Opera Vista

The 2010 Opera Vista Festival is March 20-27 (you can buy tickets for the Festival online now). Over the next three weeks, we’ll be posting profiles of the competitors in the 3rd Annual Vista Competiton for New Opera. Today’s profile is on Catherine Reid and her opera The Yellow Wallpaper.

Catherine Reid

Catherine Reid (composer) received her MFA in Musical Theater Composition from NYU, and her Bachelor of Music from Boston University. During a 16 year free-lance career in NYC, Reid served as a music director, arranger, composer and teacher. Some of her projects while living there include a commission by American Opera Projects to compose The Broken Jug with librettist David Ives for the Indianapolis Opera Company, music directing a production of Berthold Brecht’s The Irresistible Rise of Arturo Ui with John Turturro at the Classic Stage Company, playing piano for Carly Simon, and orchestrating several episodes of ABC’s One Life to Live. Her musical The Colossus of Rhodes, about the rise and fall of Cecil Rhodes, (libretto by Carey Perloff) received a full production at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and at the White Barn Theater in CT. Last year, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University performed The Yellow Wallpaper (libretto by Judith C. Lane) which is the opera that put her into this competition. She was recently commissioned by The Hyde Collection to compose an evening of music inspired by specific works in their collection and also commissioned by the Glens Falls Symphony to compose Coming Home, an overture in celebration of the Glens Falls Centennial. She has been the co-creator and music director of several original cabarets with Laura Roth and Wild Women Productions. She lives in Glens Falls with her husband Stu Kuby and two children (Leo and Lucy).

Catherine on The Yellow Wallpaper
As the composer for the opera The Yellow Wallpaper I tried to create a musical map of the woman’s psychological transformation that occurs in the short story upon which it is based. I was drawn to the material when I had the vision of several women inside the wallpaper that would represent the thoughts, inner voices, layers, and repressed feelings of the woman. Making sure to keep in mind the woman’s arc as she goes from depression to either freedom or insanity (depending on how you look at it), I used dissonance and the juxtaposition of dissonance with consonance, instrumental colors, and an exploration of the ranges and colors of primarily the female voice to create the woman’s soundscape as it expressed itself to me.

The 2010 Opera Vista Festival is March 20-27 (you can buy tickets for the Festival online now). Over the next three weeks, we’ll be posting profiles of the competitors in the 3rd Annual Vista Competiton for New Opera. First up is Ronnie Reshef and her opera Requiem for the Living.

Ronnie Reshef

Israeli born Ronnie Reshef is a composer and performer of concert music, as well as music for theatre, films and other media. Ronnie’s music is known for reflecting her close and ongoing connection with theatre, whether choosing traditional methods like opera, or exploring experimental and innovative routes of merging music and stage arts. Ronnie’s works have been played by some of the top musicians and orchestras in Israel, such as the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphonic Orchestra, at venues such as The Mann Auditorium, The Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts, and the Haifa Theatre. She has played and composed music for some of the main theatres is Israel, and scored films which gained worldwide success (such as the Berlin Festival prize for a best debut work). Ronnie worked for over eight years as the musical director and composer in residence of the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio, composing, arranging, conducting and directing the music and soundtracks to dozens of shows, ranging from experimental theatre to American musicals. In New York Ronnie composed and performed music for the Living Theatre, the Juilliard Theatre Department, and the Horse Trade Theatre Group, among other theatre and music projects. A graduate of Mannes College of Music’s Master’s Program in Composition, Ronnie is the winner of competitions and awards such as the Mannes Circe Competition and the Alaria Competition for a Piano Trio, as well as the Sam Spiegel School for Cinema and TV Excellence Prize for film scoring and the Shirimon Arrangement Prize, among others.

Ronnie on Requiem for the Living
A man, dressed in a hospital gown, sits on a hospital bed in the middle of the room.
He is alone. He is anxious. This is not the first time he comes here, always fearing the worse, only to hear with relief the doctor’s words, saying that there is nothing wrong with him.

But this time, the doctor says that something is indeed wrong.

After receiving the bad news, the patient takes an imaginary journey of departure: he seeks comfort in his wife’s arms, he sings a farewell song to his son, and finally, he confronts the priest, asking “What have I done to deserve it?”, and receives a longer answer than he expected…

Requiem for the Living is a dark comedy about a dying man. The opera attempts to deal with questions such as the meaning (or more accurately, meaningless) of life, the futility, banality and absurdity of existence, the question of faith, and the fragility of human love. Those themes are taken very seriously and respectfully, however, they are delivered with humor, irony, and, we hope – compassion.

Last night the board and membership of the Fresh Arts Coalition voted “overwhelmingly” to invite Opera Vista to become a member. We are so pleased to be asked to be a part of this dynamic group of outstanding organizations that does so much to promote new and innovative arts in Houston.