David T. Little News

Peak Performances will present the world premiere of Quixote, from composer-librettist Amy Beth Kirsten and director-designer Mark DeChiazza, March 23-26.

Fort Worth Opera (FWOpera), in partnership with Telemundo, celebrates the first year of its bold new initiative, Noches de Ópera (Nights of Opera), with Fiesta Fort Worth, a family-friendly party in Sundance Square Plaza featuring a simulcast of the smash-hit mariachi opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna for thousands of spectators.

The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, America's longest running festival of new orchestral music, celebrates the arrival of its brilliant new Music Director and Conductor, Cristian M?celaru, with a sensational series of commissioned works that continue the Festival's forward-looking tradition and opens creative doors for its dynamic young conductor.

American Opera Projects (AOP) announces the return of its popularComposers & the Voice program for its 2017-19 seasons. Created and led by Composers & the Voice Artistic Director Steven Osgood, eight composers and 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 15 atwww.aopopera.org/composers_voice. The deadline for applications is April 28 with fellowships announced by July 1.

American Composers Orchestra (ACO), under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and Music Director George Manahan, continues its 40th Anniversary Season on Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7:30pm with Orchestra Underground: Past Forward at Carnegie Hall's subterranean Zankel Hall.

The University Musical Society (UMS) will offer a free online livestream of Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion's performance of Steve Reich's Sextet and Music for 18 Musicians on Saturday, March 18.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, is pleased to announce it has awarded grants to 10 opera companies through The Opera Fund: Audience Development grant program, which promotes deep learning experiences about new or infrequently produced American operas and music-theater works. Each grant supports audience development activities associated with a specific work being produced by a Professional Company Member of OPERA America.

Utah Opera Artistic Director Christopher McBeth today announced Utah Opera's 2017-18 season in recognition of the company's 40th anniversary.

The Metropolitan Opera's 2017-18 season will feature 220 performances of 26 works, including two Met premieres, one co-commissioned by the company and one an older masterpiece having its first Met performances; a variety of repertory favorites, three in new productions; and performances of Verdi's towering concert work for soloists, orchestra, and chorus, the Requiem. Of note, Broadway star Kelli O'Hara is set to return to the Met in Così fan tutte this season.

American Composers Orchestra (ACO), under the leadership of Artistic Director Derek Bermel and Music Director George Manahan, continues its 40th Anniversary Season on Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7:30pm with Orchestra Underground: Past Forward at Carnegie Hall's subterranean Zankel Hall. Now in its 13th year, Orchestra Underground continues as ACO's subversive and entrepreneurial redefinition of the orchestra as an elastic ensemble. Led by Manahan, Past Forward illustrates the role the past plays in the present, from composers' own personal explorations of their roots, to broader investigations of the universal role of memory and recollection.

Fort Worth Opera (FWOpera) announced today the names of the eight composer and librettist teams whose unpublished works have been selected for the company's fifth annual, critically acclaimed new works series, Frontiers - funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Dixon Place and The Wet Ink Ensemble will present the NYC premiere of award-winning composer/performer Kate Soper's IPSA DIXIT for two nights only Today, February 3rd and Saturday February 4th, 2017 at 7:30 PM.

Des Moines Metro Opera, in an historic partnership with the Iowa National Guard and Camp Dodge, will open its 45th Anniversary Season with a production of David T. Little's poignant and chilling one-act opera Soldier Songs in late January 2017.

Peak Performances will present the world premiere of Quixote, from composer-librettist Amy Beth Kirsten and director-designer Mark DeChiazza, March 23-26.

PlayMakers Repertory Company will present a workshop production of"De Profundis," an original work being developed and directed by explosive theatre-makers Brian Mertes and Jim Findlay.

Dixon Place and The Wet Ink Ensemble will present the NYC premiere of award-winning composer/performer Kate Soper's IPSA DIXIT for two nights only Friday, February 3rd and Saturday February 4th, 2017 at 7:30 PM.

Beth Morrison Projects and HERE's fifth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival begins this week, running January 5-15!

For a new opera to have its second major showing less than four months after its premiere is unheard of—but then BREAKING THE WAVES, based on the Lars Von Trier film of the same name, isn't just any opera. This triumph by composer Missy Mazzoli, librettist Royce Vavrek, and direction by James Darrah—with a star-making turn by soprano Kiera Duffy in the central role of Bess—debuted at Opera Philadelphia last September and is having its New York premiere on January 6-9, 2017, over the first weekend of the Prototype Festival at NYU's Skirball Center.

PlayMakers Repertory Company will present a workshop production of"De Profundis," an original work being developed and directed by explosive theatre-makers Brian Mertes and Jim Findlay.

Des Moines Metro Opera, in an historic partnership with the Iowa National Guard and Camp Dodge, will open its 45th Anniversary Season with a production of David T. Little's poignant and chilling one-act opera Soldier Songs in late January 2017.