Gotham Chamber Opera Stages BADEN-BADEN 1927, Now thru 10/29

Gotham Chamber Opera presents the U.S. Stage Premiere of Baden-Baden 1927: a staged evening of four one-act operas that appeared together at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927, from tonight, October 23-29, 2013 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater.

Performances: Tonight, October 23, 2013 at 7:30pm and Friday, October 25; Saturday, October 26; and Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 8pm. Tickets are $30-$175 and are available at www.ticketcentral.com or (212) 279-4200. For more information, visit www.gothamchamberopera.org.

Gotham Chamber Opera will begin its 12th season with a fully-staged production recreating the legendary Baden-Baden Festival of Contemporary Music performance of July 17, 1927. During the composer-organized summer festival, four one-act operas were presented in one evening: Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel, Paul Hindemith's Hin und zurück (There and Back), Darius Milhaud's L'enlèvement d'Europe (The Abduction of Europa), and Ernst Toch's Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse (The Princess and the Pea). Perhaps most noteworthy among the works is Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel, which was premiered at the festival and later developed into the complete opera, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Gotham Chamber Opera will re-create this historic performance of all four operas with an evening entitled Baden-Baden 1927.

The creative team for Baden-Baden 1927 consists of Neal Goren, conductor; Paul Curran, stage director; production design by German neo-expressionist painter Georg Baselitz; co-design and costume design by Court Watson; lighting design by Paul Hackenmueller; video design by Driscoll Otto; and hair and makeup design by Randy Mercer.

The production marks the long-awaited return to the New York stage of legendary soprano Helen Donath and also stars soprano Maeve Höglund, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, tenors Daniel Montenegro and Matthew Tuell, baritone Michael Mayes and bass John Cheek.

Gotham Chamber Opera's 2013/2014 season will continue with a co-production with Trinity Church Wall Street, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers fromJanuary 1-5, 2014. In February, the company will present a double bill co-produced with and staged at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, consisting of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda by Monteverdi, and a newly commissioned work, I Have No Stories to Tell You, by Gotham Chamber Opera Composer-In-Residence Lembit Beecher. The United States premiere of The Raven by Toshio Hosakawa at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater concludes the season in May 2014 as part of the New York Philharmonic's inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL.

Gotham Chamber Opera, now in its twelfth season, is the nation's leading opera company dedicated to vibrant, fully staged productions of works intended for intimate venues. Its high quality presentations of small-scale rarities from the Baroque era to the present have earned Gotham an international reputation and unanimous critical praise.

Founded by conductor and Artistic Director Neal Goren, Gotham debuted in 2001 (as Henry Street Chamber Opera) with the American premiere of Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione. In subsequent seasons, Gotham has produced many more local and world premieres, including such works as Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Milhaud's Les Malheurs d'Orphee, Bohuslav Martinu's Les Larmes du Couteau and Hlas Lesa, Sutermeister's Die schwarze Spinne, Handel's Arianna in Creta, Britten's Albert Herring, and Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino. The company renamed itself Gotham Chamber opera and became an independent 501(c)3 organization in 2003.

Gotham has partnered with notable New York and national institutions, including Lincoln Center Festival and Spoleto USA for the 2005 production of Respighi's La bella dormente nel bosco; the Morgan Library and Museum for Scenes of Gypsy Life (an evening of song cycles by Janá?ek and Dvo?ák) in 2008; and the American Museum of Natural History and the American Repertory Theater for 2010's production of Hadyn's Il mondo della luna. That production featured lunar exploration video developed by the Museum and NASA and broadcast on the Hayden Planetarium's 180-degree dome.

Gotham has earned a reputation for showcasing outstanding young singers alongside established directors and choreographers such as Mark Morris (the 2009 production of Hadyn's L'isola disabitata), David Parsons (the New York stage premiere of Astor Piazzola's tango opera, María di Buenos Aires), Karole Armitage (the world premiere of Ariadne Unhinged), Basil Twist (La bella), Christopher Alden (Scipione and Arianna in Creta), and Diane Paulus (Il mondo). In October 2010, Gotham partnered with director Moisés Kaufmann and his company, Tectonic Theater Project, to co-produce the first United States stage performances of Xavier Montsalvatge's El Gato con Botas, at the New Victory Theater.

For the 2011-2012 season, Gotham celebrated its tenth anniversary with the world premiere of Dark Sisters, by Nico Muhly, and a revival of its first production, Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione. Moving into its second decade in 2013, Gotham presented a sold-out run of Cavalli's Eliogabalo at The Box and two performances of Daniel Catán's La Hija di Rappaccini (Rappaccini's Daughter) at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Cherry Esplanade. That production then toured to Los Angeles, where it was presented by the Broad Stage at the Greystone Manor in Beverly Hills.

For more information, visit www.gothamchamberopera.org.

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