NYCO holds a Séance in 2011

It was just announced this week that New York City Opera will close their 2010-11 season with the AOP-developed Stephen Schwartz opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon.  Our audiences got a chance to see several workshops of Séance in 2008, and now they'll have a chance to see how it all finally came together when it has its fully staged NYC premiere on April 19, 2011.  NYCO star Lauren Flanigan, who appeared in each of the AOP workshops, will return to the role of Myra, the psychic medium who hatches a nefarious kidnapping plot in order to boost her reputation.

NYCO will also produce Strauss' Intermezzo, Bernstein's A Quiet Place, and will bring back Jonathan Miller's production of Donizetti's Elixer of Love. (A bit of trivia: Jonathan Miller hosted an AOP libretto workshop of Heart of Darkness and Semmelweis in November 2008 just before AOP's workshop of Séance in the Lower East Side's Orensanz Theater.)

From NYCO's press release:

“With this season, we take another step forward on an exciting journey for New York City Opera,” stated George Steel. “I’m thrilled that we have three new productions, that we’re presenting four premieres of works by American composers—all of them New Yorkers—and that we’re exploring new programming possibilities, both with our triple bill of mini-operas and with the new concert series. Most of all, I love the incredible range of compositional styles this season: from the transparent simplicity of Donizetti to the opulent middle-period Richard Strauss to the blend of the popular and classical worlds in Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz—all this topped off by the delicious trio of Schoenberg, Feldman and Zorn. This is what City Opera was made to do, and what makes City Opera unique.”

See more about NYCO's premiere of Séance on a Wet Afternoon and the rest of the 2010-11 season here.

Other upcoming premieres of AOP-developed projects include Before Night Falls at Fort Worth Opera this May and Heart of Darkness at the Royal Opera House in 2011.