Yale Opera - Triple Bill, May 2 & 3, 2015

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Yale Opera

Bon AppĂŠtit!

Lee Hoiby

Riders to the Sea Ralph Vaughan Williams

Gianni Schicchi Giacomo Puccini

may 2 & 3, 2015

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k Cross, Artistic D a r ic ire Y is

Yale Opera

Bon AppĂŠtit!

Lee Hoiby

Riders to the Sea Ralph Vaughan Williams

Gianni Schicchi Giacomo Puccini

May 2 & 3, 2015 Sprague Memorial Hall Saturday, 8 pm & Sunday, 2 pm

rebecca l. welles costume designer

douglas dickson & timothy shaindlin music direction and preparation

doug harry lighting designer

louisa proske stage director

paul lieber projection designer

Robert Blocker, Dean

Yale Opera

Bon AppĂŠtit!

A Musical Monologue Music by Lee Hoiby Text by Julia Child Adapted by Mark Shulgasser By arrangement with G. Schirmer, Inc., publisher and copyright owner Performed in English Musical direction and preparation by Timothy Shaindlin

cast Julia Child

leah hawkins, mezzo-soprano

In Bon AppĂŠtit!, Julia Child takes us through the many delicate steps of making a glorious French chocolate cake.

Yale Opera

Riders to the Sea Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams After the play by J.M. Synge By arrangement with C.F. Peters Corporation Performed in English Musical direction and preparation by Timothy Shaindlin cast (in order of vocal appearance) Nora Cathleen Maurya Bartley Woman

evanna chiew, mezzo-soprano nicole percifield, soprano kathleen reveille, mezzo-soprano brian vu, baritone meechot marrero, soprano

Living on the harsh coast of the Aran Islands, Maurya has already lost four sons, a husband, and a father-in-law to the sea. While she is resting, her daughter Nora brings home a bundle of clothes that were taken off a drowned man in Donegal, suggesting to her sister, Cathleen, that they might belong to Michael, Maurya’s fifth son, who went missing nine days before.

Maurya tries to prevent Bartley, her last living son, from going on a boat to Connemara to sell horses, but Bartley insists he must provide for the family. The daughters are shocked when Maurya refuses to give Bartley her blessing for the journey, and they send Maurya after him to break the spell.

While she is out, they open the bundle of clothes – they are indeed Michael’s, his death by drowning confirmed. When Maurya returns, she is horror-stricken by a evil-boding vision of Michael, in new clothes, following Bartley on a gray pony. Soon after, women of the village enter. Bartley is knocked off his horse by the gray pony and drowns.

Maurya, having lost her last son, sees her own end coming. intermission

Yale Opera

Gianni Schicchi Music by Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Giovacchino Forzano Performed in Italian with English translation Musical direction and preparation by Douglas Dickson cast (in order of vocal appearance) Zita, Buoso’s cousin Simone, Buoso’s cousin Rinuccio, Zita’s nephew Marco, Simone’s son La Ciesca, Marco’s wife Gherardo, Buoso’s nephew Nella, Gherardo’s wife Betto, Buoso’s brother-in-law Gherardino, Gherardo’s son Gianni Schicchi Lauretta, his daughter Spinnelloccio, a doctor Amantio di Nicolao, a notary Pinellino, a shoemaker Guccio, a tailor Buoso Donati

kathleen reveille, mezzo-soprano andy berry, bass halim shon, tenor sun ting li, tenor sat samuel hinkle, baritone leah hawkins, mezzo-soprano ting li, tenor sun halim shon, tenor sat nicole percifield, soprano pawel konik, bass-baritone andrew holms, boy soprano* zhiguang hong, bass-baritone meechot marrero, soprano sun jinxiang yu, soprano sat jorge prego, tenor brian vu, baritone brad walker, bass-bartitone andrew swartzell* andrew swartzell* * guest artist

The rich Buoso Donati dies, and his relations promptly assemble in hope for the inheritance. However, there are rumors that he has given all his money to a convent. After a frantic search for the will, the horrid truth is confirmed: not a cent to the family!

Rinuccio, the young nephew of the elderly Zita, suggests that Gianni Schicchi be consulted — a colorful character around town, he always finds a solution to any quandary. Rinuccio hopes that Schicchi’s help

Yale Opera

Gianni Schicchi (continued) will make Zita reverse her staunch opposition to his planned marriage to Lauretta, Schicchi’s daughter, as Lauretta has no dowry and Schicchi is a low-class outsider. When Schicchi arrives, Zita insults him bitterly, but Lauretta implores her daddy with such crafty passion that he relents and considers the will. He comes up with a plan: as no one yet knows that Buoso has died, Schicchi will disguise himself as Buoso and dictate a new will to a notary.

The relatives divvy up the spoils, but cannot agree on the best part of the inheritance: the mule, the house, or the mills of Signa. Everyone in turn tries to bribe Schicchi for those coveted things. When the lawyer arrives, everything goes according to plan, but Schicchi tricks the tricksters by giving the three best prizes to himself. The relatives cannot prevent him, because revealing the scheme would mean grave punishment. Outraged, they loot the house and leave. Rinuccio and Lauretta can now be married, because Schicchi can give his daughter Buoso’s inheritance for a dowry.

Biographies

Louisa Proske stage director

Douglas Dickson musical direction and preparation

Louisa Proske is a versatile director of theatre, opera, and musicals. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera, which the Wall Street Journal recently hailed as “pioneers … reformatting the opera experience from the grand to the deliberately intimate.” Her production of Offenbach’s forgotten operetta Daphnis & Chloé won high critical praise, and her Falstaff with Dell’Arte Opera was called a “revelation” and “everything an opera performance should be.” Other opera productions include Lucia Di Lammermoor (Heartbeat Opera), La Voix Humaine (Yale Opera), the world premiere of Invisible Cities (Red Light New Music), and several world premieres with Experiments in Opera. Theatre work includes The Winstons (Juilliard School of Drama), Balm in Gilead (Mason Gross), Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Strasberg Institute), Rum ’n Coca Cola in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Pinkalicious the Musical (Hangar Theatre), ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore (The Tank), Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and As You Like It at Yale School of Drama, A Servant To Two Masters (Edinburgh Fringe), The Barber Shop (Cambridge Footlights), and an international tour of Macbeth. Louisa holds an M.F.A. in directing from Yale School of Drama and is a proud alumna of the Drama League Director’s Project and the Soho Rep. WriterDirector Lab. She is also on faculty at Maggie Flanigan Studio teaching Shakespeare Acting and Script Analysis.

Douglas Dickson received his B.A. degree from Princeton University and his M.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. On various occasions the Washington Post has called him an “intelligent, sensitive” pianist with “super technique,” a “skillful pianist,” and has praised him for the “finely integrated oneness” he achieves as an accompanist. Mr. Dickson has performed in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and South America in venues ranging from Japan’s Expo Hall to the Cincinnati Coliseum.

» www.heartbeatopera.org

While still in college, he was the accompanist for the American Boychoir. As part of Duodecaphonia, a prize-winning piano duo, he has performed at the Kennedy Center and elsewhere. Mr. Dickson has been music director for productions at Quinnipiac University, Yale School of Drama, Opera Theater of Connecticut, and Connecticut Experimental Theater. He was music director and conductor for Yale Opera’s production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and he conducted a concert featuring Yale Opera with the Orchestra Verdi in Milan. He has taught at Quinnipiac University since 1993, and joined the Yale faculty in 1998.

He made his Carnegie debut in an all-Ives concert at Weill Recital Hall. For Naxos, he has recorded more than eighty Charles Ives songs.

Biographies

Timothy Shaindlin musical direction and preparation

Rebecca L. Welles costume designer

A native of New York City, Timothy Shaindlin joined the Yale School of Music faculty in 2008. After studies at The Juilliard School and Indiana University, he worked for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, San Diego Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera. He has also coached for Glimmerglass Opera, Sarasota Opera, and Hawaii Opera Theatre. In Europe, he worked for Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu and played master classes for Tito Gobbi. He has played classes and coachings for such artists as Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne, Natalie Dessay, Ben Heppner, Luciano Pavarotti, Eleanor Steber, Samuel Ramey, Régine Crespin, Thomas Hampson, Frederica von Stade, and Carlo Bergonzi.

Rebecca L. Welles received her M.F.A. in theatre design from Yale School of Drama in 2012. Her recent design credits include Le Nozze de Figaro, La Cenerentola, and Iolanta for Yale Opera, Awake and Sing! and Murder Mystery for the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Conn. Recent New York credits include Irreversible with the Red Fern Theatre Company; The Taming of the Shrew, Baruch Performing Arts Center; Blank Canvas, Downtown Urban Theatre Festival; Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shrunken Shakespeare; and Marie Christine, Columbia University. Upcoming work includes Fools and The Education Project for the Educational Center for the Arts.

Mr. Shaindlin’s work on the podium includes conducting engagements with the Wolf Trap Opera Festival, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Pittsburgh Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago Light Opera Works, and Eugene Opera. He has assisted such renowned conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Andrew Davis, Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Richard Bonynge, Bruno Bartoletti, Donato Renzetti, Louis Langrée, Edoardo Müller, Yves Abel, Daniele Gatti, Antonio Pappano, and Paul Gemignani.

Doug Harry lighting designer Doug hails from the U.K. and trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama way back in the crazy eighties. He has travelled the world as a lighting designer for theatre, opera, and corporate events. Currently, he splits his time between production management and design and is currently the production manager for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. He is very happy to be designing for the Yale Opera program.

Biographies

Paul Lieber projection designer Paul Lieber is a projection designer, playwright, songwriter, and performer. His design work has been seen at the Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale Opera, BAM, MaYi Theater Company, and with the Elisa Monte and Martha Graham dance companies. He is co-founder of the songwriting collective Strange Motel and holds an M.F.A. in projection design from Yale School of Drama. Âť www.paullieberprojections.com

special thanks Richard Cross Richard Harding Robert Heltzel Christina Holms Jeromy Hunt Lydia Niemi John Roach John Sullivan Kyle Swann Marc Verzatt Yale School of Drama Long Wharf Theatre Southern Connecticut State University Wendall K. Harrington and her projection design students

Student Profiles

Andy Berry • bass B.S. Yale University; Young Artist Programs: dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, Opera on the Avalon, Central City Opera* Evanna Chiew • mezzo-soprano B.M. University of British Columbia; Young Artist Programs: Opera nuova, Toronto Summer Music Academy, Chamber Music Northwest Program* Leah Hawkins • mezzo-soprano B.A. Morgan State University; Young Artist Programs: Houston Grand Opera Young Artist Vocal Academy, Martina Arroyo Foundation’s Prelude to Performance, Central City Opera, Chautauqua Opera* Samuel Hinkle • baritone B.M. Mannes College of Music; Young Artist Programs: Siena Music Festival Zhiguang Hong • bass-baritone B.M. China Conservatory of Music, M.M. Mannes College of Music; Young Artist Programs: International Vocal Arts Institute, Dicapo Opera Theater Pawel Konik • bass-baritone B.A., Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music; M.A. Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music - Katowice/Poland Opera Academy; Young Artist Programs: Teatr Wielki Polish National Opera (Warsaw, Poland) Ting Li • tenor B.M. Shanghai Conservatory of Music Meechot Marrero • soprano B.M. Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico; Young Artist Programs: International Vocal Arts Institute, Savannah Voice

Festival, VOICExperience, Savannah Voice Festival* Nicole Percifield • soprano B.M. New England Conservatory, M.M. Manhattan School of Music; Young Artist Programs: Minnesota Opera Jorge Prego • tenor B.M. Vigo Conservatory (Spain); M.M. Hartt School of Music; Artist Diploma, Roosevelt University; A.D. Yale University; Young Artist Programs: Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Opera Theater Kathleen Reveille • mezzo-soprano B.M. Mercyhurst University; Young Artist Programs: New York Summer Opera Scenes Halim Shon • tenor B.M. Seoul National University, M.M. Peabody Institute of Music Brian Vu • baritone B.A. U.C.L.A.; M.M. Yale University; Young Artist Programs: Chautauqua Institution Voice Program, Wolf Trap Opera, Music Academy of the West, Glimmerglass Festival* Brad Walker • bass-baritone B.M. Michigan State University; M.M. Kansas University; Young Artist Programs: Chautauqua Opera, Merola Opera Program* Jinxiang Yu • soprano B.M. CUNY Queens College, Performance Certificate, American Musical and Dramatic Academy * upcoming

Yale Opera Production Staff

louisa proske Stage Director

erika niemi Manager

rebecca l. welles Costume Designer

norah scheinman Production Stage Manager & Coordinator

doug harry Lighting Designer

kristianna ibsen Assistant Stage Manager

paul lieber Projection Designer

brad walker Props Runner evanna chiew brian vu Student Assistants

jeromy hunt Props Assistant jo nazro Wardrobe Assistant jill brunelle Surtitle Operator

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Upcoming Events

Yale Baroque Ensemble

Guitar Chamber Music

may 4 Morse Recital Hall | Monday | 7:30 pm The Harmony of Nations: Masterworks of the French and German baroque, including selections by Couperin, Leclair, and J.S. Bach. Robert Mealy, director Free Admission

may 6 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm YSM Student Ensembles Chamber music featuring the guitar by Tedesco, Giuliani, Eespere, Falla, Assad, and Joan Tower. Benjamin Verdery, director Free Admission

Competition Winners

Brentano String Quartet

may 5 Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm Oneppo Chamber Music Series The winners of the School’s annual chamber music competition perform music by Mozart, Poulenc, Britten, and Dutilleux Tickets start at $10 • Students $5

may 13 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Oneppo Chamber Music Series Haydn: String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 50, No. 1; MacMillan: Quartet No. 3; Brahms: String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major Tickets start at $26 • Students $13

Lunchtime Chamber Music

Commencement Concert

may 6 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm YSM Student Ensembles Music for a variety of chamber ensembles Wendy Sharp, director Free Admission

may 17 Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 4:00 pm YSM Student Ensembles Featuring student performers selected from the Yale School of Music’s class of 2015 Free Admission

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Robert Blocker, Dean