Date and Time: April 23, 2015 @ 7:30 PM
Location: University of Miami Weeks Center for Recording and Performance, Clarke Recital Hall - Frost Opera Theater
Admission: Free to all
The Death of Webern
An Opera in Two Acts
Music by Michael Dellaira, Libretto by J. D. McClatchy
Alan Johnson, artistic director
Featuring U. of Miami Voice Faculty: Tony Boutté, Maria Denison, Esther Jane Hardenbergh, Kevin Short, and Alan Johnson plus Frost Opera Theater Alumni and Students
In 1945, a mere five months after the fall of Berlin, celebrated Austrian composer Anton Webern was shot and killed by an American G.I. Was it an accident? Mistaken identity? Or assassination? The libretto follows the research of musicologist Hans Moldenhauer and Webern’s own private lectures in a determined quest to find out. “From the 1950s through the 1970s, Webern eclipsed Schoenberg and became the god of contemporary composition,” says composer Michael Dellaira. “And today? I recently met four music students from major conservatories who had never heard a note of Webern and had never seen a score. And I thought, that’s the death of Webern.”
Commissioned by The Pocket Opera Players, The Death of Webern had its premiere in October 2013 at Symphony Space in New York, and Frost Opera Theater has programmed this provocative contemporary work for a single performance. The concert will be recorded for an upcoming release on Albany Records.
