Odyssey Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project Present the Boston Premiere of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata

“It’s shocking how deep this seemingly lighthearted opera goes.” – The New Yorker
 
“Mr. Adamo, who also wrote the libretto, invents characters and conflicts and makes the story a richer human drama…” – The New York Times
 
“...delivering more genuine laughs than just about any comic opera since Gianni Schicchi...His amusing, slang-strewn libretto uses the Aristophanes original only as a point of departure.”
- VARIETY

BOSTON, MA (For Release 12.23.24) — Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the nation’s most intriguing opera companies,” Odyssey Opera, in partnership with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), presents the Boston premiere of Lysistrata at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Saturday, February 15, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess, is Mark Adamo’s early-21st century hilarious take on the ancient satire written over 2000 years ago by Greek playwright Aristophanes. Acclaimed conductor Gil Rose leads an internationally accomplished cast including baritones John Moore and Kevin Deas, mezzo-sopranos Katherine Beck, Sandra Piques Eddy, and Lucy Schaufer, tenor David Portillo, soprano Anya Matanovic playing the lead role of Lysistrata, and more, all supported by the GRAMMY®? Award-winning BMOP.
 
Hailed by The New Yorker as “one of America’s most formidable lyric composers,” American composer-librettist Mark Adamo made his mark on the opera world in 1998 with the debut of his first work Little Women. His second opera Lysistrata premiered 20 years ago in 2005 by the Houston Grand Opera. According to Backtrack, it is “an engaging, coherent, and beautiful work…Adamo has an extraordinary ear for vocal writing and a knack for theater.”

In the year 411 B.C., the Athenian Aristophanes made a statement on the then-current state of public affairs amidst the decades-long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. His play, names after an Athenian female character names Lysistrata, weighed in on the issue in Aristophanes’s signature satirical style. Serving as a delicious premise, Adamo reimagined the play by cutting three scenes, creating new characters, changing the war and inviting a wrangling romance between Lysistrata and the Athenian leader Nico.
 
“I love Lysistrata’s strut and wit and nerve, its utopian yearnings, its magical locale — an Acropolis where, by dream-logic, a handful of couples can reconcile the love of the battlefield with the battlefield of love.”       
                                                                                    - MARK ADAMO, composer-librettist-director

Adamo and his husband and collaborator John Corigliano entrusted Gil Rose’s company before with the performance and recording of The Lord of Cries (Pentatone) subsequently receiving a 2024 GRAMMY®? nomination for Best Opera Recording. Coming soon is Adamo’s new opera Sarah in the Theater– Odyssey Opera’s first-ever commission – and Odyssey Opera’s forthcoming recording of Lysistrata (Pentatone).
 
About Mark Adamo          
Known for his “way of finding a drama’s emotional nerve and projecting it to an audience,” (Financial Times) Mark Adamo’s first acclaimed opera Little Women (1998) was followed by his four subsequent operas– Lysistrata, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Becoming Santa Claus, and The Lord of Cries–having “opened yet other pathways on his remarkable exploration of what an opera can be” (American Record Guide.)  As opera and symphonic performances have resumed in 2021-2022, his work has returned to stages in Santa Fe, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and London. 
 
While Adamo’s principal work continues to be for the opera house, he has spent the last decade venturing into both chamber music and symphonic and choral composition. In April 2013, baritone Thomas Hampson and the Jupiter String Quartet introduced Aristotle, after the poem by Billy Collins, in concerts at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California, before continuing to Boston and New York under the auspices of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The preceding December, Sasha Cooke and the New York Festival of Song introduced The Racer’s Widow, a cycle of five American poems for mezzo-soprano, cello, and piano.
 
During Adamo’s time as the composer-in-residence at New York City Opera from 2001 through 2006, he led the VOX: Showcasing American Composers program. The Atlantic Center for the Arts also named Adamo one of their Master Artists in May 2003.  Since 2007, he has served as the principal teacher of American Lyric Theatre’s Composer-Librettist Development Program in New York, where he coaches teams of composers and librettists in developing their work for the stage.
 
Adamo began his education in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where, as a freshman in the Dramatic Writing Program, he received the Paulette Goddard Remarque Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate achievement in playwriting. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Music Degree cum laude in composition in 1990 from the Catholic University of America.  His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.

About Gil Rose       
Gil Rose is one of today’s most trailblazing conductors, praised as “amazingly versatile” (The Boston Globe) with “a sense of style and sophistication” (Opera News). Equally at home performing core repertoire, new music, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operatic works, “Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality. In doing so, he’s built an indefinable, but unmistakable, personal aesthetic” (WQXR). A global leader in American contemporary music, GRAMMY®? Award-winner Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), who “bring an endlessly curious and almost archaeological mind to programming…with each concert, each recording, an essential step in a better direction” (The New York Times), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera, praised by The New York Times as “bold and intriguing.” GilRoseConductor.com
 
About Odyssey Opera      
Founded in 2013 by artistic director/conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as a powerful expression of the human experience. Its world-class artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings through lesser-known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in varied formats and venues.  Odyssey Opera takes its audience on a journey to places they’ve never been before. odysseyopera.org
 
About BMOP          
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today’s musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades.
 
Each season, Rose brings BMOP’s award-winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory’s historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unrivaled eclecticism. Musical America’s 2016 Ensemble of the Year, BMOP was awarded the 2021 Special Achievement Award from Gramophone Magazine as “an organization that has championed American music of the 20^th and 21^st century with passion and panache.” The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era. BMOP.org.
 
Ticketing Program Information:
Saturday, February 15, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. ET
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, MA
Tickets: General $35-$70. Students $10. To reserve, visit BMOP.org or call 718.324.0396.
 
Lysistrata (2005)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP)
Gil Rose, conductor
Mark Adamo, composer, librettist & director
 
Cast List: (14 singers to play 21 characters):

The ATHENIAN WOMEN
   XANTHE/APHRODITE: Maggie Finnegan (soprano)
   LYSIA/LYSISTRATA: Anya Matanovic (soprano)
   MYRRHINE: Katherine Beck (mezzo-soprano)
   SAPPHO: Felicia Gavilanes (mezzo-soprano)
   KLEONIKE: Lucy Schaufer (mezzo-contralto)

The SPARTAN WOMEN
   CHARITO/TISIPHONE: Jamie-Rose Guarrine (soprano)
   DIKA/ALECTO: Kristen Watson (soprano)
   ARETE/MEGAERA: Christina English (mezzo-soprano)
   LAMPITO: Sandra Piques Eddy (mezzo-contralto)

The ATHENIAN MEN
   NIKIAS/NICO: David Portillo (tenor)
   KINESIAS: John Moore (baritone)

The SPARTAN MEN
   MARON: Fausto Miro (tenor)
   ALPHEUS/ARES: Neal Ferreira (tenor)
   LEONIDAS: Kevin Deas (bass-baritone)
 
A semi-staged production sung in English