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NEWS
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News Release |
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Going for Baroque: BGSU makes opera history BOWLING GREEN, O.—When Bowling Green State University music historian Vincent Corrigan announced he had discovered a photocopy
of Francesco Cavalli’s opera ‘Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne” in the library, a chorus of colleagues rang out: “Let’s do it!”
Now, in the most far-reaching collaboration of campus musicians, actors, translators, dancers and choreographers—and musicians
from the Eastman School of Music—Bowling Green’s College of Musical Arts will make history by presenting the North American
premiere of the Baroque opera on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13.
The long-neglected opera, which will be sung by students and faculty of the BGSU Opera Theater, features lutist Paul O’Dette.
One of the world’s foremost experts on Baroque music and a master of the lute, O’Dette is providing musical direction for
the production. He also is bringing the Eastman Collegium Musicum, which he directs, with him. The ensemble will perform the
continuo sections, with O’Dette on lute from the orchestra pit.
The massive project—translating the libretto alone was quite a task--entailed a “musicological study and scholarly excavation
of the opera,” according to Dr. Ronald Shields, chair of BGSU’s Department of Theatre and Film. Shields, director of the production,
first explored the possibility of staging a Baroque opera during a National Endowment for the Humanities scholar-in-residency
at Princeton University in the summer of 2004.
Two events planned on Nov. 14 will take a scholarly look at the opera and its staging at BGSU.
Dr. Wendy Heller, an associate professor of music at Princeton, will be the speaker for “Transforming Ovid: Love, Desire
and Metamorphosis in Cavalli’s Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne.” The College of Arts and Sciences Lecture will be held at 12:30
p.m. in 308 Bowen-Thompson Student Union. Heller is the author of “Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in 17th-Century
Venice,” for which she received the book award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.
At 9 a.m. that day in 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union, Heller will participate in a Cavalli Roundtable with O’Dette; Dr.
Massimo Ossi, chair of the Department of Musicology at Indiana University and a well-known scholar on 17th-century music;
Dr. Mary Agnes Doyle, PlayTALKS speaker at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and Bowling Green faculty and staff. They will
discuss the BGSU production of “Apollo e Dafne,” the status of staging Baroque opera today and insights into the score and
libretto.
Read more about the opera at
http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/mc/monitor/10-31-05/page15617.html.
(Posted November 01, 2005 )
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