Mark Campbell News

BroadwayWorld has a first look at STONEWAL at The New York City Opera starring Andrew Bidlack, Liz Bouk, Lisa Chavez, Michael Corvino, Jessica Fishenfeld, Mark Heller, Brian James Myer, and Jordan Weatherston Pitts. The opera has music by Iain Bell, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia. STONEWALL opens tonight, Friday, June 21 and run for five performances only through Friday, June 28 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center (in the Time Warner Center at Broadway and 60th Street).

BroadwayWorld has a first look at STONEWAL at The New York City Opera starring Andrew Bidlack, Liz Bouk, Lisa Chavez, Michael Corvino, Jessica Fishenfeld, Mark Heller, Brian James Myer, and Jordan Weatherston Pitts. The opera has music by Iain Bell, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia. STONEWALL opens tonight, Friday, June 21 and run for five performances only through Friday, June 28 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center (in the Time Warner Center at Broadway and 60th Street).

The spectacularly musical, touchingly dramatic, surprisingly funny and profoundly moving chamber opera, AS ONE, by Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, made its long-overdue return to New York on Thursday, in a production by Matt Gray as part of New York City Opera's spring season.

Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop) has announced that it will produce Intimate Apparel, a new opera with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and a libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her critically acclaimed play.  The production, which will be directed by Bartlett Sher, will begin previews Thursday, February 27 and open on Monday, March 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street). 

New York City Opera's (under the direction of Michael Capasso, General Director) co-production of AS ONE will open this Thursday, May 30 at 8pm and run for four performances only through Thursday, June 6. The opera, a co-production with American Opera Projects and Kaufman Music Center, has music and was conceived by Laura Kaminsky, a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, original film by Kimberly Reed, direction by Matt Gray, and will run at the Merkin Hall (129 West 67th Street).

“It's been quite a ride,” says Kim Reed, co-librettist, filmmaker—and inspiration--for AS ONE, the chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, with co-librettist Mark Campbell. The work's 27th production, in under five years, opened on May 30 under the auspices of New York City Opera, American Opera Projects (its original commissioner) and Kaufman Music Center at Merkin Hall on West 67 Street in Manhattan.

Folks Operetta continues its Reclaimed Voices Series with Paul Ábraham's exotic jazz operetta, The Flower of Hawaii featuring soprano and former Ms. Illinois Marisa Bucheit (2014) as Princess Laya/Suzanne. 

Bright Shiny Things commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising with the release of AS ONE [BSTC-0127, 1 CD], the original-cast first recording of the highly acclaimed 75-minute chamber opera for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and string quartet.

Tolpegin is magnificent in her portrayal. So often...an actor's depiction of mental illness is totally externalized...sobbing hysterical laughter, jerky body movements. Tolpegin doesn't rely on such tricks. We learn about her through her dialogue and song, but we are not always privy to her private internal struggles and suffering. This is the difference between a caricature and a character.

As One, composer Laura Kaminsky's chamber opera for two voices and string quartet, comes to Kaufman Music Center's Merkin Hall for a run of four performances: Thursday, May 30 (8 pm); Saturday, June 1 (9 pm), Tuesday, June 4 (8 pm), and Thursday, June 6 (8 pm).

On June 7 at 8pm, June 8 at 6pm, and June 9 at 3pm, Utopia Opera presents the New York Premiere of SOME LIGHT EMERGES, a chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, & Kimberly Reed, in a fully-staged production performed with its original orchestration at the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College (695 Park Avenue). Drama Desk Award-nominee David Schweizer directs and Utopia founder and artistic director William Remmers conducts. Q&A sessions with Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed, and members of the cast and crew follow each performance.

The nationally regarded Fulton Theatre is proud to present the riveting family drama and electrifying rock musical, Next to Normal, in the Tell Studio Theatre May 16 through June 2, with Previews May 14 and 15. An emotional powerhouse, Next to Normal is the recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Pride in the Park will feature a diverse program of selections from opera and musical theater sung by stars of City Opera's Pride Series, including a sneak peak of their upcoming world premiere, Stonewall, playing June 21-28 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the event, Iain Bell and Mark Campbell's Stonewall is a moving and explosive new American opera that captures the rage, grit, humor and, finally, hope of the LGBTQ community's uprising in a Greenwich Village dance club on one hot night in June 1969.

San Francisco Opera presents George Frideric Handel's Orlando in a bold production by director Harry Fehr that updates the setting to World War II London during the Blitz. English conductor Christopher Moulds makes his Company debut leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and a cast of five leading Handelian artists, each of whom is singing their roles for the first time. Handel's rarely performed work of love and madness will be presented June 9 27 at the War Memorial Opera House.

The Oratorio Society will conclude its 2018-19 Carnegie Hall season, which was expanded to four concerts from previous years' three, with Verdi's thrillingly dramatic Requiem, which premiered in Milan in 1874 and has since become one of the most-performed works in the symphonic choral canon. OSNY Music Director Kent Tritle leads the performance, which features the soloists Elizabeth de Trejo, soprano; Raehann Bryce-Davis, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Blue, tenor; and Adam Lau, bass, on Thursday, May 9, 2019, at 8:00 pm.

The Oratorio Society will conclude its 2018-19 Carnegie Hall season, which was expanded to four concerts from previous years' three, with Verdi's thrillingly dramatic Requiem, which premiered in Milan in 1874 and has since become one of the most-performed works in the symphonic choral canon. OSNY Music Director Kent Tritle leads the performance, which features the soloists Elizabeth de Trejo, soprano; Raehann Bryce-Davis, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Blue, tenor; and Adam Lau, bass, on Thursday, May 9, 2019, at 8:00 pm.

New York City Opera has announced that Blythe Gaissert & Michael Kelly and Briana Elyse Hunter & Jorell Williams will comprise the rotating casts of its upcoming production of AS ONE.

Was the pairing of Iain Bell and Mark Campbell--respectively, composer and librettist of New York City Opera's (NYCO) world premiere STONEWALL--'love at first sight”? I asked them. We were at the workshop in New York earlier this month that allowed them and director Leonard Foglia to cross the t's and dot the i's (and hear their new work performed).

American Opera Projects (AOP) announces the return of its popular Composers & the Voice program for its 2019-21 seasons. Created and led by Composers & the Voice Artistic Director Steven Osgood, six composers and up to three librettists will be selected for two-year fellowships to learn the fundamentals of writing for the voice and opera stage. Workshop sessions with professional opera singers, mentors, and instructors are held at AOP's home base in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Applications and complete information will be available beginning March 18 at www.aopopera.org/composers_voice. The deadline for applications is April 26 with fellowships announced by July 16.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus, who will present their Spring Concert, L'Amore e la Vita (Love and Life) for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on April 6 and 7. Led by Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. This program, which Ketchum humorously calls the Rom-Com of opera, will feature selections from two Verdi operas I vespri siciliani and Ernani, three Donizetti operas - Don Pasquale, La fille du r giment and L'elisir d'amore, as well as operatic sequences from Bizet's Les p cheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), Delibes' Lakm , and Puccini's La rondine.