The School
of Music has commissioned the first major opera of
the institution’s history. Composer and Grammy
winner Libby Larsen has been chosen to create an operatic
adaptation of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
play, “Picnic.”
The opera, made possible through a gift of $150,000
by Charles H. Babcock Jr. of Winston-Salem, will debut
in early 2008.
Larsen is one of America’s most performed, living
composers. She has created a catalogue of more than
200 works spanning virtually every genre from vocal
and chamber music to orchestral and choral scores.
Her operatic works include “Barnum’s Bird,”
“Clair de Lune,” “Dreaming Blue,”
“Mrs. Dalloway” and “A Wrinkle in
Time,” among others. She was awarded a 1994
Grammy as producer of “The Art of Arleen Augér,”
an acclaimed recording that features Larsen’s
“Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
Larsen has been hailed as “the only English-speaking
composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great
verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively”
(USA Today); and as “a composer who has made
the art of symphonic writing very much her own”
(Gramophone).
William Inge’s play “Picnic” won
the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was adapted into a
film in 1955. It is about two all-female households
in Kansas who are changed by a visit from an exciting
young man.
In August 2006, UNCG’s Aycock Auditorium is
scheduled for an extensive renovation with funds from
the N.C. Higher Education Bonds. The auditorium is
slated to re-open in January 2008, and the newly commissioned
opera will likely be the first major event to be held
in the hall. Because the Aycock renovation includes
the construction of an orchestra pit and stage lift,
the School of Music will finally have a venue for
the presentation of grand opera that matches the quality
of its performances.
The School of Music’s Opera Theatre, under the
direction of David Holley since 1992, has a long history
of successful opera productions. They have received
seven first-place awards over the past decade from
the National Opera Association opera production competition.
This past year, the program won two first-place awards
for 2003’s “Little Women” and 2004’s
“Susannah.” Previous winners have included
“Orpheus in the Underworld” (2001), “The
Consul” (2000), “Dialogues of the Carmelites”
(1997), “Amahl and the Night Visitors”
(1996) and “Don Giovanni” (1994).
