Guettel, LaChiusa, Tesori and Kushner at The Metropolitan Opera

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 1:08pm

From Playbill.com:

"The Metropolitan Opera in New York is drawing on some top theatre talents for its upcoming attractions. Director Mary Zimmerman, playwright Tony Kushner and composers Michael John LaChiusa, Jeanine Tesori and Adam Geuttel will take part in upcoming productions, the New York Times reported.

Zimmerman, who won a Tony Award for her stage adaptation of Metamorphoses, will direct opera star Renee Fleming in Rossini’s Armida during the 2009-10 season.

Also new is an ambitious, multi-show, multi-year collaboration between the Met and Lincoln Center Theater, in which Broadway composers will develop operas. Adam Guettel, whose The Light in the Piazza is a hit at LCT; Jeanine Tesori, who wrote incidental music for LCT’s production of Twelfth Night and saw her Thoroughly Modern Millie on Broadway; Tony Kushner, who worked with Tesori on Caroline, or Change; and Michael John LaChiusa, whose Bernarda Alba is now at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, will be part of the venture.

The Met and LCT jointly commissioned new works from the composers. The pieces will be workshopped—a process more common to theatre than opera—and then presented at either the Met or the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The first complete show is expected to debut during the 2011-12 season. Peter Gelb, the Met’s incoming general manager, told the Times that the arrangement “was designed to produce operas with better dramatic flow from unexpected composers and to give them a chance for improvement before hitting the stage.”

Other planned projects include a new Tosca, possibly directed by George C. Wolfe, debuting in fall 2009. Also, Richard Eyre will direct and Matthew Bourne will choreograph Angela Gheorghiu in Carmen."


http://www.playbill.com/news/article/97911.html

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 1:51pm

Such exciting news!

[Barihunk]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 2:06pm

Sounds like Peter Gelb is really going to be shaking things up over at Sybil's Barn. If he can actually get these composers to deliver viable products, kudos to him. This is also potential good news for those great performers out there who straddle the fine line between grand opera and musical theatre.

Even more exciting is his enlisting of Broadway directors to reimagine the repertoire. Zimmerman is a natural to bring Rossini's magical Armida to the stage. The collaboration of Karita Mattila and George C. Wolfe on "Tosca" is an exciting prospect. Gheorghiu as Carmen is all wrong though. The article failed to mention the new production of "Barber of Seville" that Bartlett Sher will helm next season.

On the whole, very good news indeed.

Updated On: 2/13/06 at 02:06 PM

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 6:23pm

This is such great news. I can't wait to tell my voice teacher and my vocal coach!

[jsdhzm]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 8:30pm

Broadway vocalist, Andrea Burns will be singing Adam Guettel's
Light in the Piazza at the State Theatre, New Brunswick NJ on
Feb. 19, 2006, 2:00 p.m. She will be singing with a 70 piece symphony.

www.edisonsymphony.com

www.statetheatrenj.org click order tickets- click Los Romeros to find Andrea Burns also

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 9:29pm

Many of these projects are in the distant future, so I'm not exactly holding my breath for any of them. I am particularly worried about Adam Guettel getting The Princess Bride written before he is due to deliver a commissioned opera.

[TheEnchantedHunter]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 10:10pm

It's enough to make the heart break. How the mighty have fallen!


Allison MacKenzie
Peyton Place, New Hampshire

[BSoBW3]

Posted: 2/13/06 at 10:45pm

I can't wait that long.