Marc Blitzstein News

Vocalist Danya Katok is joined by pianist Michael Sheetz in an evening of musical theatre, jazz, and contemporary folk gems that tell a story of perseverance towards her ultimate wish, motherhood. Songs by Marc Blitzstein, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Randy Newman, Stephen Sondheim, Georgia Stitt, and more capture the pain, heartbreak, fear, and finally, joy in this most personal story directed by Dewey Moss.

Opera Saratoga's Artistic and General Director Lawrence Edelson announced that the company's 2018 Summer Festival will feature new productions of four operas at The Spa Little Theatre in Spa State Park, along with a wide variety of free and ticketed concert events from May 26 through July 15 at venues throughout the region.

On Saturday, May 26, Grammy Award-winning mezzo Susan Graham – “an artist to treasure” (New York Times) – makes her title role debut in Marc Blitzstein's Regina at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. She will be joined by veteran bass-baritone James Morris, Broadway and television actor Ron Raines, and award-winning soprano Susanna Phillips in a new production by Artistic Director James Robinson, with Music Director Emeritus Stephen Lord leading from the pit (May 26–June 24).

From Sunday, June 3 through Friday, June 22, 2018, conductor Michael Christie will lead the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in the world premiere performances of An American Soldier, the new two-act opera by Huang Ruo and Henry David Hwang, at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road). Tenor Andrew Stenson (Danny Chen), mezzo-soprano Mika Shigematsu (Mother Chen), and soprano Kathleen Kim (Josephine Young) make debuts with OTSL and join bass-baritone Wayne Tigges (Sergeant Aaron Marcum) and director Matthew Ozawa for this production.

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Doyle, today announced its upcoming 2018-19 season, the acclaimed theater's 51st.

On April 21, 2018, Opera Santa Barbara presented Douglas Moore's GALLANTRY and Leonard Bernstein's TROUBLE IN TAHITI at the Center Stage theater in downtown Santa Barbara. The Center Stage is a 130-seat black box auditorium on the third floor of the chic, user-friendly Paseo Nuevo.

State Theatre New Jersey presents Patti LuPone: Don't Monkey with Broadway on Sunday, May 6, 2018 at 4pm. Tony Award-winner Patti LuPone explores her life-long affair with Broadway with interpretations of classic show tunes by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Jule Styne, Stephen Schwartz, Charles Strouse, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Tickets range from $35-$98.

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music awarded a record $99,000 at the 2018 Lotte Lenya Competition, which took place at Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY on April 14, 2018. This year's competition brought the total distributed to young singers to more than $1 million in awards, prizes, and grants in the twenty-year history of the contest.

This spring, Grammy Award-winning mezzo Susan Graham revisits her signature interpretation of Ravel's Sheherazade in performances with the San Francisco Symphony under Yan Pascal Tortelier (April 19-21). She then makes her title role debut in Marc Blitzstein's Regina at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (May 26-June 24), in a production that marks the 30th anniversary of her company and leading-role debuts. After three glorious decades at the highest echelons of the opera world, there is still, as the New York Times put it, "no more satisfying singer than this eminent mezzo-soprano, with her rich, even voice, exquisite musicianship, and warm presence."

Opera Saratoga's Artistic and General Director Lawrence Edelson announced the complete casting and programming for the company's 2018 Summer Festival, which will feature new productions of four operas at The Spa Little Theater in Spa State Park, along with a wide variety of free and ticketed concert events from May 26th through July 15th at venues throughout the region. Single tickets, as well as subscription packages, are on sale now at www.operasaratoga.org.

'The Cradle Will Rock' comes to Theatre Columbus State, Columbus State Community College, Nestor Auditorium, 270 Cleveland Ave., Columbus, Ohio.

In a house built over a brothel, Yekel and Sarah struggle for a place in legitimate Jewish society as a pimp and a former prostitute. Everything hinges on marrying off their daughter Rifkele, but Rifkele's secret relationship with Manke, one of the women of the brothel, threatens their carefully laid plans. In Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance, the boundary between the seedy underworld and the respectable world dissolves: when both are built on the sale of female bodies, which is the family home and which the brothel?

Goodspeed Musicals kicks off its 2018 season with the Broadway hit The Will Rogers Follies, A Life In Revue. The exuberant dance-filled musical will be running April 13 - June 21 at The Goodspeed in East Haddam, Conn.

In a house built over a brothel, Yekel and Sarah struggle for a place in legitimate Jewish society as a pimp and a former prostitute. Everything hinges on marrying off their daughter Rifkele, but Rifkele's secret relationship with Manke, one of the women of the brothel, threatens their carefully laid plans. In Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance, the boundary between the seedy underworld and the respectable world dissolves: when both are built on the sale of female bodies, which is the family home and which the brothel?

Brick Road Theatre is pleased to welcome Joey Folsom to the cast of Marc Blitzstein's THE CRADLE WILL ROCK. Mr. Folsom's credits include Lenny in Lenny Bruce is Back, Odysseus Rex in Year of the Rooster (Upstart Productions), Hank Williams in Hank Williams: Lost Highway, George in All My Sons (WaterTower Theatre), Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Broken Gears Project Theatre). His television/film credits include Camera Store, Cronus, Soul Frackers, Arc, and The Intangible Truth of Chance Malloy.

The selection of The Threepenny Opera to inaugurate Street's 2018 season is one of the year's most eagerly anticipated theatrical events in Music City - thanks in part to the fact that it may well be the first home-grown staging of Brecht and Weill's parody of operetta that, in turn, skewers capitalistic society while touting socialist, even Troskyite, values in the guise of a rather farcical music hall diversion. Does it succeed? The answer is 'yes,' perhaps even an emphatic 'YES!' although one must pay close attention to the lyrics for the punch of the political set amidst a story that, on the surface, seems somewhat apolitical in tone, style and nature.

Court Theatre, under the continuing leadership of Charles Newell, Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director, announces the extension of All My Sons by Arthur Miller, directed by Charles Newell and featuring Kate Collins, John Judd and Timothy Edward Kane. All My Sons now runs through February 18, 2018 at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Tickets to extension performances of All My Sons go on sale Friday, February 2, 2018 and available by calling the box office at (773) 753-4472 orwww.CourtTheatre.org.

At Opera Saratoga's Annual Meeting, Rosemarie Rosen, President of the Board of Directors, announced results from the company's 2017 fiscal year, which closed on September 30, 2017. The company reported another year of artistic and financial success thanks to the generosity, engagement and partnership of communities throughout the lower Adirondack and the New York State Capital Region.

Mikaela Bennett with NYFOS; photo by Karli Cadel On February 27 at 8:00 p.m., New York Festival of Song and Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center present a new program devised by Steven Blier, entitled, simply, PROTEST. A cast of young, diverse and brilliant singers that includes Mikaela Bennett who just wowed the world in Michael Gordon's opera Acquanetta at the Protoype Festival performs songs by a panorama of composers, from Marc Blitzstein and Joni Mitchell to Randy Newman and Mohammed Fairouz. (View the complete program below.)

Two-time Tony and GRAMMY Award winner Patti LuPone returns to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (The Wallis), as part of the acclaimed Broadway @ The Wallis series, for a one-night-only Valentine's Day event featuring two intimate concerts at 7:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday, February 14, 2018. The Broadway legend will be joined on stage by Broadway @ The Wallis series host and music director Seth Rudetsky who wrote and starred in the Broadway musical Disaster! in a not-to-be-missed night of singing and conversation produced by Mark Cortale. The Broadway @ The Wallis concert is made possible by generous support from Ken and Wendy Ruby.