O'Regan THE PHOENIX promo booklet

MUSIC SALES | CONTEMPORARY OPERAS

i The Phoenix

The Phoenix an opera in two acts

by Tarik

O’Regan and John Caird

Cover image: Luca Pisaroni as Young Da Ponte and Rihab Chaieb as Mozart in the world premiere performance of The Phoenix at Houston Grand Opera in 2019. Photos Š Lynn Lane, courtesy of Houston Grand Opera.

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or ‘The Operatic Adventures of Lorenzo Da Ponte on Two Continents’ in Two Acts Music Libretto Commissioner Orchestration

Duration

Tarik O’Regan John Caird Houston Grand Opera 2(afl,pic)2(ca)2(bcl)2(cbn)/3.2.2+btbn.1/ timp.4perc/2hp.pno(cel).ftpno/str 2 hrs 30 mins

Cast and characters Lorenzo Da Ponte, Sr (“Da Ponte”) Baritone Lorenzo Da Ponte, Jr (“Enzo”) Bass- Baritone Maria Malibran, a singer Mezzo-soprano Patrick Kelly, Da Ponte’s friend Tenor Giulietta, Da Ponte’s niece Soprano Faustina, his other niece Soprano SATB Chorus of Stagehands, Venetians, Viennese, Londoners, American Immigrants and New Yorkers. Five children (boys or girls) aged between 8 and 14 playing the three Conegliano brothers in Act One and the five Da Ponte children in Act Two.

Brief Synopsis It is 1832 at the Park Theatre in Manhattan. Lorenzo Da Ponte has written the libretto for a new opera titled The Phoenix, based on his life; he hopes proceeds from the performances will help him to build a new theatre for Italian opera in New York. The final dress rehearsal is about to begin. Da Ponte and his son Lorenzo Jr., nicknamed Enzo, who composed the music, are co-directing and performing as well. The other performers include opera stars Maria Malibran and Patrick Kelly and two of Da Ponte’s nieces, Giulietta and Faustina. The elder Da Ponte plays himself as well as his father as a young man. The other principal characters portray themselves in the backstage scenes and scene changes but take multiple roles in the opera-within-an-opera, The Phoenix. The opera traces the circuitous route of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s life from boyhood in Ceneda, Italy, via Venice, Vienna and London, to America, where he lived for more than 30 years.

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The Phoenix (2018)2011)

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The American in Europe Jeremy Johnson, dramaturg

Most people who have been going to the opera for a few years know that ‘the Da Ponte operas’ were written be Mozart. But perhaps we should be more precise: those operas – the Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte – were composed by Mozart. Their libretti were written by Lorenzo Da Ponte, a man from the small town of Ceneda, Italy, seven years older than the Salzburg composer; a man who, for all of his 89 years of life, is entirely know for a scant five years during which he collaborated with a musical genius. His other 84 years, though, are arguably even more interesting. Da Ponte seemed to think so, too, writing three different editions of his memoirs over the last 15 years of his life.

Tarik O’Regan says that Da Ponte’s connection to the United States is what inspired the opera. ‘It began with an article I wrote for the Guardian newspaper on European émigré composers and their work in New York – Britten, Bartók Mahler – and this whole body of work created in America

by European artists. And part of that was my discovery of just how much time Da Ponte had spent in the United States.’ O’Regan – an immigrant and now an American citizen himself – would go on to become intrigued by this juxtaposition of time and place: Da Ponte was an ‘old world European’ living at the same time the new world was being established. Librettist John Caird points out that Da Ponte and Mozart were writing Don Giovanni ‘on the very same nights that Hamilton and Madison were putting the final touches on the Constitution in September 1787. That, to me, is absolutely fascinating.’

For O’Regan and Caird, Da Ponte’s life is an American story – an immigrant story. His connection to America started almost three decades before moving there. While teaching at the Treviso seminary, he wrote political and

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Pictures from the premiere of The Phoenix at Houston Grand Opera, 2019. Luca Pisaroni (top, right) and Thomas Hampson (bottom, left) in role of Lorenzo Da Ponte. Photos © Lynn Lane, courtesy of Houston Grand Opera.

started with an immigrant. Da Ponte’s unending enthusiasm and zealous love for both of his homes – Italy and America – compelled him to unite the best parts of each. The man who wrote the libretti for three of our most beloved Italian operas? He was an American. As O’Regan puts it: ‘There are always these strange collisions of time and culture… things aren’t as far apart as you think.’

The full version of this article originally appeared in Houston Grand Opera’s program, Opera Cues, (April 2019). Used with permission of the author and Houston Grand Opera.

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philosophical poems for his students to recite that questioned the authority of a tyrannical monarchy. The year he wrote these words? 1776. Caird points out that one of the poems was titled The American in Europe: ‘He’s hearing, clearly, all about the revolution in America and the Declaration of Independence. Da Ponte’s destination as an artist, from the very beginning, seemed obvious to be America.’ As the world becomes more interconnected than ever, we see daily the influence of rapid globalization and cultural diversity. Perhaps it is easy to take for granted the influence that Italian culture has had on American life, but it’s even easier to forget that it all

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Tarik O’Regan © Frances Marshall

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Tarik O’Regan, ‘one of the leading British composers of his generation’ (Gramophone) who is writing ‘music of startling beauty’ (The Observer), was born in London in 1978. He grew up predominantly in Croydon in South London, spending some of his early childhood in Morocco, where his mother was born, and Algeria. He was educated at Whitgift School, during which time he studied percussion, and later composition with Jeremy Dale Roberts, at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music in London. He then read music at Pembroke College, Oxford and in 1997, while still a student, he received his first commissions from the Choir of New College, Oxford and James Bowman.

Following the completion of his undergraduate studies, O’Regan began serving as the classical recordings reviewer for The Observer newspaper, a position he held for four years. During part of this time he also worked for JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank. He completed his postgraduate studies under the direction of Robin Holloway at Cambridge, where he was appointed Composer in Residence at Corpus Christi College and formally began his career as a composer, with his first published works appearing in 2001 on the Finnish Sulasol imprint. This period marked the start of his relationship with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (who would later release O’Regan’s first album, VOICES, under the direction of Timothy Brown) and the premiere of two important orchestral works: Clichés with the London Sinfonietta and The Pure Good of Theory with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

In 2004 O’Regan moved to New York City to take up the Chester Schirmer Fulbright Fellowship at Columbia University and subsequently a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. During this period, his composition Sainte won the Vocal category of the 2005 British Composer Awards and his debut disc, VOICES was released on the Collegium label. O’Regan began dividing his time between the UK and the US when he was appointed Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. During his two-year tenure at Cambridge, his composition Threshold of Night won the Liturgical category of the 2007 British Composer Awards and Scattered Rhymes, his first CD on the Harmonia Mundi label, performed by the Orlando Consort and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier, was released. O’Regan’s second disc on the Harmonia Mundi label, Threshold

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Tarik O’Regan

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6 of Night, appeared in late 2008 and awakened a wider interest in his work, demonstrated by the CD garnering two GRAMMY® Award nominations in 2009: Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance.

After this, he increased his output as a music commentator in print and on air, especially on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. This aspect of his career broadened with the broadcasting in 2010 on BBC Radio 4 of the awardwinning ‘Composing New York’, a documentary written and presented by O’Regan. In the same year, he was appointed to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a Director’s Visitor and made his BBC Proms debut with Latent Manifest performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

O’Regan’s third album on the Harmonia Mundi label, Acallam na Senórach: an Irish Colloquy (based on the 12th Century Middle Irish narrative of the same name) was released in October, 2011. This was followed, one month later, by the premiere of Heart of Darkness, a chamber opera in one act with an English-language libretto by artist Tom Phillips based on the novella of the same name by Joseph Conrad, at the Linbury Theatre of the Royal Opera House, London. It received wide critical attention and marked O’Regan’s first foray into operatic writing.

Between 2012-17 O’Regan completed his Suite from Heart of Darkness for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and two North African-influenced projects; Raï, for the Dutch National Ballet, and Chaâbi, commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He was the featured composer for both the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Chamber Choir Ireland) and New Music for a New Age (Washington Chorus). A Celestial Map of the Sky, a new album on the NMC label of orchestral music performed by the Hallé Orchestra, was released, and O’Regan’s first opera, Heart of Darkness, received its North American premiere. Mata Hari, an evening-length ballet commissioned by the Dutch National Ballet, was premiered, issued on DVD/ Blu-ray by EuroArts, and subsequently revived for a second month-long run.

His work also received performances by the Orchestra of the Opéra de Rouen, Lausanne Symphony Orchestra, and the Alexander String Quartet.

O’Regan has been appointed to the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship at Columbia University; a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard; and positions at Trinity and Corpus Christi Colleges in Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Yale. He has served on the composition faculty of Rutgers University, and as Senior Advisor to the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. In 2017, he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Pembroke College, Oxford and to the board of Yaddo.

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Librettist

John Caird is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and a freelance writer and director of plays, musicals and operas. His National Theatre productions include Hamlet, Money, Humbleboy, The Seagull, Stanley, Trelawney of the Wells, Peter Pan, and his own new Olivier Awardwinning version of Bernstein’s Candide, which has played worldwide. Recent directorial credits include Knight’s Tale, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night in Tokyo; Don Giovanni at Welsh National Opera; McQueen at the Haymarket Theatre; Tosca in Chicago and Los Angeles; Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Stratford Festival in Canada; La bohème in San Francisco and Toronto; Parsifal in Chicago; and his own musical Daddy Long Legs Off-Broadway, in Tokyo, and across the United States. He has directed over 20 productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Beggar’s Opera, Twelfth Night, Peter Pan, Our Friends in the North, Nicholas Nickleby, and Les Misérables – the last two productions winning numerous awards in the West End, Broadway, and internationally.

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John Caird

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‘...some of the most sublime, incantatory choruses I’ve ever heard’ Lynn Lane, Houstonia Magazine

‘…a complex score, rich in the choral and ensemble music for which O’Regan is justly famous… Some scenes, such as that of Da Ponte’s arrival in America, have the feel of Benjamin Britten’s great seafaring opera choruses.’ operawarhorses.com

The Phoenix was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and first performed at the Wortham Theater Center, Houston, Texas, April 26 2019

For more information about The Phoenix, please contact: Thomas Le Brocq Creative Manager (Back Catalogue and Opera) Music Sales Group E: thomas.lebrocq@musicsales.co.uk T: +44 (0)20 7612 7400

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