Project

THE WANTON SUBLIME
Music by Tarik O'Regan
Libretto by Anna Rabinowitz

About The Wanton Sublime

The Wanton Sublime, a new commission from Tarik O’Regan and Anna Rabinowitz, explores the human and mythic aspects of the iconic Virgin Mary. It raises questions about her role as the “eternal feminine”, while casting light on her struggles with timeless issues of gender and male power.

Part of the PETER JAY SHARP SOLO PROJECT: The monodrama revealed, funded by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.

About the Creators

TARIK O'REGAN (composer)
Born in London in 1978, Tarik O'Regan was educated at Oxford University and subsequently at Cambridge. His work has garnered two 2009 GRAMMY® nominations (including Best Classical Album) and two British Composer Awards. He has held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. Other appointments in recent years include positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Yale University.

2010 marked the premiere of O'Regan's BBC Proms commission, Latent Manifest, by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the broadcast of a self-penned documentary, Composing New York, which he presented for BBC Radio. 2011 sees the opening of Heart of Darkness, his opera based on Joseph Conrad's novel of the same name, at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre and the release of Acallam Na Senórach, his third album on the Harmonia Mundi label. www.tarikoregan.com

ANNA RABINOWITZ (librettist)
Anna Rabinowitz’s fourth volume of poetry, Present Tense, was published by Omnidawn Books in fall 2010. Her previous volume of poetry is The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, published by Tupelo Press, 2006. 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 Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2009. A German-English bilingual edition of Darkling will be brought out by Luxbooks, Weisbaden, Germany in fall 2011. Fall 2011 will also mark the release, by Albany Records, of a CD of Darkling. Rabinowitz’s books also include At the Site of Inside Out (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), which won the Juniper Prize. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Foreward Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year for Darkling. Rabinowitz is Editor Emerita 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.

Media

AOP Presentations

May 9 & 12, 2011
May 9 - The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003
May 12 - South Oxford Space, 138 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY 11217
Concert reading of opera excerpts and panel discussion with artists
Performances by Amy Shoremount-Obra
Piano: Mila Henry
TICKETS

Jan 11-12, 2009
Song excerpt
Peter B. Lewis Theater - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Performed by Caroline Worra
Featuring AOP string ensemble; J. David Jackson, conductor