Mark Adamo

Little Women
The Composer
The Cast

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GREAT PERFORMANCES
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Queen's Jubilee Gala

Paganini's Progeny /
Art of Violin

Copland's America with Jonathan Sheffer and the Eos Orchestra

Don Giovanni Unmasked with Dmitri Hvorostovsky

3 Mo' Tenors

Joshua Bell in
West Side Story Suite

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MARK ADAMO
The 38-year old American composer is a native of Philadelphia who was raised in the suburbs of New Jersey. He was recently named composer-in-residence of the New York City Opera. Though he has premiered several vocal works, Little Women, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera (HGO), is his first opera.

HGO has since offered him two more commissions. The first, which will premier in the 2001- 02 season is Lysistrata, a comedic chamber opera adapted from Aristophanes' play in which the women of warring Athens and Sparta stage a sex strike: no sex until the men agree to renounce war. The second, an opera based on the legend of Dracula, is scheduled for a later season. He credits everything he knows about operatic discourse to his (Italian) family background.

His other compositions include orchestral and choral works: Late Victorians - a solo oratorio in four movements and Alcott Portraits - a chamber orchestra suite from Little Women, both commissioned and premiered by The Eclipse Chamber Orchestra in Washington, D.C.; Cantate Domino: Choral etude on Psalm 97 - commissioned and premiered by the Choral Arts Society of Washinton at the Kennedy Center; The Poet Speaks of Praising - commisioned by the GALA V Festival; and Three Appalachian Folk Tunes - commisioned by the Congressional Chorus of the United States and recently performed and broadcast by the BBC Singers. In the 2002-03 season, his first first piece for a large orchestra, Three Angels: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra will be promiered by Washinton DC's National Symphony Orchestra.

Photos: Christian Steiner & George Hixson, courtesy WNET 13