James Darrah News

This winter, Trinity Church Wall Street's  program of ambitious musical offerings in lower Manhattan sees the return of the audience favorite Bach + One concert series, which will crown its season in the spring with a performance of three of Bach's cantatas at the Leipzig Bach Festival. Director of Music Julian Wachner has also just been announced as one of three finalists to become the next Artistic Director of the storied Oregon Bach Festival. On the heels of last August's release of Ellen Reid's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera p r i s m on the Decca Gold label, with Wachner leading The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity's in-house contemporary orchestra, NOVUS NY, the same forces reunite for the Washington D.C. premiere of the opera in the Kennedy Center's DIRECT CURRENT festival.

A season filled with thrilling music, captivating stories, world-class singers, and exciting productions goes on sale by subscription Thursday, February 13. Eight new-to-Chicago productions, including three Lyric premieres plus two original Lyric productions, will entertain and thrill audiences from September 2020 through June 2021.

Opera Omaha announces its third annual ONE FESTIVAL. The ONE Festival is a place for wild dreams, wilder execution, and exploration of those ideas on a grand scale. Programming is driven by the artists, not the executives. With an emphasis on experimentation and new worka?'yet not tethered to premieresa?'ONE fosters an environment that encourages and celebrates bold risks and transformative storytelling. At a glance, one might assume this is happening in NYC or LA; but this opera hothouse sizzles in the dead center of our country, far from the coasts. 

The works of Dai Fujikura are performed with regularity by conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel and by some of the most acclaimed orchestras and ensembles in the world.

LA Opera President and CEO Christopher Koelsch today announced the company's 35th season, which will include six mainstage productions a?" one of them a company premiere and five productions new to Los Angeles a?" and two concerts presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with additional performances presented in other venues through the company's Off Grand and Connects initiatives.

This year's edition of PROTOTYPE, which refers to itself as 'Opera-Theatre-Now,' has come and gone. You never know what to expect, for better or for worse: Try guessing what's going to be 'the next big thing' at your own peril, even if it has played somewhere else first, for they things might not be what you expected at all.

Opera Omaha has an outstanding 2020/2021 Season in store, filled with exhilarating productions and remarkable artists. We look forward to numerous exciting debuts as well as the return of some of Omaha's favorite artists who will thrill us once again.

'The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen.' And so ends the Book of Revelation, with Chapter 22, in the New Testament...or does it? In speaking with creator-librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs, I find someone who clearly believes that too much is never enough. Thus, she decided that there was room for one more chapter after the Apocalypse of Revelation 22: REV. 23, an opera making its New York debut at the Prototype Festival 2020.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and Trinity Church Wall Street (Trinity), together with PROTOTYPE: Opera|Theatre|Now, are pleased to announce a multiyear partnership in which BMP and Trinity will commission and produce five cutting-edge new opera-theater works for premiere at the PROTOTYPE Festival over three seasons (2021a?"2023). These comprise a new work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer-director team Du Yun and Michael McQuilken; two new works by librettist Royce Vavrek, paired with Mary Kouyoumdjian and Julian Wachner, respectively; a work by composer Ted Hearne with text by Halim Flowers and rap from Momolu Stewart; and a work by Paola Prestini with poet Brenda Shaughnessy.

This winter, Trinity Church Wall Street co-produces the New York premiere of REV. 23, the latest opera by its own Director of Music Julian Wachner, along with the cutting-edge Prototype Festival and Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Performances take place at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in Manhattan, on January 17 at 8pm and January 18 at 3pm and 8pm. Composed to an audacious, satirical libretto by Cerise Jacobs, founder of the Boston-based activist opera company White Snake Projects, which commissioned the work, REV. 23 explores an a?oeunpublisheda?? new chapter of the Book of Revelation. Los Angeles-based director James Darrah creates a striking new production for this New York premiere, leading the audience on a fantastical journey through the myths of the collective unconscious. Noted conductor Daniela Candillari leads Trinity's in-house contemporary orchestra, NOVUS NY.

Following a chorus of critical praise for creator and librettist Cerise Jacobs and composer Jorge Sosa's immigrant-themed opera, I Am a Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams, Jacobs's opera REV. 23, composed by Julian Wachner, will receive its New York premiere in new production by Los Angeles-based director James Darrah at the 2020 Prototype Festival (Jan 17-18).

Opera Atelier's 2019/20 Season opens with their ground-breaking period production of Don Giovanni from October 31a?"November 9, 2019 at the Ed Mirvish Theatre. This is the first time Opera Atelier's acclaimed production has been remounted for Toronto audiences since its 2011 premiere. Don Giovanni features Douglas Williams as Don Giovanni, Colin Ainsworth as Don Ottavio, Gustav Andreassen as the Commendatore, Mireille Asselin as Zerlina, Stephen Hegedus as Leporello, Carla Huhtanen as Donna Elvira, Olivier Laquerre as Masetto, and Meghan Lindsay as Donna Anna. 

Semele recently opened at Opera Philadelphia and critics were in attendance. Find out what they had to say!

In the summer of 1983, Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein put on a show that was light years ahead of the zeitgeist, vis-a-vis the awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ people in America, and about twenty years before the legalization of same-sex marriage. Yet, after a successful tryout at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, they boldly went where no Broadway musical had gone before when they opened LA CAGE AUX FOLLES at the Palace Theatre on August 21, 1983. Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston concludes its 51st Summer Season with LA CAGE, and I am pleased to report that the show continues to stand the test of time. The three most important components for a successful staging of this musical are the two actors who play the leading men, Georges (J.T. Turner) and Albin (James Darrah), and the dance troupe who comprise Les Cagelles, the drag performers at the Saint-Tropez title nightclub owned by the latter couple, and they collectively win the trifecta.

Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston's 51st Summer Season concludes with La Cage Aux Folles from August 8-18, 2019.

Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) announces that its 3rd Annual Award for Best New Opera has been given to composer and sound artist Ellen Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins for p r i s m.

With its eighth innovative season in 2020, PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now continues its rigorous exploration of the work, producing and presenting an abundance of provocative shows in the interstitial realms between music, operatic tradition, and theatre. This season, Beth Morrison Projects and HERE's meteoric annual festival lands on stages across New York from January 9-18, presenting 6 works by 23 composers and librettists along with hundreds of collaborators - productions ranging from black-box chamber opera to multi-media rock concerts. 

There's only one transformative, artist-packed weekend left of Opera Omaha's ONE Festival, to include the Opera Omaha debut of acclaimed theatre director Lileana Blain-Cruz as she directs the world stage premiere of a new performance edition of Gounod's Faust. 

Last night, Theatre Now New York (TNNY) presented its Sixth Annual Festival of 10-Minute Musicals at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023. SOUND BITES 6.0 grants composers, lyricists, and librettists the unique opportunity to present their work in front of a live audience. This one-night only event, now in its sixth year, showcases 10 new musicals by up-and-coming musical theatre writing teams.