Connery ’01’s Opera Cabal Performs in New York

The Performance: Opera Cabal and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble present the North American premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’ monodrama ATTHIS, and three never-before staged works by Marcos Balter:UT, Delete/Control/Option, and Live Water.

Dates and Location: June 12 and 13, at 8 p.m., at the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, N.Y.

The Company and Co-founder: Presenting unpredictable new work and modeling new forms of audience involvement, Opera Cabal reaches into neighboring visual, theatrical, and technological communities to broaden the audience for, and the definition of, opera. Majel Connery ’01 co-founded the company in 2006 and is now the executive and artistic director of Opera Cabal. Connery apprenticed with opera director Christopher Alden at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Den Norske Oper (Oslo), and at Chicago Opera Theater. She is currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor of musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Opera: Scored for soprano and eight instruments, ATTHIS is inspired by the love-poems Sappho sang to other women on the island of Lesbos some 2,500 years ago. It is conducted by Peyman Farzinpour, former director of new music at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and stage directed by Emmy Award-winning director Habib Azar. Soprano Ariadne Grief intones verses of isolation and longing by Sappho, with Connery embodying her amorous double. Balter’s works feature celebrated violist Nadia Sirota, with ethereal visualizations by Connery as stage director.

Read More: PAW’s story about Majel Connery ’01 in the March 12, 2010 issue.