Ricky Ian Gordon News

Chicago Opera Theater (COT) blends beer, Shakespeare's sonnets and opera at "Beers & Baritones: A Bar Night with the Bard," at Mad Mouse Brewery (724 W Maxwell St.) on October 20 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The third annual performance of "Beers & Baritones" will feature Chicago Opera Theater's bass-baritone Zacharias Niedzwiecki and bass Samuel Weiser, along with select performances by Chicago College of Performing Arts students Richard Hatcher and Liz Lengyel. Tickets ($35 to the general public; $30 for subscribers and Opera Underground members) can be purchased online here and includes three beers and appetizers. Mad Mouse Brewery is located inside Moxee's Brewpub, which features barbeque and Cajun cuisine.

Just announced, Second Stage Theatre's New York Premiere production of NOTES FROM THE FIELD: DOING TIME IN EDUCATION, the latest work created, written and performed by groundbreaking theatre artist Anna Deavere Smith with music composed and performed by Marcus Shelby and directed by Leonard Foglia, will open on November 2, 2016 at the Tony Kiser Theatre (305 West 43rd Street). Previews will begin on October 15.

Husband-and-wife duo John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey make their annual fall pilgrimage toCafe Carlyle with an all-new show, The Arc of a Love Affair, November 22-December 1. They return following last year's universally acclaimed show My Generation. 

In advance of the NYC premiere of Naomi Wallace's 1993 play The War Boys to be directed by James Will McBride, The Artist's Crossing presents a special panel discussion and reading of the play at The Americas Society on October 17, 2016 at 7:00pm.

Hailed as "one of the great amateur choruses of our time (New York Today) for its "full-bodied sound and suppleness (The New York Times)," The Dessoff Choirs, with soloists and orchestra, opens its 92nd season at Alice Tully Hall. For one night only, Dessoff presents We Remember including Mozart's Requiem and contemporary choral works reflecting on the lives of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and paying tribute to composer Steven Stucky, a champion of new music.

Hailed as 'one of the great amateur choruses of our time (New York Today) for its 'full-bodied sound and suppleness (The New York Times),' The Dessoff Choirs, with soloists and orchestra, opens its 92nd season at Alice Tully Hall. For one night only, Dessoff presents We Remember including Mozart's Requiem and contemporary choral works reflecting on the lives of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and paying tribute to composer Steven Stucky, a champion of new music.

The New Yorker Festival will present a Theatre for a New Audience production of a reading of the new two-character play About Alice that Calvin Trillin adapted from his memoir about his late wife, the educator Alice Stewart Trillin. About Alice, with Jessica Hecht as Alice and Tony Shalhoub as Calvin and directed by Leonard Foglia, will be heard one night only at the Directors Guild Theatre, 110 West 57th Street, Today, October 8, at 7:00pm.

Chicago's historic Studebaker Theater will become the home of live opera with a contemporary adaptation of Henry Purcell's 1692 "The Fairy Queen," a reimagining of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" presented by Chicago Opera Theater (COT) beginning November 5. The California-based performance troupe Culture Clash and COT's Andreas Mitisek put a modernized spin on Purcell's adaptation of Shakespeare's classic with an edgy and hilarious examination of the messes mere mortals make of relationships. "The Fairy Queen" will be performed at Chicago's historicStudebaker Theater (410 S. Michigan Ave). The press performance will be November 5 at 7:30 p.m.Subsequent performances will be November 11 at 7:30 p.m. and November 13 at 3 p.m.

This fall, contemporary opera producer AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS (AOP) will present COMPOSERS & THE VOICE: SIX SCENES 2016, a concert of opera scenes from ten artists emerging in the world of contemporary opera. Audiences will get a first look at six wildly different new works that range from imagining moments in the lives of famous people such as Sigmund Freud and Mabel Dodge Luhan or events taking place in a spaceship, an asylum, and a uterus. The composers Matthew Barnson, Carlos R. Carrillo, Nell Shaw Cohen, Marc LeMay, Cecilia Livingston, and Sky Macklay and librettists Edward Einhorn, Duncan McFarlane, Emily Roller, and Mark Sonnenblick, were chosen by AOP to spend a year creating new works in its bi-annual fellowship program Composers & the Voice (C&V).

For the first time ever, Chicago's iconic Music Box Theatre will host a classical live performance when Chicago Opera Theater (COT) debuts the Chicago premiere of Frank Martin's 1942 'The Love Potion' ('Le Vin Herbe') on September 30.

American Lyric Theater (ALT) and Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center, in partnership with MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), presents The Halloween Tree on October 30, 2016 at 3pm in the Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, New York City.  Based on Ray Bradbury's classic novel that explores the origins of Halloween, composer Theo Popov and librettist Tony Asaro take us on an epic journey as a group of children search for their friend Pipkin, who has mysteriously disappeared on Halloween night.

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale) will celebrate its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, beginning with the New York premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek's 27, specially adapted for MasterVoices, on October 20 and 21, 2016 at 8pm at New York City Center, 131 W. 55th Street, New York City.

Opera Philadelphia looks forward to launching the 2016-17 season with the world premiere of a new company co-commission, Breaking the Waves (Sep 22-Oct 1).

American Lyric Theater (ALT) - founded by Lawrence Edelson in 2005 to build a new body of operatic repertoire by nurturing composers and librettists and providing an incubator for their collaborations - announces its 2016-2017 Season. The season begins with the InsightALT series, providing an insider's look at how new operas are made, featuring concert readings of operas in development at ALT, including The Halloween Tree, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing, and Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant. The season concludes with the return of the critically acclaimed ALT Alumni: Composers & Librettists in Concert, celebrating the success of prominent alumni of American Lyric Theater's innovative Composer Librettist Development Program. Tickets are available at www.altnyc.org.

Just announced, four-time Tony Award Nominee Judy Kuhn (Fun Home, She Loves Me, Chess, Les Miserables) will join the cast of Fiddler on the Roof as Golde.

The Public Theater announced complete casting today for the New York premiere of SWEAT by Lynn Nottage.

New York City's famed MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale) - founded in 1941 by legendary conductor Robert Shaw - will celebrate its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season.

The New Yorker Festival will present a Theatre for a New Audience production of a reading of the new two-character play About Alice that Calvin Trillin adapted from his memoir about his late wife, the educator Alice Stewart Trillin. About Alice, with Jessica Hecht as Alice and Tony Shalhoub as Calvin and directed by Leonard Foglia, will be heard one night only at the Directors Guild Theatre, 110 West 57th Street, Saturday, October 8, at 7:00pm.

FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents "A House of Glass" in concert on Monday September 12, 2016 at 7 PM. Broadway's Joshua Morgan (Les Mis), Lawrence Clayton (The Color Purple), Leah Horowitz (Follies), Jelani Remy (The Lion King), Austin Colby (The Sound of Music), Theresa McCarthy (Floyd Collins) and Megan Kane take part in a one night only concert version of this exciting new musical!