Contact: Fred KnubelFor immediate release
Director of Public Information
212-854-5573; fhk1@columbia.edu

Columbia To Celebrate
Formative Era in American Opera



A special concert April 6 will honor pioneering contributions to American opera in the 1940's and 1950's by Columbia University, where many new works, including Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Medium, and Virgil Thomson's and Gertrude Stein's The Mother of Us All, were commissioned and given their world premieres.

The 3 P.M. Sunday concert in Miller Theatre on campus will feature non-staged excerpts from those operas and others by such composers as Benjamin Britten, Douglas Moore, Carlos Chavez and Jack Beeson that were first performed at Columbia during a period of intense interest in the development of an American opera tradition. With Moore as head of its Music Department, the University provided its Brander Matthews Theater, established the Columbia Opera Workshop, attracted funding from the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and over two decades forged what has been called "an American opera idiom."

The concert is part of the centennial celebration of the Music Department, founded in 1896 by composer Edward MacDowell. It will present young professional singers accompanied on piano by emerging opera and vocal composers, among them Tom Cipullo, who heads Friends and Enemies of New Music, a group that encourages contemporary music performance and is producing the event. Columbia music alumnus and composer Jim Stepleton organized it. For tickets, call 212-854-7799.

1.30.9719,041