With Anthony Roth Costanzo, Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie, Hai-Ting Chinn, and Karim Sulayman
1861-2011: Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Unification of Italy
A new opera by American composer Jonathan Dawe will receive its world premiere performances at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. Dawe, the youngest composer commissioned by James Levine for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has composed a new dramatic work combining sounds of the Italian Baroque with compositional workings based on fractal geometry. The libretto is by Terry Marks-Tarlow.
The cast will include celebrated countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (“A star in the making,” Opera News), Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie (“Extraordinary agility,” New York Times), Hai-Ting Chinn (“Lovely clear sexy soprano,” Opera Today) and Karim Sulayman (“Clean, clear sound and earnest intensity,” Houston Chronicle).
The Second Instrumental Unit (“Polished and tightly unified,” New York Times) under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky (“Excellent,” New York Times) offers virtuosic support with recorders, piccolo trumpet, saxophone, strings, theorbo, and drums.
In addition the cutting-edge modern-Baroque hybrid dance ensemble Company XIV provides newly commissioned choreography by the group’s director Austin McCormick.
James Levine has said “Dawe’s contemporary take on early music is extraordinary.”
