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Odyssey Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project Present a Trio of Monodramas, Feb 21
Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera Present Three Monodramas Featuring Today’s Leading Powerhouse Vocalists, Feb 21
BOSTON, MA (For Release 01.20.26) — Hailed as “a leader in contemporary opera and classical music in America (Opera News),” the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera present MONO E MONO (E MONO), a dynamic concert of monodramas scored by some of the nation’s most influential American composers. The performance will take place on Saturday, February 21, 2026, at 8:00 p.m., at NEC’s Jordan Hall, featuring the acclaimed BMOP and Odyssey Opera, as well as powerful solo performances by sopranos Julia Mintzer and Sarah Coburn and one of the world’s most sought-after baritones Michael Chioldi, all led under the direction of Grammy Award-winning conductor Gil Rose.
The program begins with a work by the quintessential American composer, William Bolcom (b.1938) who masterfully blends diverse American music traditions such as jazz, ragtime, Broadway and folk songs with classical forms. His distinct American sound has garnered him an American National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Awards. Bolcom’s opera, Medusa (2003), is a monodrama for dramatic soprano and string orchestra. He composed this extraordinary work with his longtime collaborator, the writer Arnold Weinstein. Weinstein came up with a libretto on the Medusa theme conveying her experience as the only mortal Gorgon. According to The New Criterion, “Bolcom and Weinstein don’t take themselves too seriously. They are serious artists, all right: but they are free of pretentiousness, and they know that a little fun is part of art, even high art. Bolcom’s score grips and startles and amuses throughout, qualifying as a triumph.”
American composer Ronald Perera (1941-2023) provides a riveting character study in The White Whale (1981): a gripping monodrama for baritone and orchestra, based on the character Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. Well-known in the Bay State’s music community, he taught at Smith College for 30 years. Among the finest combiners of words and music, Perera is recognized for his significant contributions to American music, particularly his skill in setting literary texts.
Round out the evening is a celebration of the upcoming centenary of Carlisle Floyd’s birth (June 11, 1926-September 30, 2021), BMOP and Odyssey Opera present his rarely performed Flower and Hawk(1972) giving an intimate look at the wealthy, powerful and imprisoned Eleanor of Aquitaine. Hailed by the NEA as “the most important American composer and librettist in our nation’s history,” Floyd is credited for giving American opera its national voice in a series of contemporary classics rooted in American themes.
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About Julia Mintzer (soprano)
Julia Mintzer won rave reviews in the title role of Tobias Picker’s Thérèse Raquin at Theater an der Wien. She has been heard as Salome in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and with Tulsa Opera and will sing her first Tosca at Theater Sankt Gallen. She returned to the Dresden Semperoper for the world premiere of Chasing Waterfalls. She made her UK debuts onstage as Carmen with Welsh National Opera and offstage with two Off West End Nominations for her productions of Bluebeard’s Castle and Der Vampyr. She reprised her Santuzza for Dorset Opera Festival. Julia has sung leading roles with Washington National Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival, and directed and developed performances at the Venice Biennale, the Helsinki Festival, the Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art, and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. An alumn of the Royal Opera House’s Engender Network Mentorship Programme, she made her German directorial debut at Landesbühnen Sachsen with Amahl und die Nächtlichen Besucher and directed The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Opera Grand Rapids.
About Michael Chioldi (baritone)
Michael Chioldi is one of the world's most sought-after Dramatic Baritones. His interpretations of the Verdi, Puccini and Strauss repertoire has been praised by critics and audiences across the world. In January 2022 Michael made his major role debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Rigoletto to critical acclaim in a new production by Bart Sher. Critics praised his performance as a “Triumph in the title role” (Bachtrack) and as “a true Verdian voice that displays booming power, tender softness, and ravaging tragic colors” (Women About Town). He recently made his Gran Teatro Liceu (Spain) debut as Gerard in Andrea Chenier alongside Sondra Radvanovsky and Jonas Kaufmann and subsequently as Miller in Verdi’s Louisa Miller with Piotr Beczala. His portrayal of Henry VIII by Saint-Seans with Odyssey Opera was heralded by Edge Media as “world class baritone singing…Moments such as Henry's Act IV monologue and the final passages of the opera were nothing short of thrilling.”
About Sarah Coburn (soprano)
Sarah Coburn has performed on many of the world’s great stages, including The Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Seattle Opera, Los Angeles Opera, New York City Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, the Wiener Staatsoper, and Welsh National Opera. She has received awards from the George London Foundation, The Richard Tucker Foundation, The Jensen Foundation, The Liederkranz Foundation, Opera Index, and was a National Grand Finalist in the 2001 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Other operatic highlights include Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Opera San Antonio; the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with Washington National Opera, Tulsa Opera, Utah Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City and with Cincinnati Opera and Glimmerglass Opera for the French version of the same opera; Gilda in Rigoletto with Welsh National Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Los Angeles Opera, Portland Opera, Arizona Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Nashville Opera, and Tulsa Opera; Marie in La fille du regiment with Seattle Opera, Opera Carolina, and Tulsa Opera; Asteria in Tamerlano with Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera; Elvira in I Puritani with Boston Lyric Opera, Washington Concert Opera, and the Tivoli Festival; Oscar in Un ballo in Maschera with Opera Company of Philadelphia, Florida Grand Opera and Cincinnati Opera; Sister Constance in Les dialogue des Carmelité with Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera; Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem serai with Atlanta Opera; Euridice in L’anima del filosofo with the Handel & Haydn Society and Glimmerglass Opera; Adele in Le comte Ory and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with Seattle Opera; Amina in La sonnambula with Wiener Staatsoper; Adina in L’elisir d'amore with Washington National Opera; Adele in Die Fledermaus with Seattle Opera and Michigan Opera Theater; Vittoria in Tuttie in Maschera with Wexford Festival Opera; the title role in Manon with Opera Santa Barbara; Juliette in Romeo et Juliette with Tulsa Opera; Giulietta in I capuletti e i Montecchi and the title role in Patience with Glimmerglass Opera; Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier with Cincinnati Opera; Norina in Don Pasquale, Sandrina in La finta giardiniera, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with Florida Grand Opera; and Linda di Chamounix with Caramoor Festival.
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 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 the repertoires of 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 20th and 21stcentury with passion and panache.” The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and precision with which they infuse the music of the present era. BMOP.org.
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
BMOP ODYSSEY OPERA | MONO E MONO (E MONO)
Sat February 21 at 8:00 p.m.
NEC’s Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston, MA
Tickets: General $10 . Reservations strongly encouraged. To reserve, visit BMOP.org or call 718.324.0396.
Gil Rose, conductor
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Odyssey Opera
WILLIAM BOLCOM/libst. ARNOLD WEINSTEIN Medusa (2023) | Julia Mintzer, soprano
CARLISLE FLOYD/libst. FLLOYD Flower and Hawk (1972) | Sarah Coburn, soprano
RONALD PERERA/libst. PERERA The White Whale (1981) | Michael Chioldi, baritone
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