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This magnificent DVD box set includes three of the most popular American operas in the repertoire: Porgy & Bess, Show Boat and Moby Dick, with extensive bonus material for each production. MOBY DICK Herman Melville’s epic tale of a fierce, obsessive whaling-boat captain who descends into madness and puts his crew in mortal danger "Achingly beautiful, magnificently sung and gorgeously staged ... the audience responded with an eight-minute standing ovation" (Associated Press) •With Grammy Award-winning tenor Jay Hunter Morris, Stephen Costello and Morgan Smith •Bonus materials: Interviews with soloists and actors
Available in both DVD and BlueRay on Amazon.
San Francisco Opera’s highly acclaimed production features Jay Hunter Morris (Ahab), Stephen Costello (Greenhorn), Morgan Smith (Starbuck), Talise Trevigne (Pip), Jonathan Lemalu (Queequeg), Robert Orth (Stubb), Matthew O’Neill (Flask); conducted by Patrick Summers and directed by Leonard Foglia.
World Premiere recording. A young American composer goes to Amsterdam to get permission from the widow of a famous composer to complete his unfinished opera. While in Amsterdam, he falls in love with the widow's companion, who was the composer's mistress.
In Out of Darkness, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer accomplish something remarkable. They convey the vastness of the Holocaust’s scope through emotionally rich portraits of those caught in its grasp, without reducing them to caricatures of martyrdom. The three chapters of this work relate stories that offer compelling musical witness to survival in the face of unimaginable adversity. The deeply moving song cycle For a Look or a Touch illuminates Nazi persecution of homosexuals, informing historical realities through an intensely intimate story of memory and loss.
Featuring Baritone Morgan Smith
For a Look or a Touch, Heggie
Based on the true story of two teenage lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle For a Look or a Touch casts long-awaited light on the fate of gay Germans in the Holocaust. By noted young American opera composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, the work juxtaposes the exuberant freedom of pre-World War II Berlin with the brutal Nazi horrors that followed, while making an eloquent, poignant plea for remembrance.
Featuring Jake Heggie's For a Look or a Touch with guest artist Morgan Smith. Conducted by Dr. Timothy Seelig Music recorded by Jack Vad and Leslie Ann Jones on March 31 - April 2, 2015 at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, CA
Brundibár is part of an inspiring human legacy. Hans Krása’s beautiful children’s opera, performed 55 times at the Terezín concentration camp, stands as a memorial to its original performers, the child inmates of Terezín. Tony Kushner’s acclaimed new English libretto, which receives its world première recording here, brings a modern vibrancy to Brundibár’s story about the triumph of good over evil, and the power of friendship to change the world.
Featuring Baritone Morgan Smith
Camp Songs / Ghetto Songs, Schoenfield
American composer and pianist Paul Schoenfield is at the keyboard for two searing, heart-piercing works commissioned by Music of Remembrance. Schoenfield gives voice to the words of two brilliant poets—one a Holocaust survivor, one murdered—and the range of their emotions through rage, bitter humor, tenderness and fragile hope. This first English-language recording of his Camp Songs (a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist) joins his newest song cycle Ghetto Songs—transporting listeners from the horrors of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin to life in the Kraków Ghetto.
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s grand opera Moby-Dick was a stunning success in the world premiere production by the Dallas Opera in 2010. Robert K. Wallace attended the final performance of the Dallas production and has written this book so readers can experience the process by which this contemporary masterpiece was created and performed on stage. Interviews with the creative team and draft revisions of the libretto and score show the opera in the process of being born.
