Encompass New Opera Theatre is a professional
opera company located in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
which specializes in premiering new productions, and reviving 20th century operas by American and international composers. A member of
Opera America __NOTOC__
Opera America, styled OPERA America, is a New York-based service organization promoting the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera in the United States. Almost all professional opera companies and some semi-professional companies i ...
, Encompass was founded in 1975 by
Nancy Rhodes who remains the company's Artistic Director. Since its founding, Encompass has produced over 50 fully mounted operas with orchestra as well as
staged reading
A stage reading, also known as a staged reading, is a form of theatre without sets or full costumes.
The actors, who read from scripts, may be seated, stand in fixed positions, or incorporate minimal stage movement.
There is an overlap with t ...
s of more than 150 new works.
The company's first production was
Virgil Thomson's 1947 opera, ''
The Mother of Us All
''The Mother of Us All'' is a two-act opera composed by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Thomson and Stein met in 1945 to begin the writing process, almost twenty years after their first collaborative project, the opera ''Four Sain ...
''.
Other past productions have included:
*World premiere of
Ricky Ian Gordon's ''Only Heaven'', set to poems by
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...
. (1995, reprised 2001)
*New York premiere of
Grigory Frid
Grigory Samuilovich Frid also known as Grigori Fried (russian: Григо́рий Самуи́лович Фри́д, 22 September N.S. 1915 – 22 September 2012) was a Russian composer of music written in many different genres, including chamber ...
's 1969 opera, ''
The Diary of Anne Frank
''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherl ...
'', set to excerpts from
Anne Frank's diary (2002)
*
Hans Werner Henze's ''End of a World'' (an early work originally written as a
radio opera) and
John Harbison's ''A Full Moon in March'', a setting of
the play by
William Butler Yeats (2003)
*World premiere of ''Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On'', an opera of based on the life of
Gertrude Stein composed by William C. Banfield to a
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
by the poet Karren LaLonde Alenier (performed with two other operas based on texts by Stein, Virgil Thomson's 1927 ''Capital Capitals'' and
Ned Rorem's 1968 ''Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters'', 2005)
*New York premiere of
Philip Hagemann
Philip Hagemann (born 21 December 1932) is an American composer and conductor.
Hagemann was born in Mount Vernon, Indiana, the son of Harry Philip and Lorene (Knight) Hagemann. He learned to play the piano and the saxophone and took music degrees ...
's ''Shaw Sings!'', two one-act operas based on the writings of
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
(2008)
In 2009 the company received an "Access to Artistic Excellence" from
The National Endowment for the Arts to fund the world premiere production of ''The Theory of Everything'' by compose
John David Earnestand librettist, Nancy Rhodes.
[ The National Endowment for the Arts]
2009 Grant Awards: Access to Artistic Excellence
. Retrieved 4 May 2009. Excerpts from the work in progress were presented at
New York City Opera's VOX 2007 Festival.
Encompass has had three music directors in its history, Jack Gaughan (1975-1993)
John Yaffé(1993-2008), and Mara Waldman (2008-present).
References
External links
Encompass New Opera Theatreofficial web site
''Scene4 Magazine'', April 2006.
{{authority control
New York City opera companies
Musical groups established in 1975
1975 establishments in New York City