Complimentary Media Tickets: 440-775-8328
Limited Seating Available for Weekend Performances
Call Oberlin College’s Central Ticket Service at 440-775-8169

OBERLIN, OHIO —The Conservatory’s Opera Theater presents Little Women, Mark Adamo’s refashioning of the coming-of-age classic by Louisa May Alcott, on Wednesday, March 14, at 8 p.m. in Hall Auditorium, with additional performances at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 16, and Saturday, March 17, and a 2 p.m. matinée on Sunday, March 18. The two-act opera, with one intermission, will be sung in English.

Mark Adamo will be in Oberlin for its first performance of Little Women. He will also conduct master classes with students in Oberlin’s composition and vocal studies programs.

Stage direction is by Jonathon Field, Associate Professor of Opera Theater and Director of Opera Theater Productions at Oberlin. Musical direction is by guest conductor Christopher Larkin, who led the premiere performance of Little Women in 1998 at the Houston Grand Opera.

Tickets are $5 for all students; $8 for Oberlin College faculty, staff, alumni, parents, area educators, and seniors; and $12 for the general public. All seats are reserved. Tickets are $3 more when purchased at the door. Call Oberlin’s Central Ticket Service, located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, at 440-775-8169. Box-office hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and select Saturdays. Hall Auditorium is wheelchair accessible, free parking is available throughout the campus, and hearing enhancement is available upon request.

Little Women is sponsored by the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Opera Theater program through generous support from the Louis C. Sudler Fund. It is produced in cooperation with the Oberlin College Theater and Dance Program.

Synopsis
Little Women is a coming-of-age story about the young March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, with Jo at its heart. The opera begins with a view of the past, when life for Jo was simple and she and her sisters were close. Much to her dismay, life becomes complicated. Meg, the eldest, marries. Younger sister Beth grows ill. Fearful of putting love or her own ambitions before her devotion to her sisters, Jo pushes away two would-be suitors, driving one into the arms of her youngest sister, Amy, and soon finds herself alone. Realizing that nothing she does can stop the world from changing, Jo begins to accept that she must let go of the past, celebrate her loved ones for what and who they were, and release them to what they are now.

Performers and Production Team
This production of Little Women features Oberlin Conservatory students double cast in the principal roles, with guest mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht performing the part of Jo on Wednesday and Saturday. The other principals alternate performances, with one cast appearing Wednesday and Saturday, and the other Friday and Sunday. The principal roles include Jo (Katherine Pracht, Julienne Walker ‘07); Laurie (Andrew Owens ‘07, Samuel Levine ‘07); Meg (Tiffany Marx ‘08, Lauren Free ‘07); Beth (Jennifer Jakob ‘07, Alexandra Becerra ‘08); Amy (Shelly Irvin ‘08, Leigh Madeline Nelson ‘07); Bhaer (John Harper ‘08, Joseph Barron ‘08); Brooke (Kevin Ray ‘07, Evan Bennett ‘08); Aunt Cecilia (Emily Harrington ‘09, Maureen Sutliff ‘08); Gideon/Dashwood (Colin Levin ‘07, Justin Manalad ‘08); and Alma (Jennifer Noel ‘07, Meghan Brooks ‘08). The members of the chorus include Alyssa Cox 08, Lauren Hayes ‘08, Sarah Klauer ‘07, and Angie Kloc ‘08.

The Oberlin production team of professional staff and students includes Assistant Music Director of Opera Theater Alan Montgomery as Assistant Music Director and accompanist, and Associate Professor of Theater Michael Louis Grube as Managing Director and Set Designer. Lisa Kelly is the stage manager. Technical direction is by Joseph P. Natt; the assistant technical director is David Bugher. Costume design is by Associate Professor of Theater Chris Flaharty. Lighting design is by Jeremy K. Benjamin and the master electrician is Andrew Kaletta. Robert Katkowsky is the properties master. Vocal accompanying and opera coaching is by Howard Lubin. Ensemble Librarian and Manager Chris Haff-Paluck is the orchestral librarian. Nathan Medley ‘07 is assistant stage manager.

Mark Adamo achieved national recognition when Little Women, his first opera, was broadcast in August of 2001 on PBS’s Great Performances, a mere three years after its 1998 premiere at the Houston Grand Opera. Such high-profile attention for an essentially unknown composer is unprecedented, and was followed by the commercial release of Little Women on a double-CD set for the Ondine label. Adamo’s first opera had quickly become one of the most successful operas by a modern American composer and a repertoire staple: more than 40 productions of his retelling of the Louisa May Alcott classic have been presented by opera companies great and small. In 2005 the New York City Opera (NYCO), where Adamo served as composer-in-residence from 2001 to 2006, took the piece on tour to Japan (the ensemble’s debut) as part of the World Expo. Adamo curates the NYCO’s contemporary opera workshop series “VOX: Showcasing American Composers.” In March 2005, the Houston Grand Opera premiered his second opera, Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess, and the National Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to premiere his harp concerto Four Angels in June 2007. Adamo’s choral works have been widely performed and include Garland, written for the Young People’s Chorus of New York; The Poet Speaks of Praising, for men’s chorus and piano, commissioned by the GALA V festival; Pied Beauty, for unaccompanied chorus, commissioned by the Washington Singers; Three Appalachian Folk Tunes for soprano and unaccompanied chorus, commissioned by the Congressional Chorus of the United States; No. 10/Supreme Virtue for double chorus (on verses from the Tao Te Ching); and QWERTYUIOP, for chorus and mad soprano (a Dadaist comedy on typewriter lessons). He wrote Canticle for the superstar vocal ensemble Chanticleer and Cantate Domino for the Choral Arts Society of Washington. Adamo began his education at New York University, where he received the Paulette Goddard Remarque Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate achievement in playwriting. He went on to earn a bachelor of music degree cum laude in composition in 1990 at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he was awarded the Theodore Presser prize for outstanding undergraduate achievement in composition. Adamo served as Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in May 2003 and has annotated programs for Stagebill, the Freer Gallery of Art, and most recently for BMG Classics. His criticism and interviews have appeared in the Washington Post, Stagebill, Opera News, the Star-Ledger, and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Christopher Larkin is a regular guest of opera companies throughout North America. He has appeared on the podiums of the Santa Fe, Washington, New York City, Fort Worth, Portland, and Nashville operas, as well as the Houston Grand Opera, Opera Pacific, Boston Lyric Opera, and Lake George Opera. He has conducted an expansive repertoire, including the East Coast premiere of Tod Machover’s Resurrection, La Boheme, La Traviata, Samson et Dalila, I Puritani, Don Giovanni, Tosca, Romeo et Juliette, Le Nozze di Figaro, and the Fort Worth Opera’s performance of Little Women. As Music Director of the New York City Opera National Company, he led national tours of Madama Butterfly and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Prior to coming to New York, he held the position of Associate Conductor with Houston Grand Opera. While in Houston, he led the world premieres of Little Women and Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O with the Houston Opera Studio, and also conducted the highly acclaimed multimedia productions of Carmen, Madama Butterfly, and I Pagliacci. Maestro Larkin has worked as an assistant conductor and vocal coach with several major opera companies in North America, including the Metropolitan, San Francisco, and Vancouver operas, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and the Canadian Opera Company. Last season, Larkin made his debut at the Wexford Festival conducting Floyd’s Susannah, and returned to the Fort Worth Opera for Dialogues of the Carmelites, the Utah Opera for Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Opera Carolina for La Cenerentola, and Il Viaggio a Reims for the Music Academy of the West. This season, he will make his Florentine Opera debut with Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and he will return to the Fort Worth Opera for Falstaff and to the Music Academy of the West for La Boheme. The following season already includes engagements with Portland Opera for La Cenerentola, Kentucky Opera for Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Fort Worth Opera for Angels in America.

Jonathon Field is one of America’s more versatile and popular stage directors, having directed more than 100 productions in all four corners of the United States. He served as Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland for six seasons, where he presented the operas of Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti as well as the Ohio premieres of works by John Adams, Mark Adamo, and Philip Glass. Field’s productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, among them Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief and The Spanish Hour, were so successful they were repeated at the Illinois Humanities Festival with Stephen Sondheim as keynote speaker. His productions of La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus for San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theatre played in more than 20 states, as has an updated version of La Bohème for Seattle Opera. In addition to the standard Italian and German repertoire, he has directed Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov in the original Russian in San Francisco; he had a great critical success there as well with Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges. Over the past eight years Field has directed 10 productions with the Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press “their most perceptive stage director,” and working there with such esteemed artists as Teresa Zylis-Gara, Jerome Hines, Pablo Elvira, Giorgio Tozzi, and Angelina Reux.

Field’s versatility extends from the avant garde to musical comedies. He successfully introduced computer-generated scenery to the world of opera in a recent San Francisco production of Candide that the press called “virtual Voltaire—the backgrounds are as varied as the story.” His pioneering use of video-projected scenery in productions of The Turn of the Screw, Tales of Hoffmann, and Der Freischütz has elicited praise from audience and critics alike. In the realm of operetta and musicals he has staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury for Lake George Opera, Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in Chicago, and Merry Widow and Countess Maritza in San Francisco. For the Oakland Symphony he translated and choreographed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella using members of the Oakland Ballet. He has worked on several world premieres, most notably assisting Robert Altman with Bolcom’s McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and David Alden with Susa’s The Love of Don Perlimplin with San Francisco Opera. He has also worked as Assistant Director for several of Seattle Opera’s Wagner Ring cycles, and he has served in an administrative capacity with many opera companies and festivals. In February 2007, Field directed—at Oberlin and at Miller Theatre in New York City—the U.S. premiere of Lost Highway, the dramatic music theater work by noted Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth based on the David Lynch film.