Manhattan
School of Music's reputation for excellence in the field of opera
is nationally and internationally renowned. Graduate students are
accepted by audition into the Opera Studio, which is headed by Gordon
Ostrowski. They are then chosen from this program to participate
in major full-length productions (as the Opera Theater) and to present
programs of scenes with orchestra and/or piano during the season.
Manhattan School of Music presents two fully staged productions
each year spanning the classical and contemporary repertoire and
has been praised by the New York Times for its significant
contribution to operatic life in New York. Students accepted into
the Opera Studio also receive a comprehensive outreach training
program which includes a children's opera.
Another important element of our opera program is the Opera Workshop,
which provides an appropriate venue for singers to develop stagecraft
and dramatic interpretation as well as gain additional performance
experience. Dona D. Vaughn, acting instructor of the Lindemann Young
Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera, directs this Opera Workshop,
as well as our Undergraduate Opera Theater, which is required of
all junior and senior voice majors.
Examples of our main-stage Opera Theater productions include three
sold-out performances during the 1999-2000 season of the New York
premiere of William Mayer's A Death in the Family, and Il
matrimonio segreto by Domenico Cimarosa. Anthony Tommasini's
New York Times review of the opening-night performance of
our production stated:
The School's contention that it offers a valuable cultural
resource to the community was borne out with its charming production
of the Cimarosa opera. This is exactly what a music school should
be doing: presenting committed performances of deserving works that
professional institutions, with their minds fixed on the bottom
line, tend to ignore.
In April 1998, the School presented a new production of Bedrich
Smetana's The Two Widows. Other notable productions have
included a double bill of Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti
and Gustav Holst's Savitri,Le Comte Ory by Gioacchino
Rossini, Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco, Rappaccini's
Daughter by Daniel Catán, Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters
in Search of an Author, Donizetti's, L'ajo nell'imbarazzo
and Il campanello di notte, Une Éducation manquée
by Emmanuel Chabrier, The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto
Nicolai, The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten, Mahagonny
Songspiel and The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken by Kurt
Weill, The Yellow Wallpaper by Ronald Perera, Iphigénie
en Tauride by Christoph Willibald Gluck, The Taming of the
Shrew by Vittorio Giannini, the world premiere of The House
of the Seven Gables by Scott Eyerly, and The Rape of Lucretia
by Benjamin Britten.
Our most recent productions have included a double bill of Gian Carlo
Menotti's Amelia Goes to the Ball paired with Robert Ward's
Roman Fever in December 2001, a production of Der Wildschütz
by Albert Lortzing in April 2002, and the New York premiere of
The Seagull by Thomas Pasatieri, based on the Chekhov play,
in December 2002. 
