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American Opera Projects Presents the World Professional Premiere of Lee Hoiby's This Is the Rill Speaking

Apr. 01, 2008

On Saturday, April 26, American Opera Projects, in collaboration with Purchase College Opera, presents the world professional premiere of Lee Hoiby's This Is the Rill Speaking at the Recital Hall of SUNY, Purchase, New York. The opera, with a libretto by Mark Shulgasser based on Lanford Wilson's play of the same name, will be conducted by Benton Hess and staged by Ned Canty. The librettist Mark Shulgasser offers the following remarks:

Lee Hoiby's one-act opera This Is the Rill Speaking captures the everyday happenings of rural America in all of its glories and shortcomings. One of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson's seminal early works, first produced in 1965 at Café Cino, This Is the Rill Speaking is of the genre of plotless, multi-vocal evocations of the 20th-century small town, embodied in such well-known works as Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, the stories of Sherwood Anderson, and Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Into this context Lanford Wilson introduces the theme of the birth of the writer, and his short play represents the powerful recursive source of creativity, registering the seed of itself, and the utterance of the fledgling stream. Lee Hoiby's musical setting brings forth new branches, leaves and berries, and in the spectacular sextet finale, a wholly unexpected bloom, forced at the request of Lanford Wilson himself, who, after hearing the original version asked us somehow to bring "all the voices together."
The production of This Is the Rill Speaking commences at 4:30 pm and is followed by the New York premiere of Hoiby's Shakespearian opera The Tempest at 8 pm. The two productions make up AOP's and SUNY Purchase Opera's program entitled Celebrating Lee Hoiby which includes cocktails and a benefit dinner with the creators between the performances. On April 28, This Is the Rill Speaking will receive its New York City premiere by American Opera Projects at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space.

To learn more about the music of Lee Hoiby, please visit www.schott-music.com and www.leehoiby.com.

For more information on American Opera Projects, visit www.operaprojects.org.

To purchase tickets go to www.artscenter.org.

Lee Hoiby
This Is the Rill Speaking (1991)
S, 2Mz, T, 2B;11111000-hp-str(2.1.1.1)
40'

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