And so here we are, with all of the Times Square tourists, right across the street from Madame Tussaud’s (which seems to be doing gangbusters business on Halloween week). We’re at the New 42, one of the most pleasant places we’ve used for auditions in New York. Abundant natural light, clean space, and acoustics both
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Trip away; make no stay…
The summer was an exhausting, amazing, and beautiful thing. But 15 weeks of long days and little time to breathe have left us a little worse for wear. The to-do list is long, as application review and auditions, the premiere of The Inspector, and preparations for the 40th anniversary WTOC season are added to essential
Read MoreLazy July Weekend
Prepare preshow talk for Turk… manage last-minute ticket requests for sold-out shows… plan to write a blog post… kick off the Vocal Colors recital series… get ready for first Blier residency… think about writing a blog post… set up rehearsals for concert with NSO this Friday… gather notes for meeting with Midsummer Night’s Dream stage
Read More“Lose preconceptions about opera as something big, grand and overblown”
Part Two of Anne Midgette’s survey of new American opera ran in the Post yesterday, and we got some nice ink for our recent and future commissioning activity. (Do click through – it’s a good read.) Part One ran last Sunday, on the day of our WTOC Artist Welcome Reception, and quite a few donors
Read MoreNew Opera: Good Things Come in Small Packages
July 3, 2010 New Opera: Good Things Come in Small Packages Hot off the presses today at the Wolf Trap Opera Company is an interview with WTOC Director Kim Pensinger Witman, which features prominently in the second of Anne Midgette’s two-part analysis of the future of American Opera in the Washington Post. The article includes
Read MoreInspecting: Done, done, and done.
The Inspector workshop lasted just six days -intense, full of laughter, and infused by the good will and hard work of our cast and staff. Any just description deserves more time and space than I can afford here, already engulfed as I am by the beginning of our summer season. Let it be said that
Read MoreInspecting: Fazzobaldi
This week we’re workshopping the next Musto/Campbell opera. The Inspector will premiere next spring at The Barns, and we’re taking it apart and putting it back together stem-to-stern. Today, meet Mayor Fazzobaldi [pronounced Fatso Baldy for those of you who don’t speak Italian:)) Baritone. 40s–50s. Short, corpulent, bombastic, bellicose, and bumbling, a man driven by his
Read MoreUncertainty
We’re furiously working out the details of our open-ended approach to Zaide. We will offer anywhere from two to four possible endings, and the details will emerge during our rehearsal period. The desire to lock in the details now is tempting, but to do so would be to fly in the face of the whole
Read MoreMy Fifteen Minutes
I was looking forward to this week’s Bastianello & Lucrezia rehearsals so that I could report from the front lines. It was clearly delusional thinking, for the last 6 days have left no time at all for writing. As one can only do in a small company (and I know that many of you out
Read MoreBlog Clog
Brain Drain. All sorts of things interfering with blogging. This week included a trip to New York for preparations for our upcoming workshop of Musto & Campbells Inspector opera. And the little remaining office time was clouded by fumbling attempts at writing marketing copy for our 2010 shows. (You’d think that struggling with Twitter would
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