Goat Hall Productions - San Francisco Cabaret Opera presents
Fresh Voices XVI Festival of New Works: "Memories & Desires"
Fridays-Saturdays, August 12-13, 26-27, 2016 8:15PM
Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA
A Double-Bill World Premiere of Two Outrageous Operas!
Mark Alburger's
ALMA MARIA SCHINDLER MAHLER GROPIUS WERFEL
John G. Bilotta & Jostein Stalheim's
ROSETTA'S STONE
THE CAST FOR "Alma Maria Schindler, et al":
Alma Maria Schindler - KASSIDY GRACE MAYERNIK
Alma Maria Schindler Mahler - LARISSA LORENZ
Alma Maria Schindler Mahler Gropius - CHRISTA DURAND
Alma Maria Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel- JILL WAGONER
Alma Pianist Double On-Stage - FEONA LEE JONES
Gustav Mahler - MARK ALBURGER
Walter Gropius - JAMIE SAMANTHA LEE
Franz Werfel - HARRIET MARCH PAGE
Oscar Kokoschka - JACQUELINE GOLDGORIN
Feona Lee Jones, piano, with
Orchestra conducted by Mark Alburger
THE CAST FOR "Rosetta's Stone":
Rosetta - CASS PANUSKA
Al - WAYNE WONG
Cortex - JILL WAGONER
Thalamus - SARITA CANNON
Hippocampus - ALEXIS LANE JENSEN
Amgdala - KASSIDY GRACE MAYERNIK
Cerebellum - JAMIE SAMANTHA LEE
Brain Stem - HARRIET MARCH PAGE
Rachel Condry, clarinet
Robin Reynolds, cello
Feona Lee Jones, piano
Mark Aburger, conductor
ABOUT THE OPERAS:
"Alma Maria Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel," Op 232 (2014) is an adultery of post-modern musics, inspired by the beautiful Austro-American composer-socialite, her three husbands (composer-conductor Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, writer Franz Werfel), nine lovers (theatre director Max Burckhard; artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka; composers Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner, and Gustave Charpentier; biologist Paul Kammerer; pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch; and cleric Johannes Hollnsteiner), and numerous associates (Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Arnold Schoenberg, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Ernst Krenek, and Dmitri Shostakovich). She becomes a literal doll (in Kokoschka's kinky design) who denigrates ("When someone is down, give them a push"), inspires ("All that I love is a man's achievement"), and lies (physically and verbally) her way to the top, in the increasingly anti-Semitic and Nazi-sympathetic interbellum Vienna.
"Rosetta’s Stone" (2015) is a collaborative work about a professor’s descent into Alzheimer's and its effect on his student, created by a team of artists in the United States and Norway: composers John G. Bilotta and Jostein Stalheim and librettists Oded Ben-Horin and John F. McGrew. In "Rosetta's Stone", the professor’s mind is deconstructed into a cerebral café of brainy baristas — Amygdala, Brain Stem, Cerebellum, Cortex, Hippocampus, and Thalamus — in scenes that alternate with his pupil's poignant musical responses. "Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth." (R. W. Emerson)
TICKET INFORMATION
General: $35
Students & Seniors: $25
Tickets are available from
LESHER CENTER FOR THE ARTS
https:\\lesherartscenter.showare.com
(925) 943-7469
or at the door.
Goat Hall Productions' Fresh Voices Festivals are funded in part by a generous grant from the Anne and Gordon Getty Foundation.
Goat Hall Productions is a member of Theatre Bay Area.
Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera:
(707) 451-8396
http://www.goat-hall.org/