Chautauqua Opera Company workshops: Anne of Green Gables and Sarah in the Theatre

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES Chautauqua Opera Company will host the first workshops of a new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables by composer Danika Lorèn and librettist Royce Vavrek (Lincoln in the Bardo). In this bold new reimagining, a fictional reality competition sets out from coast to coast to find the Canadian who most embodies the spirit of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s indelible heroine, Anne Shirley. With Lorèn in residence for the full six-week season, Chautauqua Opera Company’s young artists will collaborate closely on the creation of the first 60 minutes of new music being written for their specific voices. The season will include two public presentations of new music with piano accompaniment, giving Chautauqua audiences a unique opportunity to watch the development of this inventive work. SARAH IN THE THEATRE Commissioned by Odyssey Opera, Mark Adamo’s Sarah in the Theatre is a fantasy on the life and work of pioneering opera conductor, stage director and impresario Sarah Caldwell. Chautauqua Opera Company’s 16 young artists will sing all principal and ensemble roles in the first piano/vocal workshop of the opera’s second act. Following a reading of the complete act, the two-week workshop will conclude with a public presentation of excerpts and conversation with the composer/librettist. The Chautauqua audience, which saw Adamo’s first opera Little Women in 2002, will have a special window into his work dramatizing the career of a true American trailblazer.