Conrad Cumming’s New Opera THE GOLDEN GATE to Receive Staged Workshop at Lincoln Center with All-Star Cast, 1/16-1/17

AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS (AOP) and LivelyWorks present a workshop production of The Golden Gate, an opera in two acts with music by Conrad Cummings and libretto from the novel-in-verse by Vikram Seth adapted by the composer. The performances, on Saturday January 16 and Sunday January 17, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. will take place at the Rose Studio, 10th Floor of the Rose Building (next door to The Juilliard School, enter on 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue). Tickets are $25, available at www.operaprojects.org.

Joining conductor Steven Osgood (New York City Opera, De Nederlandse Opera, Chautauqua Opera, former AOP Artistic Director) and director John Henry Davis (Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, "Oz" for HBO) is a cast of young singers whose appearances include leading roles at The Metropolitan Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Theatre du Châtelet Paris, Lyric Opera of San Diego, Santa Fe Opera, The Wooster Group, and La Scala: baritone David Adam Moore, tenor Keith Jameson, mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn, bass Kevin Burdette, and soprano Katrina Thurman.

The Golden Gate charts two years in the tightly intertwined lives of five young, attractive, and complex characters. In their early- and mid-twenties, each is dealing with the intoxicating and disorienting openness of possibilities presented by San Francisco in the early 1980s.

American Opera Projects General Director Charles Jarden says, "This funny, tragic, surprising story of love, loss and growing up, set in Conrad's hometown of San Francisco, is the most accessible and musically rich opera we have had the privilege to nurture."

Inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Seth's novel-in-verse follows Pushkin's themes while moving its verse and its story into a poignantly modern setting.

A versatile composer on the faculty at The Juilliard School Evening Division, Conrad Cummings has received the following praise from the NYTimes: "Mr. Cummings is his own man;...[with an] impressive ability to change styles...while retaining a compositional image." The Golden Gate is his fifth opera.

Cummings writes, "Vikram Seth's best-selling novel-in-verse awakens the vivid memories I have of my home town and reminds me acutely of the romantic adventures of my younger life. Boys with girls, boys with boys, it's all there, along with the exhilaration and the heartbreak. Seth's verse makes these experiences sing; I've tried to capture in music their unique mixture of pathos and humor."

Vikram Seth's first novel, The Golden Gate (1986) ("a splendid achievement" -The NYTimes), gained international attention and extraordinary sales. His acclaimed epic of Indian life, A Suitable Boy (1993), won the WH Smith Literary Award and The Commonwealth Writers Prize and sold over two million copies. An Equal Music (1999), the story of a violinist haunted by the memory of a former lover, has been translated and published in six languages.

American Opera Projects' (www.operaprojects.org) mission is to champion innovative works of music theater, to expand the art form, and to identify, develop and present new works by emerging and established talent. AOP is "a living, breathing workshop," (Time Out NY) "a valuable company [that] offers a chance to look in on operas in progress by talented composers." (The New Yorker)

Emma Lively is the president of LivelyWorks, a young company committed to developing and producing tuneful, optimistic and entertaining works for the stage.
 
The performance on January 17th will be filmed in three-camera video for use in a promotional DVD.

Workshop production of The Golden Gate, an opera in two acts with music by Conrad Cummings and libretto from the novel-in-verse by Vikram Seth adapted by the composer.

Saturday January 16 and Sunday January 17, 2010 at 8:00 p.m.

The Rose Studio, 10th Floor of the Rose Building (next door to The Juilliard School, enter on 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue).

Tickets are $25, available at www.operaprojects.org.