Nov. 14: American opera selections span the world, decades
PULLMAN, Wash. – Selections from American operas of the 1950s will sing stories spanning the Wild West to a Bavarian village to a game of bridge at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, at Bryan Hall, Washington State University. The free, public performance by the School of Music opera program will be directed by Julie Anne Wieck and accompanied by Karen Savage.
The first scenes will be from Douglas Moore’s beautifully dramatic opera, “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” set in the gold-rush 1880s in Leadville, Colo. “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” the one-act opera by Marc Bucci, is a comic portrayal of the West based on the well-known folk song; it includes several operatic clichés.
After a brief intermission, the nine-minute, one-act “A Hand of Bridge,” by Samuel Barber, will get inside the thoughts of two married couples who gather weekly to play bridge in the 1950s. The final scenes will be from an opera by Leonard Bernstein based on the French philosopher Voltaire’s satirical novel “Candide.”
Contact:
Julie Wieck, WSU School of Music, 335-4331, jwieck@wsu.edu
