For Immediate Release
October 23, 2007
Contacts: Richard Russell, Director of Marketing
rrussell@sarasotaopera.org
(941) 366-8450, ext. 245
Patricia G. Horwell, Communications Officer
phorwell@sarasotaopera.org
(941) 366-8450, ext. 332

Sarasota Opera Commissions Ned Rorem to Write Work for Sarasota Youth Opera

Opera Based on Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland With Libretto by J.D. McClatchy Will Premiere in May 2009

SARASOTA, FL - Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ned Rorem and librettist and poet J.D. McClatchy have been commissioned by Sarasota Opera to write a full-length opera for the Sarasota Youth Opera program. The work will premiere in May 2009 at the Sarasota Opera House. The opera will be based on Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" which ran in the New York Herald and New York American newspapers from 1905 through 1913.

The new commission is part of Sarasota Opera's ongoing effort to expand the repertoire of works written for young voices. One of only a handful of organizations in the country that perform works designed especially for young people, this is the fifth opera commissioned by Sarasota Opera.

Sarasota Opera Executive Director Susan Danis commented, "to have such a distinguished team write a piece for our Youth Opera program is certainly an honor and a unique opportunity for the community and our Youth Opera members. The significance of the project has already been recognized and supported by grant from the Joy McCann Foundation and many of our other key supporters." Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi added, "one of our objectives in commissioning new works is to expand the repertoire of quality operas for young people to perform. With a composer and librettist of such eminence creating this piece we look forward to a new work of artistic importance for our community and young people across the country."

Sarasota Youth Opera, founded in 1985, is the most comprehensive program in the U.S. to introduce and involve young people in the performance of opera. Youth Opera members participate in a year-round program which includes vocal instruction, performance in choral groups, and involvement in the Sarasota Opera main stage season. The program culminates in the production of an operatic work which was written to be sung by young people. The fully-staged Sarasota Youth Opera performances are under direction of the Sarasota Opera professional music and production staff and take place on the main stage of the historic Sarasota Opera House.

About the Composer

Composer Ned Rorem
Photo credit: Christian Steiner.
Print quality photo

Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.

Ned Rorem is one of America's most honored composers. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 1976 for his suite Air Music, Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968). He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; in 1998 he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America. The Atlanta Symphony recording of the String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles received a Grammy Award for Outstanding Orchestral Recording in 1989. From 2000 to 2003 he served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003 he received ASCAP's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in January 2004 the French government named him Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.

Rorem is justly renowned for his art songs; his catalog includes more than 500 works in the medium. Evidence of Things Not Seen, his evening-length song cycle for four singers and piano, represents his magnum opus in the genre. The New York Festival of Song premiered the cycle at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in January 1998. New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen "one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer;" Chamber Music magazine deemed it "a masterpiece."

Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist J.D. McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2006 and has enjoyed subsequent performances with the Lake George Opera, Aspen Music Theater Center, North Carolina School of the Arts, and Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, CA.

About the Librettist

Librettist J.D. McClatchy
Photo credit: James Hamilton
Print quality photo

J.D. McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems, the most recent of which is Hazmat, a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written three volumes of essays and edited a dozen other books and the acclaimed series "The Voice of the Poet" for Random House Audiobooks. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review and The New Republic, among other publications.

McClatchy has taught at Princeton, Columbia, UCLA and Johns Hopkins, and he is currently a professor of English at Yale University. Since 1991, he has served as editor of The Yale Review. McClatchy has risen to an increasingly prominent role in the opera house as a librettist; writing for William Schuman's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending, Tobias Picker's Emmeline, Loren Maazel's 1984 (with Thomas Meehan), Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts, Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel (with Julie Taymor), and Ned Rorem's Our Town.

In 1996 he was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and served until 2003 when he was named to the Academy's Board of Directors. In 1998 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the following year was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honors, Mr. McClatchy has been awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the Governor's Arts Award in Connecticut, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

About "Little Nemo in Slumberland"

Winsor McCay's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland ran in the New York Herald from 1905 - 1911 and in the New York American from 1911 - 1913. It relates the dreams of a little boy which always began in some adventure, usually ending in mishap or disaster which caused him to wake up. While the strip was not a popular success because the stories were dark and surreal in comparison to the slapstick style of comic strips like Katzenjammer Kids, the visual style is often cited as an important influence on generations of artists including Moebius, Chris Ware, William Joyce, and Maurice Sendak.

About the Sarasota Youth Opera

Established in 1984, Sarasota Youth Opera was one of the first programs of its kind in America. It is a year-round which involves the members in all of the facets of operatic performance and production. For part of the year the members form the Youth Opera Choruses. The choruses include three groups of young people, age 10 -18. One training group (the Preparatory Chorus) works to improve skills and prepare students for one of the two advanced choruses (the Treble Chorus and the Mixed Voice Chorus).

Members also pariticipate in the mainstage Sarasota Winter Opera Festival. They form the children's chorus if it is required. They have also performed children's solo roles and sometimes are used as supers.

Each May, under the direction of the professional Sarasota Youth Opera music and production staff, members perform a fully-staged opera with orchestra of a work specifically written for young voices. In past season productions have included John Rutter's The Piper of Hamelin, Aaron Copland's The Second Hurricane, and Benjamin Britten's The Little Sweep. Sarasota Youth Opera has also commissioned works, the last of which was John Kennedy's The Language of Birds, which premiered at the Sarasota Opera House in 2004.

In June 2007, 38 members of the Treble/Mixed Chorus participated in the International Choral Festival in Tuscany, Italy. Singers spent six days visiting and performing in Montecatini Terme, and touring Florence, Pisa and Lucca.

About Sarasota Opera

Based in Florida's beautiful Gulf Coast, Sarasota Opera is in now in its 49th season. In 1960 the company began presenting chamber-sized repertoire in the historic 320 seat Asolo Theater on the grounds of Sarasota's Ringling Museum of Art. Recognizing the need for a theater more conducive to opera, the company purchased the former A.B. Edwards Theater in downtown Sarasota in 1979. Renovations began in 1982 and the 1,033 seat theater, now on the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1984 as the Sarasota Opera House. Since 1983 the company has been under the artistic leadership of Victor DeRenzi. Since then the company has garnered international attention with its Masterwork Revivals Series, which presents neglected works of artistic merit, as well as the Verdi Cycle producing the complete works of Giuseppe Verdi. Recognizing the importance of training, Maestro DeRenzi founded the Apprentice Artist and Studio Artist programs. Sarasota Opera also maintains a commitment to education through its OPERA-tion performances for local schools and the unique Sarasota Youth Opera program.

The Sarasota Opera House is currently undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation and restoration. The project is designed to restore the historic 1926 theater to its original glory, while creating a venue for opera for the 21st century. Decorative details are being restored, seating is being replaced, and the orchestra pit has been enlarged to allow for an expansion of the repertoire. Backstage systems are also being updated and public areas and amenities expanded and enhanced. Construction is scheduled to be completed in January 2008, to allow for March opening to the 2008 Opera Festival.

Sarasota Opera's 2008 Winter Opera Festival will open on March 1, 2008 with Verdi's Rigoletto. The season, which will run through April 13, will also include Puccini's La rondine, Verdi's rarely-heard I due Foscari (The Two Foscari) and conclude with Mozart's Così fan tutte. Subscriptions and single tickets for the 2008 Opera Festival are now on sale.

Sarasota Opera is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Programs are supported in part by an award the Tourist Development Tax through the Board of County Commissioners, the Tourist Development Council and the Sarasota County Arts Council. Additional funding is provided by the City of Sarasota and the County of Sarasota.

SARASOTA OPERA
61 North Pineapple Avenue
Sarasota, FL 34236
(941) 366-8450
www.sarasotaopera.org

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