The Tempest

By Lee Hoiby
The Dallas Opera
Patrick Summers, conductor

Performers listed below


Successful operas based on Shakespeare are few and far between. Over the centuries three or four hundred of them have been written. But even the Grove Dictionary of Opera says, bluntly, “only a handful have any musical or dramatic worth, and fewer have achieved a place in the repertory ...”

These days, the same thing might be said of NEW operas. World premieres take place fairly frequently. Brand new works get plenty of extra attention in the press, almost by default - and what opera company couldn’t use that? But most often, after the premiere and its public relations fanfares, these new operas languish unheard. Sometimes forever. Many opera companies - maybe MOST companies - are loathe to risk a “modern” opera production without the automatic hoopla of a world premiere.

So the opera we’re about to hear is already a winner on two counts. And it's barely more than a decade old. THE TEMPEST, by the American composer Lee Hoiby, was first performed in Iowa in 1986. A NEW opera, based on a famous Shakespeare play. Didn’t have a chance, right? Wrong. That first production won favorable notices from both press and public. And it earned the opera more time on stage. In 1997, it was produced again, by the Dallas Opera, and it’s won praise everywhere from Opera News and Italy’s “L’Opera,” to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

So, if Hoiby's THE TEMPEST succeeded in it's second production, which was aired in 1997 on NPR WORLD OF OPERA, why let it languish, unplayed, on tape? No reason we can think of, so, here it is again. Join Steve Curwood this week on NPR WORLD OF OPERA for an encore presentation - Lee Hoiby's vivid musical recreation of one of literatures greatest and most popular dramas, in its 1997 production from Dallas.

Also, don't forget to tune in NPR's AT THE OPERA 30 minutes before The Tempest for more insights.



Performers:
Julian Patrick, baritone (Prospero); Joan Gibbons, soprano (Miranda); Constance Hauman, soprano (Ariel); Gary Martin, baritone (Ferdinand); Jacque Trussel, tenor (Caliban); Steven Condy, tenor (Trinculo); Donald Sherrill, bass-baritone (Stephano)


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