Name: A First Listen To "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage"
Start: 2022-04-22T19:30:00-04:00
End: 2022-04-22T21:00:00-04:00
Location: The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts

A First Listen To "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage"

Guerilla Operais a chamber opera  ensemble whose works span live in person to interactive educational events to video on demand and live streamed events. We commission and re-envision new and experimental works custom-tailored to our unique ensemble of artists, champion cutting-edge music, and immerses audiences in profound experiences .

Guerilla Opera

A first listen to a new opera based on the best-selling graphic novel by Sydney Padua, music by Elena Ruehr, and libretto by Royce Vavrek.

The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts

<p>Join us on Friday, April 22 , 2022, 7:30 at Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA for a first listen to a new one-act opera about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, the unsung inventors of the first computer, in an alternative universe where they successfully use their invention to &quot;fight crime&quot;.</p><p>This concert event includes a pre-concert discussion and the reception afterwards to meet the artist!</p><p>Guerilla Opera’s performing ensemble includes mezzo soprano Alexis Peart as Ada Lovelace and baritone Michael Galvin as Charles Babbage, with tenor Omar Najimi, soprano  Erin  Matthews, Rane Moore (clarinet), Lilit Hartunian (Violin),  Steve Marotto (cello),  and Mike Williams (percussion).</p>

<h3>COMPOSER</h3><p>Called a “composer to watch” by Opera News, <strong>Elena Ruehr’s</strong> vocal, orchestral, chamber and film music is “Stunning...beautifully lighted by a canny instinct for knowing when and how to vary key, timbre, and harmony” (Richard Buell,  The Boston Globe, 2003).   In 2007-08, Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, where she wrote Cantata Averno based on poetry of Louise Glück.  Her recordings include an opera, Toussaint Before the Spirits, which was called “impressive… an illuminating historical musical fantasy”  (Joshua Rosenblum, Opera News August 2007), and its premiere “had the audience on its feet, cheering, whistling, and applauding… compelling, emotional, theatrical….takes us back to the beginnings of the art, and to one of the first great operas, Gluck's ''Orfeo'' (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe, 2003).  Ruehr has an ongoing collaboration with poet Elizabeth Alexander and Baritone Stephen Salters.</p><p>Dr. Ruehr especially enjoys writing for string quartet, in part because of her close working relationship with the award-winning, San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet. She is currently working on a commission from the Cypress Quartet for her Fifth String Quartet, based on the novel Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Her Fourth String Quartet has been described as “music with heart and ...a forceful sense of character and expression”  (The Washington Post November, 2007). Her Third String Quartet was called “an astounding success, conveying an emotional directness the audience could easily grasp, yet still holding musical complexities that should make it a performance staple in the quartet repertory” (Keith Powers, Boston Sunday  Herald, 2002), and was premiered by the  Borremeo Quartet at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival.  Her first work to receive national recognition, including an ASCAP award, was her First String Quartet (1988).  In a review of a performance by the Shanghai Quartet, Josiah Fisk of the Boston Herald wrote in 1995: “there’s no mistaking the profusion of ideas, the adroitness of technique and the restlessness of spirit that permeate this music.”  A recording of her string quartets performed by the Cypress Quartet will be available in 2009.   (elenaruehr.org)</p><h3>LIBRETTIST</h3><p><strong>Royce Vavrek</strong> is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio).  His opera “Angel’s Bone” with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.</p><p>With composer Missy Mazzoli he wrote “Song from the Uproar,” premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in 2012, and subsequently seen in multiple presentations around the country. Their second opera, an adaptation of Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves,” premiered at Opera Philadelphia, co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by James Darrah to critical acclaim in September of 2016. The work won the 2017 Music Critics Association of North America award for Best New Opera and was nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2017 International Opera Awards. A new production premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in the summer of 2019, produced by Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures, helmed by Tony Award-winning director Tom Morris and earned star Sydney Mancasola a coveted Herald Angel Award for her performance. Their next opera, an adaptation of Karen Russell’s short story “Proving Up,” was commissioned and presented by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and The Miller Theatre in 2018, was a finalist for the MCANA Best New Opera Award of that year. They are currently developing a grand opera for Opera Philadelphia and the Norwegian National Opera based on an original story by two-time Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Jordan Tannahill, as well as an adaptation of George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” for The Metropolitan Opera. (roycevavrek.com)</p>

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A First Listen To "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage"

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A First Listen To "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage"

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