Operatic Obscurity

One of my goals as administrator of this soon-to-be online community is to regularly profile deserving artists and organizations. Tonight, I'd like to write a little about City Concert Opera, an entirely volunteer-run* organization dedicated to concert performances of rarely performed operas.

What I love about this organization is the focus on obscure works. This is what being a small arts organization in a culturally rich city is all about - serving those niches that the larger institutions find too cost ineffective to serve. This is also why it's essential that these organizations receive support from the community. They provide us with choices, variety, discovery! I've already SEEN Der Rosenkavalier! THREE TIMES!

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But back to the subject at hand. I bet most classical music fans would be surprised (and delighted) to learn that City Concert Opera is planning a performance of a Haydn opera that has never even been published. (Unless those same people were paying attention during an earlier Haydn opera revival period.) That's right. The score for this piece exists only on microfiche in the collection of the Library of Congress. How fortunate are we to have someone with the dedication and passion to pursue a project of this nature? The answer is: very fortunate.

Being a girl whose musical tastes tend to the modern, I am also whole-heartedly supportive of the organization's plans to record an opera by David Carlson, an American composer who was recently commissioned by the Florida Grand Opera to write an opera based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (premiering May of this year). In 1993, David wrote an opera with writer Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn and an episode of Star Trek!) entitled The Midnight Angel. Apparently he has recently re-scored the piece for 8 singers and a 21-piece orchestra - meaning it's now the perfect size for a chamber orchestra to perform! Or record for that matter.

I sincerely hope organizations like City Concert Opera benefit from my project. If you know of other organizations you'd like to see profiled, please let me know!

*Note: the only staff the organization DOES pay is its musicians!