Ojai Music Festival To Debut New Opera For 68th Season

"It's not unusual for the spirits of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to hover over an outdoor concert. At this year's 68th Ojai Music Festival, though, they will be appearing in corporeal form as characters in The Classical Style, an eagerly anticipated comic opera that is making its debut. It should make a fitting centrepiece, as innovation, creativity and new music have long been hallmarks of the four-day event, which takes place about 80 miles north-west of Los Angeles. Ojai is known for its setting among the citrus groves and the mountains, and for a strong spiritual tradition dating back to the 1920s when the community became a centre for Jiddu Krishnamurti, a philosopher, and his followers. Thomas Morris has been the artistic director of the festival for the past decade. Each year he chooses a different music director, and together they shape the programme. This year he turned to Jeremy Denk, a MacArthur Award-winning pianist and writer who also wrote the libretto for The Classical Style. (The score is the work of Steven Stucky, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.) Mr Morris says the festival has 'a history of eclectic choices' when it comes to musical directors.

Historical Music Man: Aaron Copland served as
one of the many music directors for the festival.

Contemporary music was already its focus by the 1950s, and in those early years directors included Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss. More recently Mr Morris has tapped Mark Morris, a choreographer, Dawn Upshaw, a soprano, and eighth blackbird, a chamber-music ensemble. At the same time, composers like Steve Reich, John Cage, John Adams and Thomas Adès have found Ojai a congenial place for American or West Coast premieres of their work. The common element, notes Mr Morris, is that 'the artists who come to Ojai are not only performers but also thinkers and innovators.' The theme behind this 68th festival had its roots in a conversation between Mr Denk and Mr Morris a few years ago. Mr Denk had an idea for a chamber opera based, rather curiously, on an award-winning book of criticism by Charles

Terence Blanchard Honors Father With Opera About Emile Griffith

Baritone Aubrey Allicock will play Emile Griffith.

"Jazz composer Terence Blanchard couldn't have imagined how timely his opera about a gay boxer would become when he accepted a commission three years ago. Blanchard's Champion with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer is based on the life of former world welterweight and middleweight champion Emile Griffith. Its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis on Saturday comes just weeks after NBA center Jason Collins became the first active male pro athlete from one of the four major North American team sports to come out as gay. Griffith's greatest triumph came in a nationally televised welterweight title bout in 1962 when he knocked out Benny 'The Kid' Paret by battering him with 17 punches in seven seconds, sending his rival into a coma. Paret died 10 days later. At the weigh-in, the Cuban-born Paret had angered Griffith by using an anti-gay Spanish slur. Thirty years later, Griffith was beaten and nearly killed after leaving a gay bar near Times Square."

The composer (above) hopes to build
a bridge between jazz and opera.

"The 51-year-old Blanchard agreed to undertake the biggest musical project of his career in part to honor his father who could not realize his dream of being an opera singer in an era when companies didn't hire male black singers. His father performed with amateur opera groups, and Blanchard grew up listening to opera recordings at his New Orleans home. Blanchard knows his father would have been 'overjoyed' to see that his son had written an opera performed by a largely African-American cast, including Denyce Graves as Griffith's mother, Arthur Woodley as old Emile and Aubrey Allicock as young Emile. An 11-year-old from St. Louis, Jordan Jones, plays Emile as a boy." [ Source]

For more information about the production, visit the official website for Opera Theatre of St. Louis.