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Jan. 17, 2007/FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Marla Carpenter, 336-770-3337, carpem@ncarts.edu OUR TOWN, A NEW AMERICAN OPERA, TO PREMIERE AT NCSA FEB. 2 AND 4 A.J. FLETCHER OPERA INSTITUTE TO STAGE SOUTHEASTERN PREMIERE
WINSTON-SALEM – “An homage to a simpler time.” That’s how Steven LaCosse characterizes Our Town, a new American opera being presented by The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the North Carolina School of the Arts. LaCosse is the stage director of the opera, which is based on the beloved play by Thornton Wilder about George, Emily and the ordinary yet poignant residents of Grover’s Corners. The opera features music by one of America’s foremost composers, Ned Rorem, and a libretto by American poet J.D. McClatchy. Our Town will make its Southeastern premiere at 8 p.m. Feb. 2 and at 2 p.m. Feb. 4 at NCSA’s Stevens Center, 405 West Fourth St., downtown Winston-Salem. Admission is charged; call the NCSA Box Office at 336-721-1945 for reservations.	George (Adam Ulrich) and Emily (Sara Pardo) Scene design by Jayme Mellema
While Rorem and McClatchy “stayed very true to the very essence of Wilder’s play,” said James Allbritten, the opera’s music director, they also “reinvented it” into operatic form – compressing the number of characters – characters who express heightened emotions. And though the orchestra Rorem calls for is small, it includes a full complement of strings, and no percussion – save for the piano, Allbritten said. Fellows of NCSA’s A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute and students from the NCSA School of Music will perform, while NCSA School of Design and Production students have designed and built the production and are providing technical support. While many composers – including Aaron Copland – have longed to transform Thornton Wilder’s play into an opera, Wilder – who died in 1975 – resisted the idea. A few years ago, Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder’s nephew and executor of his estate, finally gave approval for the project after being approached by McClatchy, a noted Thornton Wilder scholar. The prestigious A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of NCSA was one of six commissioners of the opera, which included lead commissioner Indiana University, as well as Aspen Opera Theater, Opera Boston, Festival Opera (Walnut Creek, Calif.), and Lake George Opera (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.). Indiana University staged the world premiere of Our Town in February 2006. Reviews have been glowing. “Put simply, Our Town is a winner,” said Kyle MacMillan of the Denver Post. “Unlike so many freshly minted operas that are immediate busts or need considerable reworking, this one succeeds flawlessly on nearly every level.” Anne Midgette in The New York Times said: “Deftly matching the character of the play, Mr. Rorem's music is accessible, singable and full of integrity.” And Alex Ross in The New Yorker wrote: “Its mundane scenes of all-American life – baseball, drunkenness, gossip, marriage – elicit from Rorem the clean-lined, crisp-figured style that typified American music before the Cold War, and to which he has stayed uncompromisingly true. … Wilder’s ghosts remind us that we never appreciate the transient glories of daily existence until it is too late. The very fabric of the score – its luminous orchestration, its pearly vocal lines, its gently pulsing rhythms, its celestially circling song of young love – evokes the mundane beauty that we overlook.” James Allbritten, artistic director of The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at NCSA, has taught on the NCSA School of Music faculty since 1993. At the School, he has led performances of Eugene Onegin, Beatrice and Benedick, Albert Herring, Brigadoon, Don Giovanni, Hansel and Gretel and Belisario. He has also led performances for Piedmont Opera Theatre, where he is artistic director; Opera Carolina; and Opera Theatre of the Rockies. He is chorus master for the Winston-Salem Symphony. Steven LaCosse, managing director of The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at NCSA, has directed more than 22 productions in Indiana, Texas, New York and North Carolina. He has assisted James Lucas and Giorgio Tozzi of the Metropolitan Opera and was the only student ever chosen by the Indiana University Opera Theater to direct a production on the main stage. He was the stage director-in-residence for the first Inter-American Composers Workshop, and guest director for The Texas Opera Connection. Time magazine has called Ned Rorem "the world's best composer of art songs." He has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, chamber music, nine operas, choral works, ballets and other music for the theatre, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of 16 books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism. J.D. “Sandy” McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems, and literary essays collected in two volumes. He has also edited several other books and the acclaimed series “The Voice of the Poet” for Random House AudioBooks. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, and many other magazines. He has an increasingly prominent role in the opera world as a librettist; among his credits are William Schuman's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending and Tobias Picker's Emmeline. Rorem, McClatchy and Tappan Wilder are expected to be part of a *symposium that will be held at 2 p.m. Feb. 3 on the Our Town* set at the Stevens Center.** Also participating in the panel discussion will be Penelope Ellen Niven, writer-in-residence at Salem College and a Thornton Wilder scholar. Admission is free to the symposium. Following the Winston-Salem performances, The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of NCSA will also present Our Town in Raleigh: at 8 p.m. Feb. 9 and at 2 p.m. Feb. 11 in Fletcher Opera Theater at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Admission is charged; call Ticketmaster at 919-834-4000 for reservations. In addition, performances for schoolchildren also will be presented on Jan. 31 in Winston-Salem and on Feb. 7 in Raleigh. The A.J. Fletcher Foundation, The Broyhill Family Foundation, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County have made this production of Our Town possible. ###
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While Rorem and McClatchy “stayed very true to the very essence of Wilder’s play,” said James Allbritten, the opera’s music director, they also “reinvented it” into operatic form – compressing the number of characters – characters who express heightened emotions. And though the orchestra Rorem calls for is small, it includes a full complement of strings, and no percussion – save for the piano, Allbritten said.

Fellows of NCSA’s A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute and students from the NCSA School of Music will perform, while NCSA School of Design and Production students have designed and built the production and are providing technical support.

While many composers – including Aaron Copland – have longed to transform Thornton Wilder’s play into an opera, Wilder – who died in 1975 – resisted the idea. A few years ago, Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder’s nephew and executor of his estate, finally gave approval for the project after being approached by McClatchy, a noted Thornton Wilder scholar.

The prestigious A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of NCSA was one of six commissioners of the opera, which included lead commissioner Indiana University, as well as Aspen Opera Theater, Opera Boston, Festival Opera (Walnut Creek, Calif.), and Lake George Opera (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.). Indiana University staged the world premiere of Our Town in February 2006.

Reviews have been glowing. “Put simply, Our Town is a winner,” said Kyle MacMillan of the Denver Post. “Unlike so many freshly minted operas that are immediate busts or need considerable reworking, this one succeeds flawlessly on nearly every level.”

Anne Midgette in The New York Times said: “Deftly matching the character of the play, Mr. Rorem's music is accessible, singable and full of integrity.”

And Alex Ross in The New Yorker wrote: “Its mundane scenes of all-American life – baseball, drunkenness, gossip, marriage – elicit from Rorem the clean-lined, crisp-figured style that typified American music before the Cold War, and to which he has stayed uncompromisingly true. … Wilder’s ghosts remind us that we never appreciate the transient glories of daily existence until it is too late. The very fabric of the score – its luminous orchestration, its pearly vocal lines, its gently pulsing rhythms, its celestially circling song of young love – evokes the mundane beauty that we overlook.”

James Allbritten, artistic director of The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at NCSA, has taught on the NCSA School of Music faculty since 1993. At the School, he has led performances of Eugene Onegin, Beatrice and Benedick, Albert Herring, Brigadoon, Don Giovanni, Hansel and Gretel and Belisario. He has also led performances for Piedmont Opera Theatre, where he is artistic director; Opera Carolina; and Opera Theatre of the Rockies. He is chorus master for the Winston-Salem Symphony.

Steven LaCosse, managing director of The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at NCSA, has directed more than 22 productions in Indiana, Texas, New York and North Carolina. He has assisted James Lucas and Giorgio Tozzi of the Metropolitan Opera and was the only student ever chosen by the Indiana University Opera Theater to direct a production on the main stage. He was the stage director-in-residence for the first Inter-American Composers Workshop, and guest director for The Texas Opera Connection.

Time magazine has called Ned Rorem "the world's best composer of art songs." He has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, chamber music, nine operas, choral works, ballets and other music for the theatre, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of 16 books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.

J.D. “Sandy” McClatchy is the author of five collections of poems, and literary essays collected in two volumes. He has also edited several other books and the acclaimed series “The Voice of the Poet” for Random House AudioBooks. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, and many other magazines. He has an increasingly prominent role in the opera world as a librettist; among his credits are William Schuman's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Mario and the Magician, Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending and Tobias Picker's Emmeline.

Rorem, McClatchy and Tappan Wilder are expected to be part of a symposium that will be held at 2 p.m. Feb. 3 on the Our Town set at the Stevens Center. Also participating in the panel discussion will be Penelope Ellen Niven, writer-in-residence at Salem College and a Thornton Wilder scholar. Admission is free to the symposium.

Following the Winston-Salem performances, The A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of NCSA will also present Our Town in Raleigh: at 8 p.m. Feb. 9 and at 2 p.m. Feb. 11 in Fletcher Opera Theater at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Admission is charged; call Ticketmaster at 919-834-4000 for reservations.

In addition, performances for schoolchildren also will be presented on Jan. 31 in Winston-Salem and on Feb. 7 in Raleigh.

The A.J. Fletcher Foundation, The Broyhill Family Foundation, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County have made this production of Our Town possible.

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