The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra—plus a new festival and two opera companies—are among the arts organizations with world premieres recently announced for upcoming seasons. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra will perform Augusta Read Thomas’s 28-minute symphonic song cycle Earth Echoes at Carnegie Hall on October 11, 2012 with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Nathan Gunn. Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will receive its premiere on March 14, 2013 with soloist Lynn Harrell and Christoph Eschenbach leading the BSO. Also on the horizon for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons are new operas set for premieres in Washington, D.C., Texas, and New York City. On November 19, 2012, Washington National Opera will perform works by three composer-librettist teams as part of the first season of its American Opera Initiative commissioning program: The Game of Hearts (composer Douglas Pew, librettist Dara Weinberg), Part of the Act (Liam Wade, John Grimmett), and Charon (Scott Perkins, Nat Cassidy). In June 2013, WNO will also stage the world premiere of the hourlong opera The Tao of Muhammad Ali (A Ghost Story) by composer D.J. Sparr and librettist Davis Miller. In January 2013, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE (nonprofits arts groups based in New York City) will co-present the world premiere of the opera Sumeida’s Song by Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz. Sumeida’s Song takes place during a new two-week festival of music theater and opera theater in New York City called PROTOTYPE. Also scheduled for a world premiere at PROTOTYPE festival is David T. Little’s multimedia work Soldier Songs, with a libretto adapted from recorded interviews with war veterans. The Fort Worth Opera in Texas will premiere two new operas in spring of 2014: a full-length version of Libby Larsen’s A Wrinkle in Time, adapted from her one-act 1991 children’s opera, with librettist Bradley Greenwald; and With Blood, With Ink by composer Daniel Crozier and librettist Peter M. Krask, based on the story of 17th-century Mexican nun Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Posted July 26, 2012
