Midwest University

School of Music's reputation for excellence in the field of opera is nationally and internationally renowned. Graduate students are accepted by audition into the Opera Studio, which is headed by Gordon Ostrowski. They are then chosen from this program to participate in major full-length productions (as the Opera Theater) and to present programs of scenes with orchestra and/or piano during the season. Manhattan School of Music presents two fully staged productions each year spanning the classical and contemporary repertoire and has been praised by the New York Times for its significant contribution to operatic life in New York. Students accepted into the Opera Studio also receive a comprehensive outreach training program which includes a children's opera.

Another important element of our opera program is the Opera Workshop, which provides an appropriate venue for singers to develop stagecraft and dramatic interpretation as well as gain additional performance experience. Dona D. Vaughn, acting instructor of the Lindemann Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera, directs this Opera Workshop, as well as our Undergraduate Opera Theater, which is required of all junior and senior voice majors.

Examples of our main-stage Opera Theater productions include three sold-out performances during the 1999-2000 season of the New York premiere of William Mayer's A Death in the Family, and Il matrimonio segreto by Domenico Cimarosa. Anthony Tommasini's New York Times review of the opening-night performance of our production stated:

The School's contention that it offers a valuable cultural resource to the community was borne out with its charming production of the Cimarosa opera. This is exactly what a music school should be doing: presenting committed performances of deserving works that professional institutions, with their minds fixed on the bottom line, tend to ignore.

In April 1998, the School presented a new production of Bedrich Smetana's The Two Widows. Other notable productions have included a double bill of Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti and Gustav Holst Savitri,Le Comte Ory by Gioacchino Rossini, Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco, Rappaccini's Daughter by Daniel Catén, Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Donizetti, L'ajo nell'imbarazzo and Il campanello di notte, Une éducation manquée by Emmanuel Chabrier, The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai, The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten, Mahagonny Songspiel and The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken by Kurt Weill, The Yellow Wallpaper by Ronald Perera, Iphigénie en Tauride by Christoph Willibald Gluck, The Taming of the Shrew by Vittorio Giannini, the world premiere of The House of the Seven Gables by Scott Eyerly, and The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten. Our most recent productions have included a double bill of Gian Carlo Menotti's Amelia Goes to the Ball paired with Robert Ward's Roman Fever in December 2001, a production of Der Wildschütz by Albert Lortzing in April 2002, and the New York premiere of The Seagull by Thomas Pasatieri, based on the Chekhov play, in December 2002.