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October 18, 2004

Contact: Eric Gerber
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MOORES OPERA CENTER LIFTS CURTAIN ON ‘MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’ AND NEW CD
Live Recording of UH Production of “Casanova’s Homecoming” Now Available

HOUSTON, Oct. 18, 2004 – As the Moores Opera Center launches its new season with an enchanting production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the company also prepares to take a deep bow with the release of its first-ever commercial CD, “Casanova’s Homecoming.”

The opera program of the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston debuts its production of the Benjamin Britten adaptation of the Shakespeare classic Oct.22, with additional performances Oct. 23-25. Two Moores Opera Center veterans, Peter Jacoby and Buck Ross, will conduct and direct, respectively.

Coinciding with that premiere, Newport Classic is releasing “Casanova’s Homecoming,” a live recording of the original Dominick Argento comic opera presented by the Moores Opera Center in 2001. The CD – which is now available through commercial outlets such as Amazon.com – has been submitted for Grammy consideration in two categories.

The CD also will be available at the Moores Opera House during upcoming productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A $40 donation is requested.

“With this CD, our opera company joins a rather select group,” said David Ashley White, director of the Moores School of Music. “How many universities have released commercial recordings of their opera productions?”

The Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Argento, whose “Miss Havisham’s Fire” also was performed last season by the Moores Opera Center, penned “Casanova’s Homecoming” in 1985. The light-hearted tale concerns the exiled lover’s return to Venice and his entanglement in a double-cross concerning gender-switching and, of course, seduction. Only the Minnesota Opera and New York City Opera had performed the work prior to UH’s version.

When the UH Moores Opera Center staged the piece in 2001, Houston Chronicle music critic Charles Ward praised both the work itself and the company’s performance of it. Calling it an “effervescent production,” Ward saluted the vocal work of two UH faculty members in the lead roles – baritone Patryk Wroblewski as Casanova and mezzo-soprano Debria Brown as Madame D’Urfe. Both can be heard in the Newport Classic CD.

Argento has commended the UH opera company for its “vision, quality and commitment.”

The original production of “Casanova’s Homecoming” and the subsequent commercial CD release were produced under the aegis of the Moores Opera Center's Opera Discovery Project that continues to be generously underwritten by the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts. The Project has been responsible for remounting a number of contemporary operas that the Center believes deserve further attention after their premieres, among them, John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles,” Conrad Susa’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” and Argento’s “Miss Havisham’s Fire.”

In addition to the premiere production “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” this season the Moores Opera Center also will be staging “Die Fledermaus,” “Rinaldo” and “A Room with a View.”

All productions are presented in the 800-seat Moores Opera House.

For more information about Newport Classic, visit www.newport-cd.com/index.htm.

For more information about the Moores Opera Center, visit www.uh.edu/music/mooresopera/index.html.

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For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.