Steven Osgood News

In celebration of LGBTQ Pride Month, American Opera Projects (AOP) will make available to the public the video of their 2014 World Premiere production of the opera As One from June 23-30, 2017 on the AOP website.

 On March 31 and April 1 at 7:30 PM “The Long Walk” will make its Western U.S. premiere at the Jeanné Wagner Theater in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. It is the story of one man's experience and based on the book “The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life that Follows” by Brian Castner.

American Opera Projects (AOP) announces the return of its popular Composers & 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.

When Opera Philadelphia's new adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated film,Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016, the New York Times declared the opera "ambitious, accomplished, [and] dramatically direct.'

The runaway success of Opera Philadelphia's world premiere production of Breaking the Waves marked a catalytic moment last fall, “changing many of the people who brought the piece to the stage – and the company itself” (Philadelphia Inquirer). The new adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated film scored a nomination for the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere, and Opera News declared it “among the best 21st-century American operas yet produced.” Now home audiences the world over can hear the spellbinding production in its entirety at operaphila.org, starting next Wednesday, March 29 at 1pm, when Opera Philadelphia unveils a free on-demand audio stream of the world premiere production that took the opera world by storm, capping an online celebration of Women's History Month.

When Opera Philadelphia's new adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated film, Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016, the New York Times declared the opera "ambitious, accomplished, [and] dramatically direct," and Opera News said it "stands among the best 21st-century American operas yet produced." It has since earned an International Opera Award nomination for Best World Premiere and made its New York debut with Beth Morrison Projects' Prototype Festival to continued acclaim.

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.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City continues its 59th season with the powerful modern classic, Dead Man Walking, music by Jake Heggie and libretto by Terrence McNally, and based on the novel by Sister Helen Prejean, with performances March 4, 8, 10 and 12 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The production will be sung in English with English titles.

The inaugural Explorations series continues with Elvis Costello's The Juliet Letters, Jan. 28 and 29 at the Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building at the Richard J. Stern Opera Center.Explorations features eclectic programs in intimate spaces, with programming that crosses musical borders and experiments with a wide range of lyrical expression.

The inaugural Explorations series continues with Elvis Costello's The Juliet Letters, Jan. 28 and 29 at the Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building at the Richard J. Stern Opera Center.Explorations features eclectic programs in intimate spaces, with programming that crosses musical borders and experiments with a wide range of lyrical expression.

Three new operas developed by American Opera Projects to premiere:  two on race relations in America and one on the future of sex.

Washington National Opera (WNO) presents the fifth season of its acclaimed American Opera Initiative, a comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists.

General Director and CEO Deborah Sandler today announced that two Lyric Opera of Kansas City Resident Artists have won international awards.

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.

Washington National Opera (WNO) presents the fifth season of its acclaimed American Opera Initiative, a comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists.

Like a morsel of Proust's madeleine soaking in a cup of tea, the setting of Juilliard Opera's new production of Jonathan Dove's opera FLIGHT took me back to another age, and Eero Saarinen's modernistic TWA (now Jet Blue) Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York. But the only thing retro about the evening itself is a return to a golden age, with the excellent performance of the cast and orchestra, under conductor Steven Osgood and the direction of James Darrah.

The New York City Classical Guitar Society is proud to join with Guitar Plus in presenting the extraordinarily versatile guitarist/composer David Leisner with the expressive, dynamic vocalist Michael Kelly in Leisner's arrangement of Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin

The Juilliard Opera season opens with Jonathan Dove's Flight on November 16, 18, and 20, conducted by Steven Osgood and directed by James Darrah. The opera features singers from Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts with the Juilliard Orchestra. 

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).

The only American finalist for the 2016 International Opera Award for Best Opera Company, Opera Philadelphia scored a fresh triumph this past week, when it launched the season with the world premiere of Breaking the Waves, a new company co-commission inspired by Lars von Trier's searing Oscar-nominated 1996 film, from the creative team of Missy Mazzoli, Royce Vavrek, and James Darrah. With three performances still to come (Sep 27 & 29; Oct 1), the critical response has already been unanimously euphoric; as the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, the season's opening week has succeeded in 'effectively demonstrat[ing] Opera Philadelphia's growing presence and ambitions.'