|
Having trouble viewing this email?
Click here to view it in your preferred web browser. | |
LA Opera Presents U.S. Premiere of Franz Schreker's
Ian Judge Directs Cast Including Anja Kampe, Robert Brubaker,
First production of any opera by Franz Schreker April 10 through 24, 2010 (Los Angeles, CA) March 8, 2010 - LA Opera presents a new production of Austrian composer Franz Schreker's rarely staged early 20th-century masterpiece, The Stigmatized (Die Gezeichneten), opening on Saturday, April 10 at 7:30pm. "Three seasons ago, LA Opera inaugurated Recovered Voices, a multi-season initiative to revive the works of composers whose lives and careers were cut short by the Nazi regime," said Plácido Domingo, LA Opera's Eli and Edythe Broad General Director. "This groundbreaking project was one of the first ideas that James Conlon mentioned when I invited him to become music director in Los Angeles. The rediscovery of this important music has long been one of his passions around the world, and when I took the idea to our Board of Directors, they immediately agreed that this would be an important new artistic goal for LA Opera. This season, I am proud that LA Opera will present Franz Schreker's The Stigmatized for the long-awaited American premiere of this magnificent work." James Conlon, the Company's Richard Seaver Music Director, will conduct. The new production is directed by Ian Judge, with projections designed by Wendall K. Harrington, costumes designed by Deirdre Clancy and lighting designed by Brian Gale. The Associate Conductor / Chorus Master is Grant Gershon. The Stigmatized will run for a total of four performances from April 10 through 24, 2010, and will be performed in repertory with the Company's production of Götterdämmerung (April 3 through 25). All performances will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles CA, 90012. Tickets to The Stigmatized range from $15 to $125, and are on sale at the LA Opera Box Office, by phone at (213) 972-8001 or online at www.laopera.com. "Franz Schreker is perhaps the most striking example of a highly recognized composer whose music disappeared after it was banned in 1933," said James Conlon. "He was so prominent that some viewed him as the successor to both Wagner and Strauss. Die Gezeichneten was given nearly two dozen productions in the years immediately following its premiere, an extraordinary indication of success by any measure. It is with great pride that LA Opera will present the first staged production in the American hemisphere of any of Schreker's operas." The Stigmatized (Die Gezeichneten, 1918) is the best known work by Franz Schreker, one of the most important and successful opera composers of the early 20th century, who fell into obscurity after the rise of the Nazi regime. The Stigmatized is a rapturously evocative late-Romantic tragedy in which an unlikely love triangle plays out on a paradise pleasure island amidst a group of decadent nobles who are marked by lust and depravity. Although none of Schreker's operas has ever been staged in the American hemisphere before now, The Stigmatized has begun to return to prominence in Europe. A 1995 Berlin Symphony Orchestra recording was part of Decca's celebrated Entartete Musik series and a spectacular 2005 Salzburg Festival production was filmed and released on DVD. LA Opera's new production of The Stigmatized features a large cast headed by American tenor Robert Brubaker in his Company debut as Alviano (a role he performed in the Salzburg production), German soprano Anja Kampe (Fidelio, Il Tabarro, Die Walküre) as Carlotta, and German baritone Martin Gantner (Tannhäuser, The Birds) as Count Tamare. American baritone James Johnson (The Broken Jug, The Birds) returns as Duke Adorno, with German bass-baritone Wolfgang Schöne reprising his Salzburg role as Lodovico Nardi for his LA Opera debut. With its racist ideology and systematic suppression-particularly, although not exclusively, of Jewish musicians, artists and writers-the Nazi regime silenced two generations of composers and, with them, an entire musical heritage. The suppression of these composers and musicians caused the greatest single rupture in what had been a seamless transmittal of German classical music. The son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Franz Schreker (1878-1934) rose to prominence in Vienna and Berlin as the greatest opera composer of his generation. In 1920, he was appointed director of the Berlin Musikhochschule, Germany's leading conservatory. In 1932, right wing pressure forced the Jewish composer's resignation from the Musikhochschule and with the advent of Hitler in 1933, he was dismissed from his tenured position at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. While engaged in a protracted battle over his retirement pension, and anxious about his future-financial as well as professional-Schreker was felled by a stroke in December 1933, from which he died on March 21, 1934, two days before his 56th birthday. LA Opera is the only major American opera company to systematically program the works of composers affected by the rise of the Third Reich. The Company's Recovered Voices series was inaugurated in the 2006/07 season with a concert that opened with the prelude to The Stigmatized and included operatic excerpts from works by Walter Braunfels, Erich Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff and Viktor Ullmann, as well as a complete concert performance of Alexander Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy. In the 2007/08 season, LA Opera presented a double bill with fully-staged performances of Ullmann's The Broken Jug (a U.S. premiere) and Zemlinsky's The Dwarf. The series continued in the 2008/09 season with the U.S. premiere of Walter Braunfels' The Birds. The Recovered Voices series was made possible by LA Opera Board Member and Los Angeles philanthropist Marilyn Ziering, who has contributed $4 million to the project and has personally raised an additional $850,000 from several leaders and supporters of the LA Opera to fund the project. The Stigmatized opens on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at 7:30pm with subsequent performances on Sunday, April 18 at 2pm; Thursday, April 22 at 7:30pm; and Saturday, April 24 at 7:30pm. Performances will be held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Tickets to The Stigmatized range from $15 to $125, and are on sale at the LA Opera Box Office, by phone at (213) 972-8001 or online at www.laopera.com. For disability access, call (213) 972-0777 or e-mail wehelpyou@laopera.com. New production made possible by major grants from Marilyn Ziering and the Ziering Family Foundation Special support provided by Thurmond Smithgall and the Lanie and Ethel Foundation
Additional generous support from Herbert Simon Foundation, Louis Colen,
Artist headshots and production photos can be found on the LA Opera Press Gallery:
Artist biographies, synopsis and background information can be found on the LA Opera website:
All programs, artists and dates are subject to change. This is an LA Opera original production.
Rolex is the Official Timepiece of LA Opera ### |
|
| © 2010 Los Angeles Opera. All Rights Reserved. | Send To A Friend | Unsubscribe |