Glimmerglass Opera
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Glimmerglass Opera is an opera company which was founded in 1975 and presents an annual season of operas at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on the lake eight miles north of Cooperstown, New York.
The summer-only season usually consists of four operas performed in rotating repertory. Glimmerglass is well-known for producing new, lesser-known, and rare works, many of which are co-produced with the New York City Opera. It is the second-largest summer opera festival in the United States, led by Artistic and General Director Michael MacLeod and Associate Artistic Director John Conklin.
The company presented its first season in the summer of 1975, when four performances of La bohème were staged in the auditorium of the Cooperstown High School. In the years since, it has grown considerably and now offers more than 40 performances of four operas, nearly always in new productions, each summer.
Operas have been performed in repertory since 1990. For the first seventeen seasons, all operas were sung in English; since 1992 they have, with some exceptions, been performed in their original language with English projected titles.
Several works have had their American or world premieres at Glimmerglass; the 1999 season featured the world premiere of Central Park, three one-act operas performed as a single work. The triptych was jointly commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, and Thirteen/WNET's Great Performances, which telecast it on PBS in January 2000. The telecast was nominated for an Emmy award.
The Young American Artists Program, established in 1988, brings singers in the first stages of their professional careers to study and perform at Glimmerglass. These young artists are chosen annually from hundreds of applicants from throughout the United States. In addition to rehearsing and performing, Young Artists receive musical coaching, attend classes in diction and acting, and are given instruction in such non-performing skills as audition techniques, role preparation, and the business aspects of managing a career. Administrators from many of the world's leading opera houses visit Glimmerglass throughout the summer and hear the Young Artists in performance.
In the course of the summer each Young Artist gives a solo song recital at venues in Cooperstown and nearby Cherry Valley, a feature of the Glimmerglass season that has become extremely popular with opera patrons and the local community.
[edit] Alice Busch Opera Theater
Glimmerglass Opera's Alice Busch Opera Theater, which opened in June 1987, was built on 43 acres of donated farmland. The 900-seat theater is notable for its pastoral setting, for being the first American opera house built since 1966, and for its sliding walls, closed only while singers are on-stage and in foul weather.
[edit] 2007 Festival Season
Glimmerglass Opera's 2007 Festival Season will feature operas inspired by the myth of Orpheus, complemented by Orpheus-inspired concert performances, films and seminars.
Four new productions, including Claudio Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo, the Gluck/Berlioz Orphée et Eurydice, Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Philip Glass’ Orphée, will run in repertory from July 7 through August 28 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater.
Each a Glimmerglass Opera premiere, the productions will be complemented by two concert performances of Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo and screenings of award-winning films, such as Jean Cocteau’s Orphée, which inspired Philip Glass’ opera and Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus. The film sets the Orpheus myth in Rio de Janeiro.
