Composers
Mark Adamo
© Martin Gram
Born: 1962
Short Biography:
Mark Adamo first attracted national attention with the libretto and score to his uniquely successful début opera, Little Women, after the novel by Louisa May Alcott. Introduced by Houston Grand Opera in 1998 and revived there in 2000, Little Women has since enjoyed over sixty national and international engagements in cities ranging from New York to Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Adelaide, Mexico City, Tokyo, and the recent European premiere in Brugges, Belgium (2009) and the Canadian premiere in 2010 in Calgary and Banff. It is one of the most frequently performed North American operas of the last decade. Telecast by PBS/WNET on Great Performances in 2001 and released on CD by Ondine that same year, in autumn 2010 Naxos releases the DVD of Little Women’s 2001 broadcast. Comparable acclaim greeted the premiere of Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, adapted from Aristophanes’ comedy but including elements from Sophocles’ Antigone. Lysistrata was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera for its 50th anniversary and premiered in March 2005 with additional performances at New York City Opera in 2006. Adamo’s first concerto, Four Angels: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and introduced in June 2007. Naxos released Adamo’s dramatic orchestral song cycle Late Victorians in 2009 on an all-Adamo CD which also features Alcott Music, from Little Women, for strings, harp, celesta, and percussion; Regina Coeli, an arrangement of the slow movement of Four Angels for harp and strings alone; and the four-minute Overture to Lysistrata for medium orchestra, performed by Eclipse Chamber Orchestra. Adamo is currently at work on his next opera, commissioned by San Francisco Opera for premiere in 2013. His music is published by G. Schirmer.
Full Biography: Acclaimed by critic Alex Ross as “one of the best opera composers of the moment,” composer-librettist Mark Adamo has lately ventured into symphonic composition, choral work, and stage direction with striking assurance. Adamo first attracted national attention with the libretto and score to his uniquely successful début opera, Little Women, after the novel by Louisa May Alcott. Introduced by Houston Grand Opera in 1998 and revived there in 2000, Little Women is one of the most frequently performed North American operas of the last decade: it has enjoyed over 75 national and international engagements in cities ranging from New York to Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Adelaide, Mexico City, Brugges, Banff and Calgary in Canada, and Tokyo, where it served as the official U.S. cultural entrant to the 2005 World Expo. The Houston Grand Opera revival (2000) was telecast by PBS/WNET on Great Performances in 2001 and released on CD by Ondine that same year; in fall 2010, Naxos released this performance on DVD and on Blu-ray (Little Women was the first American opera ever recorded in high-definition television). Little Women was acclaimed as one of Amazon.com’s Ten Best Opera Releases of 2001, and was further praised as a “masterpiece” by The New York Times in its East Coast debut by New York City Opera in March 2003. The Canadian premiere was presented in 2010 with Calgary Opera and Banff Opera in a new production by Kelly Robinson. Additional recent performances include the Utah Opera and Pensacola Opera, among others. Adamo is currently at work on his next opera, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, commissioned by San Francisco Opera, for premiere in June 2013.
Comparable acclaim greeted the premiere of Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, adapted from Aristophanes’ comedy, and including elements from Sophocles’ Antigone. Lysistrata was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera for its 50th anniversary and introduced in March 2005, when it was described in The New Yorker as “a sumptuous love story, poised between comedy and heartbreak” by “a brilliant theatre composer of effortless mastery.” Lysistrata made its New York City Opera début in March 2006, when it was praised by The New York Times for its “ambition, sweep, and skill” and “haunting music.” New York magazine, deeming it as “a serious, ambitious, and creatively generous piece of work,” noted that “Adamo’s Little Women, only eight years old, is already looking like a repertory piece. With luck, Lysistrata might well do the same.” Lysistrata was next given in concert by the young artists of Washington National Opera in May 2006 and by Fort Worth Opera on their Music at the Modern series in May 2007; the Seagle Colony staged a new production in 2007, and Fort Worth Opera produces a full revival of the piece in spring 2012. Adamo’s third opera, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, commissioned by San Francisco Opera, premieres in June 2013 in a production starring Sasha Cooke, Nathan Gunn and William Burden, directed by Kevin Newbury and conducted by Michael Christie.
Adamo’s first concerto, Four Angels: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and introduced in June 2007, when The Washington Post described it as “ambitious, eloquent, and radiantly beautiful: one of the best new pieces Music Director Leonard Slatkin has championed.” Led by their Music Director Emeritus, Keith Lockhart, Utah Symphony presented Four Angels in January 2011. In May 2007, Washington’s Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, for which Adamo served as first composer-in-residence, performed the revised version of Adamo’s Late Victorians, which The Washington Post called “a captivating chamber opera.” Naxos released Late Victorians in 2009 on an all-Adamo CD including Alcott Music, from Little Women, for strings, harp, celesta, and percussion; Regina Coeli, an arrangement of the slow movement of Four Angels for harp and strings alone; and the four-minute Overture to Lysistrata for medium orchestra, performed by Eclipse Chamber Orchestra.
Composer-in-residence at New York City Opera from 2001 through 2006, where he led the VOX: Showcasing American Composers program, Mark Adamo also served as Master Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts in May 2003, when he coached teams of composers and librettists in developing their work for the stage. He has directed two new productions of Little Women for Cleveland and Milwaukee, both of which were cited among the year’s best classical events by the critics of their respective newspapers; and he has given dozens of master-classes and coachings nationwide, most recently at NYU’s Skirball Center under the auspices of American Lyric Theatre.
Mark Adamo began his education in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where, as a freshman in the Dramatic Writing Program, 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 from the Catholic University of America. He has annotated programs for Stagebill, the Freer Gallery of Art, and most recently for SONY/BMG Classics; his monograph on the music of John Corigliano was published by the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester for its Corigliano residency in March 2000. Other criticism, scholarship, and interviews have been published by Andante.com, The Washington Post, Stagebill, Opera News, The Star-Ledger, and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Mark Adamo's music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc.
— September 2012
External Websites
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