has evolved out of the brainstorms of many opera-obsessed creative minds. The timing is strategic, to coordinate with the tail end of NYC’s MostlyMozart Festival (before you go on vacation) and as a little ‘audience prep’ for maestro William Christie’s Metropolitan Opera debut conducting this very opera.

www.cathiekingphotography.com

We will assemble the opera in four sessions, taking half of an act (between 30 & 40 minutes of music) each session, with a complete run of the half-act at the end of the evening:

Act I, Part 1 - Tuesday, August 17, 7:00 pm

Act I, Part 2 - Wednesday, August 18, 7:00 pm

Act II, Part 1 - Friday, August 20, 7:00 pm

Act II, Part 2 - Sunday, August 22, 4:00 pm

Attend any number of sessions – $10 cover, or $5 per session if attending more than one.

operamission is now cooking up what’s next…there have been more serious Handel talks…

But first, the Mozart brainstorms are brewing, and what we’re putting together to finish up the summer is something outlandishly complicated in concept, yet couldn’t be any more straightforward. As soon as we are set, we will spill the details.

In the meantime, please visit operamission’s new YouTube channel for excerpts from March’s ‘HANDEL at the Gershwin’ and soon hopefully some of Keith & Margot.

And the long-term ‘next’ is the continuation of operamission’s commission – a full-length opera-in-progress. Composer Clint Borzoni and librettist Edward Ficklin are cranking it out. Any update I blog about here will be superseded by the work they do each day. You can follow Eddy and Clint on twitter as well as operamission if you’d like to see live updates of their trials and tribulations. Suffice it to say, we will be fitting fresh music to living, breathing singers any day now.

Many more important bits have happened and are happening.

OPERA IN FLIGHT was delightfully well-attended. Participating, we had ‘visiting dignitaries’ in from as far away from Seattle (librettist Emily Conbere) and Toronto (librettist Marcia Johnson) with four others from the great state of Illinois: composers George Flynn and Stephen Andrew Taylor, as well as the two spectacular founding members of Chicago’s Anaphora: violinist Aurélien Pederzoli and clarinetist Cory Tiffin. And composer James Borchers totally brought the percussion from Boston. The NY casts of singers made their phenomenal contributions in bringing the composers’ music to life, as did a chamber orchestra of ten players. Rehearsals and performances went smoothly due to the high degree of cooperation and commitment from all of these immensely talented artists. And the audience seemed to notice.

Next week I will travel west for the Chintimini Chamber Music Festival to perform works by J.S. Bach, Kenji Bunch, and Charles Martin Loeffler — looking forward to some Oregon time!

Then returning quickly to put on another new work at Galapagos in July, this one by my friend Daniel Felsenfeld.

Looking for Handel this month…? It’s in Princeton. I highly recommend this cast….

‘OPERA IN FLIGHT: new scenes & one-acts’

Join us at 8:00 on April 2 and 3 at the Gershwin Hotel

World première of the one-act opera

music by Clint Borzoni, libretto by Emily Conbere

based on Ray Bradbury’s ‘All Summer in a Day’

AND:

Anniversary – a one-act opera

music and libretto by Edward Ficklin

AND:

three scenes from the opera-in-progress

Paradises Lost

music by Stephen Andrew Taylor, libretto by Marcia Johnson

based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s novella by the same name

AND:

‘Forms of Flight’ for solo clarinet

by George Flynn

performed by founding member of Anaphora Ensemble

clarinetist Cory Tiffin

for more details, read the press release

check out the postcard – front & back

tweet it

visit the Facebook event page

and send your support.

This is a co-presentation of

and Neke Carson at

Tickets are $20 general admission.

Come early to grab a seat, and enjoy the cafe off the lobby - Birch Coffee – beer, wine, delicious cheeses, salads, sandwiches, and more.

]]> http://operamission.org/2010/03/10/opera-in-flight/feed/ 0 operamission MargotBlackmid margot logo rays logotag operamission gershwinlogo http://operamission.org/2010/03/07/587/ http://operamission.org/2010/03/07/587/#comments Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:47:40 +0000 operamission http://operamission.org/?p=587 Continue reading →]]> We did lots more Handel.

countertenor Daniel Bubeck

Thank you Dan. Thank you Caroline, David, Matthew, Amy, Alteouise – you were all fabulous. Thank you to the HANDEL Band – Joan Plana, Beth Wenstrom, Audrey Selph, and of course the unfailingly smooth continuo support of cellist Ezra Seltzer. Very special thanks to Scott Embler for helping with the set-up and creating the mood. And of course thanks to Neke Carson for hosting us again at the wonderful Gershwin Hotel. We’ll be back soon!

It seems as if the program itself was one of the hits of the evening, so here it is for those of you who missed it – a PDF of the program.

And here is a lovely blog review from Abigail Wright.

We are very hard at work at the next presentation – a big one. So stay tuned for OPERA IN FLIGHT: new scenes and one-acts. Here is the Facebook Event Page, with more PR goodies coming soon.

And if you are liking what you are hearing & seeing, and want to hear/see more, send us your support today!

Great news — the Gershwin Hotel now has a liquor license, so grab a glass of wine and sample of cheeses from the café off the lobby to enjoy your next performance experience even more.

Please see support page to make your tax deductible contributions which will go towards our next two shows:

HANDEL at the Gershwin – Wednesday 3 March 2010 at 8:00 pm

and then, in April…

graphic courtesy of Tim Hill Images and Kate Burns Design

OPERA IN FLIGHT: new scenes and one-acts

two performances – Friday and Saturday, April 2 & 3, 2010 at 8:00 PM

all co-presented by Neke Carson at

We are proud to be a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of operamission may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

To donate by check, please make it out to “Fractured Atlas” and send it to:

Checks for $1,000 or more must be accompanied by a Major Gift Letter.

And to donate online, please click here.

And come to a performance! You’ll be glad you did….

Thank you for supporting operamission. And as our friends at Fort Worth Opera recently tweeted, “…we are all on the opera mission!”

1 – Friday, January 29, 2010, 8pm – KEITH JAMESON / CABARET SONGS – tenor Keith Jameson joins operamission and pianist Jennifer Peterson for a memorable one-night-only cabaret concert at the Gershwin Hotel. Proceeds to benefit operamission and the Greenwood Music Festival. Click to view the press release.

2 – Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 8pm – HANDEL at the Gershwin, featuring six more Handelians: sopranos Amy van Roekel and Caroline Worra, mezzo-soprano Alteouise deVaughn, countertenor Daniel Bubeck, tenor Matthew Garrett, and bass David Salsbery Fry. Baroque violinists JOAN PLANA and BETH WENSTROM  return, as well as EZRA SELTZER and JENNIFER PETERSON on continuo. More details coming soon…

3 – Friday & Saturday, April 2 & 3, 2010, 8pm – OPERA IN FLIGHT: new scenes & one-acts – composers Clint Borzoni, Edward Ficklin, George Flynn, Stephen Andrew Taylor – performers Sharin Apostolou (soprano), Alteouise deVaughn (mezzo-soprano), Martha Guth (soprano), Kimberly Sogioka (mezzo-soprano), Cory Tiffin (clarinet), Lisa Williamson (soprano) – directors Scott Embler, Emily Howard – adaptations of Ursula Le Guin, Ray Bradbury – staged with orchestra – MORE INFO COMING SOON…

Composer Edward Ficklin captured the spirit of the evening here. If you missed it, and would like to peruse the printed program (yes, we hit on twelve Handel operas) go ahead and click on this pdf.

Due to all the generous sounds made by the performers, the full house of receptive fans, and general all-around enthusiasm, the Gershwin Hotel has invited us back; plans are afoot for the next showing.

I want to personally thank the incredibly talented and cooperative musicians who put in so much time and care, and who believed in the mission in order to make it happen:

Sharin Apostolou, Eva Gerard, Tim Hill, Jennifer Hines, Joan Plana, Ezra Seltzer, Gerald Thompson, and Beth Wenstrom.

THANK YOU ALL for ‘playing’ — and for doing something that’s never quite been done before.

Thank you John Miller from Pinnacle Arts Management, Inc. for stepping in as our master of ceremonies.

Thank you, artist Neke Carson, for hosting us at the Gershwin, and also for the jazz harpsichord jam send-off.

And of course, those dedicated ‘operamissionaries’ who volunteered their time and energy in helping with the logistics on Friday: Brian Anderson, Clint Borzoni, Scott Embler, Melissa Fogarty, Luis González, and Sarah Pillow — thank  you for helping!

William Hogarth (1697-1764)'s portrait of Handel

And thank you, Mr. Handel. You knew we could do it!