Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Monday, November 5, 2012 in Events, VRC.

Vanderbilt Opera Theatre (Gayle Shay, director) and Vanderbilt University Orchestra (Robin Fountain, conductor) will present Operas in One Act—two contemporary operas, each one act long, on November 9 (8-10 p.m.) and November 11 (2-4 p.m.) at Blair School of Music’s Ingram Hall. Later the Same Evening, written in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer John Musto, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, will bring to life iconic works by the celebrated American artist Edward Hopper whose urban scenes are among the most enduring images of the 20th century.

Five of Hopper’s paintings capture moments of profound loneliness and a sense of estrangement: Room in New York (1932), Hotel Window (1955), Hotel Room (1931), Two on the Aisle (1927), and Automat (1927) all depict New York scenes that convey a sense of solitude that one can feel in the city. The opera imagines the lives of the figures in these paintings and connects them as characters—both directly and tangentially—on one evening in New York City in 1932.

The second opera, Three Decembers, was written in 2008 by Jake Heggie. The libretto by Gene Scheer is based on an unpublished play by Terrence McNally. Composer Heggie will be in residence at Blair during production week as part of Blair’s BMI Composer-in-Residence program, working with the student performers.

Free and open to the public, the performances are sponsored by Susan and Drew Pinsky (in gratitude for Helene Stanton’s great musical influence on their family), BMI, and the Mary Cortner Ragland Master Series Fund.