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Join our E-List to receive news about future performances of The Bug Opera. Potential presenters interested in previewing and/or booking the show, please call Jo-Ann Wangh at 978.486.9524 x105. Bug Opera Debut! Watch the finished opera, fully-staged and costumed, with complete cast and Indian Hill musicians conducted by Maestro Bruce Hangen, at Indian Hill Music, 36 King Street, Littleton, MA. Tickets are $12/adults; $8/children. The 90-minute show is recommended for ages 8 and up. Saturday, November 18 at 7:00 pm SOLD OUT! Sunday, November 19 at 3:00 pm SOLD OUT! OTHER AREA PERFORMANCES OF THE BUG OPERA: Friday, November 17 at 7:30 pm Columbus Theater, Providence, RI INFO: http://www.bugoperaprov.com Monday, November 27 at 7:30 pm The Eric Carle Museum, Amherst, MA INFO: 413.658.1126 Learn more about the project below ...

New Children's Opera Takes Shape at Indian Hill Music

The Bug Opera, a new opera for children and their families - as well as opera lovers of all ages - debuts at Indian Hill Music this month. Written and produced by Cummington, MA, residents Geoffrey Hudson and Alisa Pearson, the two shows are on Saturday, November 18 at 7pm and Sunday November 19 at 3pm at Indian Hill’s Camilla Blackman Hall, 36 King Street (Rte. 495/Exit 30), Littleton, MA. This performance is sponsored by Digital Federal Credit Union. Media Sponsor is Community Newspaper Company.

Colorful costumes, beautiful singing and live instrumental ensemble will tell this story about magical transformation and true friendship. In the opera, a feisty mosquito who doesn't want to drink blood meets a caterpillar who loves his life and is reluctant to change. As they look for answers they encounter a number of colorful characters: jovial Dung Beetle; bookish, sinister Paper Wasp; Luna Moth, a damsel-in-distress; and dangerous, glamorous Spider. In this coming-of-age story, the heroes' journey ultimately leads them back to themselves.

Why bugs? Bugs are everywhere: crawling, flying, swimming, and teeming around us. Why kids? Kids are curious; the world is opening up around them every day. And like all of us, kids hunger for a good story, wondering, "What did Caterpillar do next?"

The superb cast includes University of Massachusetts voice professor Janna Baty, Matthew DiBattista, Nikolas Nackley, and Alisa Pearson. These accomplished soloists have sung leading roles with Glimmerglass Opera, St. Louis Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, Skylight Opera, and Vienna's Burgtheater and Jugendstil Theater.

An ensemble of 10 instrumentalists, drawn from The Orchestra of Indian Hill, will be conducted by its Music Director, Bruce Hangen, who is also Conductor of Youth & Family Concerts for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Pops.

Why opera? Composer Geoffrey Hudson says, "Opera is a magnifying glass, amplifying the stories it tells. Opera is huge and colorful. Opera is high drama: love, death, and danger. Opera is story-telling. In a world dominated by film and television, where live performance is relatively rare, opera is a uniquely powerful medium. Music, words, acting, dancing, humor, and stagecraft all come together to tell stories of unforgettable intensity."

Hudson's music has been performed across the United States and in Europe. His recent commissions include Meeting Ground, a concerto for string quartet and orchestra commissioned by the American Composers Forum's Continental Harmony project; First Among Equals, a concerto for viola and chamber ensemble commissioned by the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble; Daydreamer, a solo flute piece commissioned by Christina Jennings; and a film score for Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. In June 2004, his viola concerto was featured at the 23rd International Viola Congress in Minneapolis. Daydreamer was performed at the 2004 National Flute Association Convention in Nashville. Hudson holds degrees in composition from Oberlin College and New England Conservatory. His musical style weaves together American rhythms with complex harmonies and Italianate vocal lines. He engages the audience by making something fresh, familiar and full of memorable melodies.

Librettist Alisa Pearson was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Boston and spent five of her childhood years in Vienna. As a Rotary Scholar, she returned to Vienna in 1995, where she quickly made a name for herself as a talented interpreter of modern music and the traditional repertory. After years of championing contemporary music as a performer, Pearson turned her hand to writing for the first time in The Bug Opera. Her sensitivity to language that sings well, her theatrical instincts, and her keen sense of character - honed over years as a stage performer - lend her stage-writing a natural ease. As a soprano, Pearson's credits include the English language premiere of Peter Maxwell-Davies' Resurrection at the Wiener Jugendstil Theater and in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Glasgow; the title role in a film of Mozart's Zaide; the title role in Pleyel's Die Fee Urgele (with the Hungarian National Philharmonic); and the premiere of Bernhard Lang's der blutige ernst at the Vienna Burgtheater. She holds degrees in voice from Oberlin College and the Eastman School of Music, where she received a Performer's Certificate for Artistic Excellence.

The Bug Opera was developed at Indian Hill Music as a partnership with the Orchestra and Music School. During the past year, scenes from the opera have been presented as workshops to audiences of Littleton fourth-graders and to the general public, soliciting feedback afterwards. The authors have used these four workshops to test their material on live audiences and then to refine it. Thus, The Bug Opera is kid-tested, and kid-approved.

Funding for the project has come from the International Music and Art Foundation, the Argosy Foundation, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Kraft Foods, the Nypro Foundation, Digital Federal Credit Union, and many individual donors.

The show will also be performed at Providence’s Columbus Theater on November 17 and The Eric Carle Museum in Amherst on November 27. In addition, grant funding from Kraft foods and Nypro Foundation has made two school shows possible in Littleton and Clinton, respectively.

For further information call (978) 486-0540 or visit The Bug Opera website:
http://www.bugopera.com/