Opera in the Americas—American Opera
March 23–26, 2006

This major conference will celebrate University of Michigan School of Music’s 125th year and its prestigious composers and musicologists.

The U-M Institute for the Humanities organized the conference with the ambitious aim of restoring to opera its wide berth in the Americas. The scholars, singers, writers, composers, directors, impresarios, critics, agents and conductors who populate the six panels will speak to myriad historical, geographical, musical, educational, and business aspects of opera, launching a wide-ranging discussion of the culture of opera on the continents of North and South America.

William Bolcom, U-M’s Pulitzer-prize winning composer, will deliver the keynote address, “My Adventures, Mostly Pleasant, in Operaland.” In subsequent panels, David DiChiera of the Michigan Opera Theatre will talk about the challenges to mounting opera in cities with changing demographics. Diane Zola of the Houston Grand Opera, will talk about the nurturing of new talent, Wayne Koestenbaum will talk about writing the libretto for Jackie O., James Dapogny, who discovered and restored two James P. Johnson operas with librettos by Langston Hughes and Eugene O’Neill, will talk about that process. Anne Midgette, New York music theatre critic and reviewer, will give her accounting of the plusses and minuses of America’s highly-developed vocal training system. Storied diva Shirley Verrett and famous tenor George Shirley, now in the 46th year of his singing career, will offer the wisdom borne of their experience. And U-M musicologist Louise K. Stein will talk about La púrpura de la rosa, the first opera ever performed in the Americas (in Lima, in 1701).

The conference is timed to coincide and resonate with a feast of performances, each bound up in a different way with the School of Music. La púrpura de la rosa by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco will be presented in a workshop format based on Professor Stein’s award-winning critical edition. Jackie O., a feast of hard-hitting Americana in a style that combines elements of musical theater and opera composed by U-M’s Michael Daugherty, and James P. Johnson’s operas De Organizer and The Dreamy Kid will also be performed.

All events take place on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, and all, except for the performances of Jackie O and De Organizer and The Dreamy Kid, are free and open to the public (for tickets, (734) 764-2538, www.music.umich.edu/performances_events/ticket_office.htm.) For more information: humin@umich.edu; (734) 936-3518. 

Generous support for the Arts and Knowledge Fellowship from the Andrew Mellon Foundation allowed the Institute for the Humanities to bring opera director Nicolette Molnár to campus for the winter term to teach, to direct Jackie O., The Dreamy Kid and De Organizer, and to underwrite this conference.

Sponsors
University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, School of Music, Center for World Performance Studies, and Andrew Mellon Foundation