All material found in the Press Releases section is provided by parties entirely independent of Musical America, which is not responsible for content.
Press Releases
New Opera by Gordon Getty: The Canterville Ghost
A new opera by Gordon Getty, The Canterville Ghost, will receive its world premiere at the Leipzig Opera (Germany) on Saturday, May 9, 2015, with additional performances in May and June. The opera, part of a double bill, will be paired with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. This marks the first premiere of a contemporary work at the Leipzig Opera House during Ulf Schirmer’s tenure as general manager.
The Canterville Ghost, with libretto by the composer, is based on the 1887 short story of the same name by Oscar Wilde. In Wilde’s story, an American family moves into an English castle inhabited by a centuries-old ghost who ultimately winds up terrorized by the very family he is trying to haunt.
Mr. Getty states: “The dos and don’ts of romantic comedy are pretty much eternal. In The Canterville Ghost Wilde has given us, in short story form, one such romantic comedy of unique beauty and genius, though with heartbreak and redemption along the way. We laugh and cry, and are enriched. I added music, and some words, with the same intention. “All of its characters who actually sing are meant as endearing. The Otises and Sir Simon are sent up, but we must want to hug them all. Virginia sees most deeply, gets the ideas and makes things happen. Sir Simon would still be lugging his chains but for her. The girl in a romantic comedy must make the audience want to protect her, all the more so for her spunk and moxie.
“Stage and page have different needs. For my opera, Sir Simon’s murder of his wife, three centuries before, and his breezy justification of it to Virginia, would grate against the wholesome and family-friendly theme. The libretto, like the 1944 movie with Charles Laughton, changes this detail. The bloodstain is also relocated from the floor to the armor, so that the audience can see it. Also Canterville and Cheshire are given more continuous roles, Washington Otis is left out, and Mrs. Umney is seen but not heard. These changes reflect no critique of Wilde.”
Stage and costume design for the production are by Tatiana Ivshina, with direction by Anthony Pilavachi and musical direction by Matthias Foremny. Annoshah Golesorkhi, plays Canterville (also Tonio in Pagliacci). Jonathan Michie, plays Hiram Otis (as well as Silvio in Pagliacci). The ghost is played Matthew Treviño, with Jennifer Porto as Virginia, Jean Broekhuizen as Mrs. Otis, and Oliver Timothy as Cecil.
The Canterville Ghost will be recorded for the PentaTone Classics label in June, 2015.
GORDON GETTY (1933) THE CANTERVILLE GHOST Libretto by the composer after the short story by Oscar Wilde
Saturday, May 9, 2015 Thursday, May 14, 2015 Sunday, June 14, 2015 Thursday, June 25, 2015 Leipzig Opera House, Leipzig, Germany
Creative Team Matthias Foremny, conductor Anthony Pilavachi, Director Tatiana Ivshina, Stage and Costume Design
Cast Includes Virginia – Jennifer Porto, soprano Mrs. Otis – Jean Broekhuizen, mezzo-soprano Hiram Otis – Jonathan Michie, baritone Cecil Cheshire – Timothy Oliver, tenor Canterville – Anooshah Golesorkhi, baritone Ghost (Sir Simon) – Matthew Treviño, bass 1st Boy / 1st Twin – Denise Wernly, mezzo soprano 2nd Boy / 2nd Twin – Rachel Hauge, mezzo soprano
About Gordon Getty The music of the American composer Gordon Getty has been widely performed in North America and Europe in such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Vienna’s Brahmssaal, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto, and Bad Kissingen festivals. In 1986, he was honored as an Outstanding American Composer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and was awarded the 2003 Gold Baton of the American Symphony Orchestra League.
Getty has recently devoted considerable attention to a pair of one-act operas, Usher House (derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and The Canterville Ghost (after the Oscar Wilde tale). The former was premiered in 2014 by the Welsh National Opera, the latter will be premiered in Leipzig in May, 2015. Getty’s first opera, Plump Jack, involving adventures of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 1984 and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and London Philharmonia, among other ensembles. In 2011 the Munich Radio Orchestra and an international cast conducted by Ulf Schirmer performed a new concert version of Plump Jack, which was simulcast on Bavarian Radio and released by PentaTone Classics.
Getty, who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, has produced a steady stream of compositions since the 1980s, beginning with The White Election (1981), a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson. It has been recorded twice—by Kaaren Erickson for Delos and by Lisa Delan for PentaTone—and has been performed in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and the Morgan Library (in New York), the Kennedy Center and National Gallery of Art (in Washington, D.C.), and the Hermitage Theatre (in St. Petersburg, Russia), among many other venues. His three-song cycle Poor Peter (2005) was included by Lisa Delan and pianist Kristin Pankonin on their PentaTone recital And If the Song Be Worth a Smile, which features songs by six contemporary American composers.
Poetry from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has often inspired Getty in his vocal compositions. His choral works Victorian Scenes (1989, to texts by Tennyson and Housman) and Annabel Lee (1990, to a poem by Poe) were premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in Annabel Lee in 1998 and 2004, on the latter occasion also premiering Getty’s Young America (2001), a cycle of six movements for chorus and orchestra to texts by the composer and by Stephen Vincent Benét. Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been performed widely since its 1998 premiere, notably in a 2004 revival in St. George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle, under the baton of Mikhail Pletnev. In 2005, PentaTone released a CD of Getty’s principal choral works up to that time, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Russian National Orchestra (conducted by Alexander Verdernikov). Getty has recently completed choral works based on Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, and an original poem that he modeled on Masefield, The Old Man in the Night.
Although most of Getty’s works feature the voice, he has also written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo piano. In 2010, PentaTone released a CD devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and in 2013 followed up with a CD of the composer’s solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao. Currently in preparation is a PentaTone CD of his chamber music, which will include a string-quartet version of his Four Traditional Pieces, a work that was performed in a string-orchestra arrangement by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in 2012. Other recent performances of particular note featured his ballet Ancestor Suite, which in 2009 was given its premiere staging, with choreography by Vladimir Vasiliev, by the Bolshoi Ballet and Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, and was then presented at the 2012 Festival del Sole in Napa, California. Of his compositions Gordon Getty has said: “My style is undoubtedly tonal, though with hints of atonality, such as any composer would likely use to suggest a degree of disorientation. But I’m strictly tonal in my approach. I represent a viewpoint that stands somewhat apart from the twentieth century, which was in large measure a repudiation of the nineteenth and a sock in the nose to sentimentality. Whatever it was that the great Victorian composers and poets were trying to achieve, that’s what I’m trying to achieve.”
Getty’s music is published by Rork Music.
www.gordongetty.com - = - END - = -
The Canterville Ghost, with libretto by the composer, is based on the 1887 short story of the same name by Oscar Wilde. In Wilde’s story, an American family moves into an English castle inhabited by a centuries-old ghost who ultimately winds up terrorized by the very family he is trying to haunt.
Mr. Getty states: “The dos and don’ts of romantic comedy are pretty much eternal. In The Canterville Ghost Wilde has given us, in short story form, one such romantic comedy of unique beauty and genius, though with heartbreak and redemption along the way. We laugh and cry, and are enriched. I added music, and some words, with the same intention. “All of its characters who actually sing are meant as endearing. The Otises and Sir Simon are sent up, but we must want to hug them all. Virginia sees most deeply, gets the ideas and makes things happen. Sir Simon would still be lugging his chains but for her. The girl in a romantic comedy must make the audience want to protect her, all the more so for her spunk and moxie.
“Stage and page have different needs. For my opera, Sir Simon’s murder of his wife, three centuries before, and his breezy justification of it to Virginia, would grate against the wholesome and family-friendly theme. The libretto, like the 1944 movie with Charles Laughton, changes this detail. The bloodstain is also relocated from the floor to the armor, so that the audience can see it. Also Canterville and Cheshire are given more continuous roles, Washington Otis is left out, and Mrs. Umney is seen but not heard. These changes reflect no critique of Wilde.”
Stage and costume design for the production are by Tatiana Ivshina, with direction by Anthony Pilavachi and musical direction by Matthias Foremny. Annoshah Golesorkhi, plays Canterville (also Tonio in Pagliacci). Jonathan Michie, plays Hiram Otis (as well as Silvio in Pagliacci). The ghost is played Matthew Treviño, with Jennifer Porto as Virginia, Jean Broekhuizen as Mrs. Otis, and Oliver Timothy as Cecil.
The Canterville Ghost will be recorded for the PentaTone Classics label in June, 2015.
GORDON GETTY (1933) THE CANTERVILLE GHOST Libretto by the composer after the short story by Oscar Wilde
Saturday, May 9, 2015 Thursday, May 14, 2015 Sunday, June 14, 2015 Thursday, June 25, 2015 Leipzig Opera House, Leipzig, Germany
Creative Team Matthias Foremny, conductor Anthony Pilavachi, Director Tatiana Ivshina, Stage and Costume Design
Cast Includes Virginia – Jennifer Porto, soprano Mrs. Otis – Jean Broekhuizen, mezzo-soprano Hiram Otis – Jonathan Michie, baritone Cecil Cheshire – Timothy Oliver, tenor Canterville – Anooshah Golesorkhi, baritone Ghost (Sir Simon) – Matthew Treviño, bass 1st Boy / 1st Twin – Denise Wernly, mezzo soprano 2nd Boy / 2nd Twin – Rachel Hauge, mezzo soprano
About Gordon Getty The music of the American composer Gordon Getty has been widely performed in North America and Europe in such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Vienna’s Brahmssaal, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto, and Bad Kissingen festivals. In 1986, he was honored as an Outstanding American Composer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and was awarded the 2003 Gold Baton of the American Symphony Orchestra League.
Getty has recently devoted considerable attention to a pair of one-act operas, Usher House (derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and The Canterville Ghost (after the Oscar Wilde tale). The former was premiered in 2014 by the Welsh National Opera, the latter will be premiered in Leipzig in May, 2015. Getty’s first opera, Plump Jack, involving adventures of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 1984 and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and London Philharmonia, among other ensembles. In 2011 the Munich Radio Orchestra and an international cast conducted by Ulf Schirmer performed a new concert version of Plump Jack, which was simulcast on Bavarian Radio and released by PentaTone Classics.
Getty, who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, has produced a steady stream of compositions since the 1980s, beginning with The White Election (1981), a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson. It has been recorded twice—by Kaaren Erickson for Delos and by Lisa Delan for PentaTone—and has been performed in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and the Morgan Library (in New York), the Kennedy Center and National Gallery of Art (in Washington, D.C.), and the Hermitage Theatre (in St. Petersburg, Russia), among many other venues. His three-song cycle Poor Peter (2005) was included by Lisa Delan and pianist Kristin Pankonin on their PentaTone recital And If the Song Be Worth a Smile, which features songs by six contemporary American composers.
Poetry from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has often inspired Getty in his vocal compositions. His choral works Victorian Scenes (1989, to texts by Tennyson and Housman) and Annabel Lee (1990, to a poem by Poe) were premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in Annabel Lee in 1998 and 2004, on the latter occasion also premiering Getty’s Young America (2001), a cycle of six movements for chorus and orchestra to texts by the composer and by Stephen Vincent Benét. Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been performed widely since its 1998 premiere, notably in a 2004 revival in St. George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle, under the baton of Mikhail Pletnev. In 2005, PentaTone released a CD of Getty’s principal choral works up to that time, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Russian National Orchestra (conducted by Alexander Verdernikov). Getty has recently completed choral works based on Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, and an original poem that he modeled on Masefield, The Old Man in the Night.
Although most of Getty’s works feature the voice, he has also written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo piano. In 2010, PentaTone released a CD devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and in 2013 followed up with a CD of the composer’s solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao. Currently in preparation is a PentaTone CD of his chamber music, which will include a string-quartet version of his Four Traditional Pieces, a work that was performed in a string-orchestra arrangement by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in 2012. Other recent performances of particular note featured his ballet Ancestor Suite, which in 2009 was given its premiere staging, with choreography by Vladimir Vasiliev, by the Bolshoi Ballet and Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, and was then presented at the 2012 Festival del Sole in Napa, California. Of his compositions Gordon Getty has said: “My style is undoubtedly tonal, though with hints of atonality, such as any composer would likely use to suggest a degree of disorientation. But I’m strictly tonal in my approach. I represent a viewpoint that stands somewhat apart from the twentieth century, which was in large measure a repudiation of the nineteenth and a sock in the nose to sentimentality. Whatever it was that the great Victorian composers and poets were trying to achieve, that’s what I’m trying to achieve.”
Getty’s music is published by Rork Music.
www.gordongetty.com - = - END - = -
WHO'S BLOGGING
Law and Disorder by GG Arts Law
Career Advice by Legendary Manager Edna Landau
An American in Paris by Frank Cadenhead
FEATURED JOBS
RENT A PHOTO
