Season 2003–2004
Opera Potpourri
Friedberg Hall, October 27
The Peabody Opera Workshop presents scenes from operas about Falstaff and others, showcasing Peabody’s new talents, sung in their original languages, with piano accompaniment, and staged by guest director Edward J. Crafts.
Peabody Opera Theatre
Giacomo Puccini’s
Il Trittico
Friedberg Hall, November 20–23
Puccini’s well-loved comedy Gianni Schicchi and sentimental tragedy Suor Angelica will be preceded, as the composer intended, by his stirring melodrama of illicit passion Il Tabarro, the least-often-performed but arguably the best work of the three. Hajime Teri Murai conducts the Peabody Symphony Orchestra; Roger Brunyate directs.
The Reunion and Perlimplín
Friedberg Hall, February 2 & 3
The Peabody Chamber Opera presents a revival of two contrasting one-act operas. Originally premiered at Peabody in 1989, The Reunion by Daniel Crozier to a text by Roger Brunyate, looks at the changes in the lives of five women as they leave college and adjust to the realities of the world. Perlimplín, a setting of a Lorca play by composer Kam Morrill, is a serio-comic fable about a man whose only way to get close to his beautiful but promiscuous wife is to disguise himself as one of her lovers.
Peabody Opera Theatre
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
The Abduction from the Seraglio
Friedberg Hall, February 26–29
Mozart’s Turkish opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail was the breakaway piece that established the arrival of the new superstar on the Viennese scene. More than the scintillating comedy it undoubtedly is, the opera’s serious contrasting of the moral values of the Western Enlightenment and the Muslim world make it as relevant to our time as it was in Mozart’s. Edward Polochick will conduct the Peabody Concert Orchestra, and the production will feature the Peabody debuts of two guest artists, stage director Garnett Bruce and designer Erhard Rom.
The Threepenny Opera
and
Weill and Brel on Love and War
Theatre Project, Baltimore, March 25–April 4
After the success of their production of the Brecht-Weill Mahagonny Songspiel last year, the Peabody Chamber Opera returns to Theatre Project with a full-length work by the same pair. Part acid social criticism, part bittersweet romance, this saga of “Mack the Knife” and his entourage of thieves and whores has never lost its theatrical punch. A cabaret of songs by Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel will be offered in between performances of The Threepenny Opera.
If I Were a Voice
Peabody Camerata in Griswold Hall, April 3 & 4
The Peabody Camerata, under the baton of Gene Young, will present the world premiere of a new chamber opera by Peabody composer Daniel Thomas Davis. An historical piece, written on a fellowship from Johns Hopkins University, it tells the story of the Hutchinsons, a nineteenth-century group of traveling entertainers who became prominent in the fight against slavery.
Americana
Davidson-Cohen Hall, April 24–26
A miscellany of works from the American musical theater. The several performances over the three-day span will contain different elements at each show, including a Gershwin revue, excerpts from Broadway musicals, and (at some performances) the one-act opera by Lee Hoiby and Lanford Wilson This is the Rill Speaking. Eileen Cornett is the musical director.