In Wednesday’s (3/5) New York Times, Jim Dwyer writes about a new opera company in New York, founded by Bryce Smith and Rebecca Greenstein, both singers with non-musical day jobs. Last year, when the two “were performing in a children’s cabaret, they realized that their summer calendars were wide open. So just as terms like ‘credit default swaps’ were becoming part of the language, they created the Opera Manhattan Repertory Theater, a company for young and emerging singers. This week, Opera Manhattan is staging its first full production, an adaptation by Shawn E. Milnes of Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus that is set not in 19th-century Vienna, but at the masked Black and White Ball engineered by Truman Capote in 1966. … The show runs from Thursday to Sunday at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village.” The director, choreographer, stage manager, conductor, and all singers are working doing the show for free. Smith is financing the up-front costs of the theater rental and musical accompaniment with a loan from his savings account.
Posted March 5, 2009
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