The American Opera Theatre
The Peabody Chamber Opera
The Handel Choir of Baltimore
present
The Gonzales Cantata
by Melissa Dunphy
and
Dido+Aeneas
by Henry Purcell
Melinda O'Neal, music director
Timothy Nelson, stage director
Friday and Saturday, February 4 and 5, 2011, at 8:00 p.m.
Friday, February 11, 2011, at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, February 12, 2011, at 8:00 p.m. <--- added performance!
Sunday, February 13, 2010, at 5:00 p.m.
Theatre Project, 45 West Preston Street, Baltimore
Admission $30 / Seniors and Students with ID $20
Tickets available from Theatre Project
online,
or call 410/752–8558
Peabody Chamber Opera in association with American Opera Theatre and the Handel Choir of Baltimore present the World Premiere staging of Melissa Dunphy’s acclaimed opera The Gonzales Cantata. This brilliant work sets to music the transcript from the Alberto Gonzales congressional hearing, in the style of a Handel oratorio. What begins as a witty and absurdist look at American politics, ends as a touching exploration of culpability and lost dreams.
The work is at once a searing and brilliantly funny political commentary, in operatic terms, on the Bush administration and its policies, and a larger-scoped poignant portrayal of the loss of the American Dream. The music also contains such duality, both a wickedly intelligent recreation of Handel's musical language, and the well-defined contemporary and personal compositional voice of Dunphy. In its concert premiere the work was featured on MSNBC’s The Rachel Madow Show and in The Wall Street Journal. Now it comes to life on the stage in a comic and touching new production.
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas has been presented by Peabody before in traditional productions. But with the use of an ingenious double casting, director Timothy Nelson’s Dido+Aeneas becomes not the story of the tragic queen of Carthage, but rather of one woman, plagued with mental illness, and her decision to take her own life. This woman’s entire life is shown as if occurring over a single day, her slide from depression into schizophrenia, her inability to access real human contact. The characters on the stage are but phantoms, voices and finally hallucinations that drive her to madness.
The Peabody Chamber Opera is proud to collaborate with the American Opera Theatre in their final production. All the soloists are either Peabody alumni or current students.
The Gonzales Cantata |
|
| Atty. General Alberto Gonzales | Molly Young |
| Sen. Patrick Leahy | Elizabeth Merrill |
| Sen. Benjamin Cardin | Julie Bosworth |
| Sen. Jeff Sessions | Julianne McCarthy |
| Sen. Orrin Hatch | Megan Ihnen* |
| Sen. Arlen Specter | Zoe Kanter |
| Sen. Dianne Feinstein | Brady Del Vecchio |
| Sen. Chuck Grassley | Abigail Seaman |
| Sen. John Comyn | Kerry Holahan |
Dido+Aeneas |
|
| Dido | Emily Noel* |
| Aeneas | Jason Buckwalter* |
| Belinda/1st Witch | Elizabeth Merrill |
| 2nd Woman/2nd Witch | Julie Bosworth |
| Sailor | Brady Del Vecchio |
| Spirit | Abigail Seaman |
| *Peabody alumnus/a | |