Composer Zhou Long Premieres His First Opera – Madame White Snake
Posted by s21concerts in Concert AnnouncementOPERA BOSTON PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF MADAME WHITE SNAKE, AN OPERA BASED ON ANCIENT CHINESE LEGEND
FEB. 26—MARCH 2, 2010
Zhou Long, composer; Cerise Lim Jacobs, librettist; Gil Rose, Music Director
Opera Boston presents the company’s first commissioned work- the world premiere of Madame White Snake, an opera by composer Zhou Long and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs, based on a beloved ancient Chinese legend. The project was conceived by Brookline, Mass. residents Charles Jacobs and Cerise Lim Jacobs. Co-commissioned with the Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation (BMF), it is the first world premiere by the BMF and an American company. Madame White Snake will have three performances – Feb. 26 at 7: 30 p.m., Feb. 28 at 3 p.m., and March 2 at 7:30 p.m. – at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston (219 Tremont St.). Madame White Snake will be sung in English with English and Chinese titles. All performances feature a free talk one hour before curtain, and the Sunday matinee will be followed by an artist talkback. Tickets are $29-$132 through Telecharge.com, by phone at 800-233-3123, or in person at the Cutler Majestic Theatre box office.
Madame White Snake is one of just four world premieres by U.S. opera companies in the 2009-10 season. Opera Boston Music Director Gil Rose conducts. Robert Woodruff directs. Soprano Ying Huang sings the title role, and male soprano Michael Maniaci sings the role of Xiao Qing. Scenic and costume design are by David Zinn. Projections and video design are by Peter Nigrini. Lighting design is by Mark Barton. Also featured is the Premier Choir of the Boston Children’s Chorus, under the direction of Anthony Trecek-King. Making their Opera Boston debut, the Premier Choir is an elite group of 12-18 year-olds with a high level of musical skill.
The orchestration for Madame White Snake features both Western and traditional Chinese instruments. The erhu, a two-stringed instrument played with a bow, is colloquially called the Chinese fiddle. Wang Guowei will play the erhu. A New York-based musician, he is among the most well-known players of the instrument in the United States. The orchestration also includes two traditional flutes, to be played by Hong Wang – the bamboo flute and the xun, a wind instrument made of clay that is similar to the ocarina. Wang is a renowned multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of Melody of China, a professional San Francisco ensemble that performs Chinese classical, folk, and contemporary music.
After the Boston premiere, Madame White Snake travels to China to close the Beijing Music Festival in October 2010. Planning has begun to bring Madame White Snake to other Asian cities following Beijing. The Asian premiere in Beijing is the first by an American opera company in China since San Francisco’s Western Opera Company in 1987. Madame White Snake is set in Hangzhou, a sister city to Boston. Mayor Thomas M. Menino and The Mayor’s Office of Arts, Tourism and Special Events are working closely with Opera Boston and the Friends of Madame White Snake, a 501c3 corporation, to celebrate this sister city relationship. The Friends of Madame White Snake are hosting a six-member delegation from Hangzhou, an important site for Boston companies with a presence in China, as their guests at the gala premiere performance.
“We are very proud to announce this major opera commission and multi-cultural production, Madame White Snake by Zhou Long and Cerise Lim Jacobs,” said Charnow. “This project marks many historic firsts- Opera Boston’s first major commission, our first collaboration with an international music organization and, perhaps most significantly, the first collaboration between the Beijing Music Festival and an American opera company. This project marks the first time that an Opera Boston production will be presented internationally.”
Zhou Long, Madame White Snake’s renowned Chinese-American composer, was recently cited by the New York Times as one of the leading Chinese composers, charged with “injecting a new vitality into the American classical music scene.” In 2003, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Zhou Long its Academy Award in Music, recognizing lifetime achievement, saying, “unlike many composers of today working between cultures, Zhou Long has found a plausible, rigorous, and legitimate way of consolidating compositional methods and techniques that allow him to express brilliantly both his experiences as a composer of Western music and his considerable knowledge of his native China. In [his music], Zhou Long displays a stunning (quasi-tactile) orchestral imagination that dramatically demonstrates his skill of embedding elements of the two cultures in a consistent, seamless, and original musical language.”
To learn more, visit http://www.operaboston.org.
Composer Zhou Long
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