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Project
| PAUL'S CASE |
Music by Gregory Spears
Libretto by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat
Based on the story by Willa Cather
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"...the piece is nearly ready to claim a place in the chamber opera repertoire – thanks to a long-haul development process for which American Opera Projects deserves much credit.”
- David Patrick Stearns, Arts Journal
Paul’s Case is a two act evening length chamber opera for seven singers [S.S. M-S.T.T.B.B] lasting approximately 85 minutes. The opera chronicles the dissolution of a high school dandy living in sooty turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. Paul, who spends his free time working as an usher at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Hall, eventually runs away to revel in the luxury of New York City's Waldorf Astoria hotel. The vocal lines, both pastoral and mechanistic, suggest the world of nature, luxury and art that Paul loves and the gilded-age machinery that will eventually destroy him. The opera may be performed with or without an intermission in small to medium sized opera houses. Orchestration TBD.
Paul's Case is being developed in part with generous grants from the BMI Foundation, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts's ART WORKS initiative, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. |
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 GREGORY SPEARS
(composer)
Gregory Spears writes instrumental and vocal music that blends together stylistic aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music. His music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the JACK Quartet, Center City Opera, the NOW Ensemble, Present Music Ensemble, So Percussion, and the Eighth Blackbird Ensemble. Current projects include a one-act chamber opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera’s HGOco with a libretto by Farnoosh Moshiri, an evening-length opera based on the novel Fellow Travelers being written in collaboration director Kevin Newbury and writer Greg Pierce, and the AOP-developed dance opera Wolf-in-Skins with choreograper/librettist/director Christopher Williams. New Amsterdam Records will release a recording of his Requiem in November 2011. www.gregoryspears.com
KATHRYN WALAT
(co-librettist)
Kathryn Walat’s play Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project, and was published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007, in Dramatics magazine, and by Samuel French. Her other plays include Bleeding Kansas (Hangar Theatre), awarded a 2010 Francesca Primus Citation; Know Dog (Salvage Vanguard Theater); and Johnny Hong Kong (Perishable Theatre). She has been commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and Actors Theatre of Louisville; and her work has been developed at The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, McCarter Theatre, Ars Nova, Electric Pear, Sundance Theatre Lab, Voice & Visions, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Kate received her BA from Brown University, and MFA from the Yale School of Drama. In 2010 she was in residence at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center with a workshop of her new play Creation, about music, obsession, and the creative process. |
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May 29-31, 2009
South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY and Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Developmental workshop of Act I
MUSIC DIRECTION: Jennifer Peterson
PERFORMANCES BY: Marcus DeLoach, Chad Johnson, Hai-Ting Chinn, Kirsten Chambers, Katherine Wessinger
October 3-4, 2008
South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY
Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes presents Scene 1
MUSIC DIRECTION: Jennifer Peterson
STAGE DIRECTION: Ned Canty
PERFORMANCES BY: Jennifer Berkebile, Marcus DeLoach, Abigail Fischer, Melissa Fogerty, Thomas Wazelle |
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April 20-28, 2013 - WORLD PREMIERE
Artisphere, Washington D.C.
Presented by UrbanArias
PERFORMANCES BY: Jonathan Blalock, Keith Phares, Melissa Wimbish, Amanda Crider, Michael Slattery, Erin Sanzero and James Shaffran
STAGE DIRECTION: Kevin Newbury
MUSIC DIRECTION: Robert Wood
Lighting Design by Eric Southern, Costumes by Amanda Seymour, Set Design by Timothy Mackabee
September 9-13, 2009
The Lantern Theater, Philadelphia, PA
Center City Opera Theater presents
Concert workshop of Act I & II
MUSIC DIRECTION: Andrew M. Kurtz
STAGE DIRECTION: Albert Innaurato
PERFORMANCES BY: Siddhartha Misra, Branch Fields, Chloe Moore, Toni Marie Palmertree, Hai-Ting, Chinn, Jean Bernard Cerin, Kyle Bielfield |
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Paul's Case image photo by Matthu Placek
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