Death in Summer to receive staged workshop in March

Gregg Wramage’s Death in Summer will be produced as a staged reading on March 16, 2008 at Manhattan School of Music’s Greenfield Hall. The performance will be part of the annual New American Opera Previews presented by Opera Index and hosted by Midge Woolsey.  A panel of judges selected Death in Summer after seeing the opera’s opening scenes performed as part of Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes in Sep. 2007. Gregg (pictured left) was a composer for C&V’s 06-07 season.  Past AOP/C&V projects presented at New American Opera Previews have included Renee Favand’s Exiles, Daniel Sonenberg’s The Summer King, and Conrad Cumming’s The Golden Gate. Adapted from the William Trevor novel by librettist Paul Bentley, Death in Summer tells the tragic story of a young English nanny obsessed with the widower father of her ward.