The Rise and Fall of the First World
A Ascensão e a Queda do Primeiro Mundo
Concert Previews
for the N. American-Brazilian chamber opera
at the
Renee Weiler Concert Hall
46 Barrow Street, NYC
April 22, 25, 27, 2010
October 27, 30 & Nov 2, 2011
Michael Kowalski, composer and co-librettist
Composer Michael Kowalski has written extensively for percussion, voice, and electronics. He was a pioneer in computer-aided composition in the 1970s but made a radical turn toward New Wave, Latin, Puccini, and Kurt Weill in the 1980s. He is also an essayist who has published in Perspectives of New Music, Critical Review, Contemporary Aesthetics, and Cybernetics & Human Knowing.
Helena Soares Hungria, librettist
Librettist Helena Soares Hungria is a globetrotting translator and interpreter who has worked extensively in London and New York and is now based in her native São Paulo. Her work ranges from works of fiction to topics in government and business, music, ethics, and religion.
Mozart de Oliveira, vocal coach and conductor
Born in Brazil, pianist Mozart de Oliveira has been accompanying and coaching in the United States for the last ten years. He has performed at Avery Fisher Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, in Europe and South America. He has worked as a vocal coach at The Boston Conservatory and assistant chorus master at the New York City Opera. He is currently a vocal coach at the Manhattan School of Music.
Christopher Berg, music director and pianist
Although self-taught as a composer, Christopher Berg counts as mentors composers Robert Helps, Noel Farrand and Richard Hundley. He studied at the Manhattan School of Music where Helps was his piano teacher. Berg is known primarily as a song composer. He has been the recipient of grants from Meet the Composer, American Music Center, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, and has been a Yaddo fellow. Berg's opera, "Cymbeline," based closely on Shakespeare's play, is now available for production.
Audrey Saint-Gil, pianist
Pianist Audrey Saint-Gil has worked as a pianist and vocal coach for opera companies in her native Toulouse, in Paris, and Vienna. She served as vocal coach for the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot, the New York Opera Society, and the Detroit Opera House. At the Metropolitan Opera she served as accompanist for Martina Arroyo's master classes. She made her debut at the Carnegie Hall-Weill recital hall in June 2008.
Angelica de la Riva, Filomena
The Brazilian/Cuban soprano Angelica de la Riva made her Lincoln Center debut in Rossini's L’Italiana in Algieri with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. In November, 2007, she was chosen to represent Brazil in Melodie Dialogue with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra at UNESCO in Paris. She has sung opera, operetta, and Broadway shows in her native Rio and in São Paulo. In New York Ms. de la Riva's roles have included Poppea in Monteverdi's L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Desirée in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, and Titania in the off-Broadway musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fools in Love.
Augusto Bittencourt, César
Guto Bittencourt has appeared in some of Brazil’s most popular television series, including Salsa e Merengue, Malhação, Força de um Desejo and Esmeralda, where he is also featured singing the theme song. On stage he was in the Brazilian productions of Les Misérables (Marius ), Chicago (M. Sunshine), Comunit (in the leading role), and Elis. In the USA he was in the Off-Broadway Castronauts (Ricky), directed by Oscar-winner Bobby Houston, Broadway Bares XXI, as well as in the opera Tamandua (Pedro) and in the films The Love Affair, Max Payne 3 (2012) and Icons, where he played the young Marlon Brando. He is currently recording his first album entitled Down in Rio.
Marie Mascari, Paula
Marie Mascari has appeared in a variety of operatic roles, including Servilia in La clemenza de Tito and Papagena in Die Zauberflöte with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, as well as Nannetta in Falstaff and Adele in Die Fledermaus. She performed the role of Melpomene in the Ridotto Opera's production of Glück's Il Parnaso confuso and Lillian Russel in The Mother of Us All with Glimmerglass Opera. Her credits with Phillip Glass include Monsters of Grace, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, La Belle et la Bête, Shorts, and Anima Mundi.
Peter Stewart, Mark
Peter Stewart has created many roles in collaboration with composers. He has toured extensively in Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America with Philip Glass in Einstein on the Beach, Monsters of Grace, La Belle et la Bête, and White Raven. His premier solo disc on the CRI label, entitled Continual Conversation with a Silent Man, features the music of Lee Hoiby. It was presented in recital at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
Mauricio Zottarelli, percussionist
Brazilian drummer and composer Mauricio Zottarelli has played in over fifty albums as a drummer/percussionist. In 2009 he toured the world as a member of the Japanese pianist Hiromi's super group, Sonicboom. He released his first album as a composer, 7 Lives, in 2009.
Itaiguara Brandão. acoustic and electric bass
Rio native Itaiguara Brandão has toured internationally and recorded with Bebel Gilberto, Paulo Braga, Paul Winter, Paquito D'Rivera, Claudio Roditi, and Elba Ramalho, among others. He has recorded on Sony BMG and numerous independent labels. From 1999 to 2003 he was the musical director for the Paulo Braga Band.
The American soprano Karen Grahn created the roles of She in Still in Love and Linda in Fraternity of Deceit. Her other roles include Silberklang in Mozart's The Impresario at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Ghita in Martin y Soler's Una Cosa Rara at the Vineyard Theatre, the First Witch in David Clenney's La Contessa di Vampiri at the Kennedy Center, and supporting roles in John Adams' Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.
Jeffrey Johnson directed the Off-Off Broadway premiere of the Postindustrial Players' Fraternity of Deceit. He is the former artistic director of the St. Mary's Group, an ensemble based at the Ohio Theatre in Soho, and is currently on the music faculty of the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University. He maintains a busy career both as an early music singer, performing in the critically acclaimed ensembles Lionheart, Pomerium, the New York Collegium, and Voices of Ascension, and as a theatre artist, where his credits include The Cave, Einstein on the Beach, and The Three Musketeers.
Set designer Florence Neal is a printmaker, sculptor, painter, and the co-founder/director of the Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, New York.
Baritone Gregory Purnhagen created the roles of He in Still in Love and Sandy in Fraternity of Deceit. He has worked extensively with Philip Glass, for whom he created the roles of la Bête, Avenant, and le Prince for the world premiere of La Belle et la Bête. He was a featured performer in the revival tour of the Glass/Wilson opera Einstein on the Beach. His highly acclaimed 2008 cabaret review, Babalu-cy, is built around the repertoire of Desi Arnaz..
Cellist Francesca Vanasco, a veteran of innumerable Broadway orchestras, is the former principal cellist of the Orquestra Sinfonica de Maracaibo in Venezuela. She is the founder of the critically acclaimed Alborado Latino Chamber Ensemble for Latin American Music.
Since its inception in 1996 the Postindustrial Players have been refining a performing style which combines the textual clarity of film with a plastic form of melody based equally on European classical music and American pop standards. Over the course of twenty years the group's vocal settings have evolved from low-intensity, text-oriented accompanied recitative to a nuanced mix of higher-intensity operatic and pop technique. In our current work, A Ascensão e a Queda do Primeiro Mundo (The Rise and Fall of the First World) this agenda has been expanded to embrace the Portuguese language, with its distinctive rhythms and idioms, and the profound traditions of MPB (música popular brasileira).
In the group's original mission statement in 1990, I wrote:
The overall purpose of the ensemble is the reinvention of uplifting, cathartic tragedy and non-sarcastic comedy and the rescue of music from its self-inflicted, 100-year-long crisis of style. ... The audience must be seduced and challenged at the same time. ... The ultimate challenge in our time is to convince mature adults that everything worth saying hasn't already been said, that everything good worth doing hasn't already been tried and found wanting, and that living human beings are indeed capable of dealing with the ultimate truths of existence, no less so than our classical ancestors. In this sense, the group's mission is unapologetically optimistic. Without repudiating the accomplishments of the last hundred years, we stand in defiance of the generally pessimistic thrust of Western philosophical, social, and aesthetic evolution in the so-called "postmodern" age.
With nearly twenty years of hindsight, this original program seems somewhat quaint and more than a bit pompous. Nevertheless, its broad thrust still informs the activities of the ensemble, and the idea of seducing and challenging at the same time remains paramount for us.
—Michael Kowalski
Gregory Purnhagen and Karen Grahn, Still in Love, Scene 2
Photo credit: Barbara Mensch
Gregory Purnhagen and Karen Grahn, Still in Love, Scene 3 Photo credit: Barbara Mensch
Fraternity of Deceit, Scene 1Photo credit: Barbara Mensch
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