New Opera Showcase Set for Trinity Wall Street, 1/18

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, announces the details for the New Opera Showcase, taking place on Monday, January 18 at 8:00 p.m. at historic Trinity Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. The Showcase offers artists, producers and audiences a unique opportunity to hear some of the most exciting operas being composed today.

This special one-night-only concert features excerpts from four new operas currently in development, selected by an independent jury of industry experts. Audience members will be among the first to hear these powerful new works:

· Beowulf by Hannah Lash (composer and librettist)

· The Invention of Morel by Stewart Copeland (composer) and Jonathan Moore (librettist)

· A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Opera by Sheila Silver (composer) and Stephen Kitsakos (librettist)

· Dream of the Red Chamber by Bright Sheng (composer) and David Henry Hwang (librettist)

The New Opera Showcase will be performed by NOVUS NY orchestra under the direction of Julian Wachner, with guest conductors Sara Jobin and Daniela Candillari.

Featured vocalists performing in the New Opera Showcase include sopranos Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Maureen McKay, Molly Netter and Vira Slywotzky; mezzo-sopranos Margaret Lattimore and Aleksandra Romano; tenors Thor Arbjornsson, Jonathan Blalock and Vale Rideout; baritones Jesse Blumberg, Ron Loyd and Christopher Magiera; and bass Jonathan Woody.

"The New Opera Showcase is a rare and invaluable event for the entire opera community - composers, librettists, performers, producers and audiences alike," stated OPERA America President/CEO Marc A. Scorca. "Composers often don't have the opportunity to hear their work with orchestra until they are in rehearsals before the premiere, and by then, it's too late for them to make adjustments. Presenting these excerpts in a public performance gives the composers immediate feedback from the audience, which they might not otherwise have until opening night. The performances with orchestra also benefit opera producers by enabling them to hear the composers' full sonic landscape in a way that simply reading a score cannot," Scorca continued. "For audiences, the New Opera Showcase is a very special experience. Most people only hear an opera once the work is fully realized, so the Showcase is a unique chance to experience the creative process in action."

OPERA America has a long tradition of directly fostering the creation and development of new works. Over the past 30 years, OPERA America's Opera Fund has provided grants totaling over $13 million to assist companies with mounting new works. The New Opera Showcase is a component of OPERA America's New Works Forum, the preeminent conference for creators and producers of contemporary American opera, taking place January 16 to 19 at the National Opera Center.

OPERA America's newest grant program, Opera Grants for Female Composers, funded by The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, provides support for the development of new operas by women, both directly to individual composers and to opera companies producing their work, advancing the important objective to increase gender equality across the field. Sheila Silver, composer of the New Opera Showcase piece A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Opera, was one of the first recipients of a Female Composers grant in 2014.

EVENT INFORMATION

Date/Time: Monday, January 18, 2016, at 8:00 p.m.

Location: Trinity Wall Street

75 Broadway (at Wall Street)

New York, NY 10006

Tickets: $25 (general admission)

$10 (OPERA America members)

$5 (students with ID)

To purchase tickets or for more information about the New Opera Showcase, visit operaamerica.org/Showcase.

This performance will also be streamed live at operaamerica.org/Live.

The New Opera Showcase has been made possible with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts and the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.

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