|
Project
DARKLING
Text: Darkling: A Poem by Anna Rabinowitz
Music by Stefan Weisman
"The Darkling Thrush" song by Lee Hoiby
World premiere Adapted and Directed by Michael Comlish
About Darkling
American Opera Projects (AOP) explores the outer edges of the operatic form with DARKLING, an experimental opera-theatre work conceived and directed by Michael Comlish, with original music composed by Stefan Weisman and Lee Hoiby. Darkling was created for four singers (soprano / mezzo / tenor / baritone), seven actors, and string quartet with optional piano. A touring version of Darkling reduces the number of actors to three and is adaptable to multiple venues. (Click here for more info on the touring version of Darkling.)
Spanning the decades from the 1930’s to the post-World War period, DARKLING is a remarkable story – both poignant and humorous – of love, loss, calamity and hope. Past and present blur, characters are swept along by the great forces of history and lives are bowed and buffeted in this uniquely moving and captivating work. "Brave and sensitive" (The New York Times), DARKLING uses opera, avant-garde theatre, vaudeville and cutting edge technology to create “an unlikely collaboration of Wagner, Sally Bowles and Steven Spielberg" (Time Out/New York). This dramatic tour-de-force views history not from a grand geo-political perspective but from the insightful, intimate outlook of a poet whose ordinary Polish-Jewish family is unexpectedly affected by extraordinary events of the Holocaust.
About the Creators
 MICHAEL COMLISH (director)
Michael Comlish, an AOP veteran since 1999, has led the development of Darkling at AOP in workshops over the last 2 years. His directing has been praised by the press as "high-style," "unorthodox," "wickedly uproarious," and "anti-Romantic," and was featured in the New Yorker’s "Talk of the Town" for his casting of pundit Andrew Sullivan as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Within the bleak world of Darkling he continues to explore a style that has been called "absurd, surreal, yet playful shifts among levels of reality." He created Nothing, from the notebooks of Richard Foreman, for the Ontological Blueprint Series. He is formerly from the Washington DC area, where he was a member of the Washington Shakespeare Company. There he directed an award winning production of Stoppard’s Travesties, The Real Inspector Hound, and co-directed A Streetcar Named Desire and subsequent revival to open WSC’s new home. Acting Roles at WSC included Edgar in Lear, Stanley in The Birthday Party, and Ken Talley in Fifth of July. For more information, visit www.comlish.com.
 ANNA RABINOWITZ (text: Darkling: A Poem )
Anna Rabinowitz’s fourth volume of poetry, Present Tense, will be published by Omnidawn Books in spring, 2010. Her previous volume of poetry is The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, published by Tupelo Press, 2006. At present, she is working on a monodrama based on The Wanton Sublime. American Opera Projects (AOP) has commissioned her to write the libretto and Tarik O’Regan, a Grammy-nominated British composer, to write the music. Her book-length acrostic poem, Darkling: A Poem, (Tupelo Press, 2001) was transformed into an experimental, multi-media opera theater work by AOP. It had its world premiere and ran for three weeks off-Broadway in 2006 and was performed in a concert version in Berlin and Poland in 2007. Center City Opera of Philadelphia performed a concert version at the Philly Fringe Festival in 2009. A translation of the original text into German will be brought out by Luxbooks, Weisbaden, Germany, in spring 2010. Rabinowitz’s books also include At the Site of Inside Out, (University of Massachusetts Press), which won the Juniper Prize. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and nominations for a Pushcart Prize and ForeWord Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year for Darkling. Rabinowitz is Editor Emeritus of American Letters & Commentary, a vice-president of the Poetry Society of America, and a member of the Board of Directors of AOP. For more information, visit www.annarabinowitz.com.
 STEFAN WEISMAN (composer for Darkling)
Stefan Weisman first worked with AOP as a member of its annual Composers & the Voice program. His playful and brooding soundscapes have been described by Anthony Tommasini (The New York Times) as "personal, moody and skillfully wrought." His one act opera Fade was produced by Philadelphia’s Center City Opera Theater at 2008's ConNEXTions. Fade was commissioned by Second Movement and premiered in London in 2008. It also had successful productions in San Francisco and Brooklyn, and will again be heard again in New York City next year. His commissioned work for the Bang on a Can All Stars was mentioned in the New York Times’ retrospective of 2007’s best new music. Most recently, his work won the soundON Festival of Modern Music's 2009 International competition. Stefan participated in AOP’s Composers & the Voice during the 2003-04 season. For more information, visit his website.
 LEE HOIBY (song composer – “The Darkling Thrush”)
Lee Hoiby is beloved by performers as diverse as Leontyne Price and Jean Stapleton, for his numerous settings of texts from Emily Dickinson to Julia Child. Mr. Hoiby was introduced to opera by his teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music, Gian Carlo Menotti, who involved him closely in the famed Broadway productions of The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street in the early 1950s. His works have been recognized by awards and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989 his work was the subject of a retrospective concert at the Kennedy Center on the American Composer Series, and a two-week festival of his work was presented by the music department of the University of California at Long Beach. His principal works include the operas The Scarf (1958 ), A Month in the Country (1964), Summer and Smoke (1971) and The Tempest (1986). He is also the composer of nearly 100 songs, as well as music for orchestra, solo instruments, chorus and the theater. He lives in upstate New York. For more information, visit www.leehoiby.com
AOP Presentations
June 11, 2007:
Touring concert version
Aleksander Fredro Theatre
Gniezno, Poland
June 9, 2007:
Premiere of touring concert version
Max Kade Auditorium, Freie Universität Berlin
Berlin, Germany
May 12, 2007:
Preview of touring concert version
and other new works presented by On the Edge
New York City Opera's VOX 2007
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, New York University
June 06, 2006:
Concert reading of scenes. Post-show panel discussion with creators.
Co-production with Friends of Freie Universität Berlin as part of Jewish Documentary Film, Theater and Speaker Series, German Consulate General, Auditorium, NYC.
Feb. 26 - March 18, 2006:
WORLD PREMIERE
East 13th Street Theater
136 East 13th St.
New York, NY 10003
November 13 & 14, 2005:
Workshop concert reading of scenes w/ panel discussion
Works & Process at the Guggenheim series
Peter B. Lewis Theater, Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
April 19 & 20, 2005:
Workshop concert reading of scenes
The Great Room, 138 South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY
Music Direction: Steven Osgood
January-February, 2004:
Improvisational development workshops
Director Michael Comlish held performance workshops in Brooklyn and Manhattan to develop Darkling by exploring each section of the original poem. The following performers participated: Elzbieta Czyzewska, Rana Kaye, Peter Kazaras, Dylan McCullough, Carol Monda, and David Tirosh.
Other Presentations
September 8-12, 2009
The Lantern Theater, Philadelphia, PA
Center City Opera Theater presents
Touring concert version
MUSIC DIRECTION: Andrew M. Kurtz
STAGE DIRECTION: Matt Gray
PERFORMANCES BY:
Maeve Hoglund, soprano
Hai-Ting Chinn, mezzo-soprano
Jon Garrison, tenor
Martin Hargrove, bass-baritone
Jason Switzer, baritone
Sharon Sigal, speaker
|
