Liven up your Work Week with UrbanArias!
Wednesday, February 29 at NOON
UrbanArias gives a FREE performance at Shakespeare Theatre’s Harman Center.
THREE MINI-OPERAS AND IMPROV!
Starring UrbanArias favorites Amedee Moore and Ethan Watermeier – and introducing Jeffrey Tarr. Directed by Joe Banno, with UrbanArias Artistic Director Robert Wood on the piano. He will also be playing it.
While away your lunch hour with three bite-sized operas, and some interactive improvisational opera – GUARANTEED to leave you with a smile on your face.
PROGRAM
LUCY by Tom Cipullo (2009)
An UrbanArias favorite, Lucy tells the story of an aging woman who sees a handsome young man visiting her each evening; he sits on her television and sings to her. A whimsical and sweet look at the joys of living in your imagination. Touching, lyrical and transcendent, Lucy is “…an ideal example of short-form opera…” The Big City
SAFARI by Seymour Barab (2010)
This mini-opera is from beloved composer Seymour Barab’s recent opus In Questionable Taste. Each piece in the work is based on a joke (usually a little off-color.) This one features two men hiking in the desert; one of them is suddenly bitten by a scorpion. In a private place. If you know the punch line, don’t give it away! In an homage to Steve Jobs, an iPhone plays a significant role.
GALLANTRY by Seymour Barab (2010)
Another mini-opera from In Questionable Taste. Gloria and Martin are mistakenly assigned the same hotel room, much to their surprise. They negotiate a way to share the room, which winds up being a hilarious commentary on marriage.
PLUS!
Opera Improv – each performance is different because YOU, the audience, dictate how it unfolds!
UrbanArias’ interactive Opera Improv features our excellent singers crafting operas ON THE SPOT from your suggestions of character, place, and situation. These are always hilarious, and a real audience-pleaser. Let your creative juices flow!
For more information on “Happenings at the Harman”, click here. The Harman Center is located at 610 F St. NW, Washington, DC 20004, and is listed as “Sydney Harman Hall” on Shakespeare Theatre’s website. UrbanArias will be performing DOWNSTAIRS in the Forum. For directions to the Harman Center, and parking information, click here.
OUR ARTISTS
Amedee Moore, soprano, recently sang the role of Clorinda in La Cenerentola and covered the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro at Opera North. Last year, Ms. Moore performed the role of Clotilde in the western hemisphere premiere of Handel’s Faramondo. In 2009, Amedee performed the role of Susanna in OSU’s production of Le nozze di Figaro. Amedee received her M.M. from the Ohio State University in 2010 and B. M. in vocal performance from Wheaton College’s Conservatory of Music in 2008. Her other roles include Jenny in Three Sisters who are not Sisters, Madame Pompous in Too many Sopranos, Meg in Little Women, Frou Frou/ Praskowia in The Merry Widow and Sister Margaretta in The Sound of Music. Amedee Moore is currently attending the Peabody Institute in pursuit of her graduate performance diploma in opera.
American baritone Ethan Watermeier has performed a broad range of principal roles in opera, musical theatre, and plays throughout the United States and abroad at companies including Houston Grand Opera (world premiere of The Little Prince by Rachel Portman, and premiere workshops of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata (Leonidas) and Jake Heggie’s End of the Affair (Henry)), Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Aspen Music Festival, Théâtre Municipal, Castres, France, Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Bailiwick Repertory, Theatre at the Center, Vital Theatre Company, and Little Theatre on the Square. For nearly two years, Mr. Watermeier performed Javert and Factory Foreman/Combeferre with the Broadway National Tour of Les Misérables. As a recitalist, his work focuses primarily on American repertoire, from early colonial song to works by living composers. In recent years, he has sung new compositions by and worked with Mark Adamo, Tom Cipullo, Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Martin Hennessy, John Musto, and Rachel Portman. In addition to performances with UrbanArias, Mr. Watermeier recently sang the baritone solo with Albany Pro Musica in Richard Einhorn’s critically-acclaimed oratorio Voices of Light. Also in the capital region he recently sang the baritone solo in Dello Joio’s Songs of Abelard with the Capital Region Wind Ensemble and the principal role of Darby in The New Old American Company’s historic and highly praised revival of the popular 1783 comic opera, The Poor Soldier, by William Shield and John O’Keeffe. At the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is currently pursuing his doctorate, Mr. Watermeier premiered the role of Joe Harland in Later the Same Evening by John Musto and Mark Campbell (World Premiere co-commissioned by the National Gallery of Art and the Maryland Opera Studio) and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Maryland Opera Studio. He also sang the New York premiere of William Mayer’s A Death in the Family as Ralph Follet and can be heard on the premiere recording on Albany Records. A winner of both the 2002 Kurt Weill/Lotte Lenya International Competition and the 2002 Anna-Case Mackay Grant, he is a graduate of Northwestern University (BM) and the Manhattan School of Music (MM). This fall, he will be performing Admiral Von Schreiber in The Sound of Music at Olney Theatre Center. Mr. Watermeier is also a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Children International, Greenpeace, and has recently joined the artist roster of Sing for Hope (singforhope.org) – a non-profit organization dedicated to “arts activism in action.”
Possessing a rich, warm voice with “rock-solid vocalism and powerful projection” (The Capital), bass Jeffrey Tarr is equally in demand for opera and concert work. He has appeared with the Washington National Opera, Opera Bel Cantanti, Opera Vivente, and Maryland Concert Opera. Mr. Tarr’s portrayal of Basilio in Annapolis Opera’s production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia was described by The Washington Post as “fervent [&] robust.” Other operatic credits include Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Benoit in La Boheme, Ceprano in Rigoletto, Frère Laurent in Roméo et Juliette, Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro, Superintendent Budd in Albert Herring and Collatinus in Rape of Lucretia. Most recently, he performed the role of the Notary in WNO’s production of Don Pasquale.
On the concert stage, Mr. Tarr has performed in Handel’s Messiah, Faure’s Requiem, Bach’s St. John’s Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, Brahms’ Requiem and Bach’s Magnificat with the Concert Artists of Baltimore, the Handel Choir of Baltimore, DC Summer Sings, and the New Dominion Chorale. His performance of Messiah with the New Dominion Chorale was lauded by The Washington Post as “outstanding…a large, resonant voice, filled with both power and clarity.”
Mr. Tarr received a Masters of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University and is a former prize winner in the Annapolis Opera Competition, the Orpheus Vocal Competition, the Marie Crump Vocal Competition and the Gretchen Hood Vocal Competition. As winner of the Vocal Arts Society’s Art Song Discovery Series, Mr. Tarr presented four recital programs at prestigious venues throughout the DC area including the Kennedy Center and the Odeon Concert Series. He presently serves as an adjunct faculty member in the voice department at American University.
Over the last 25 years, Joe Banno has established himself as an innovative, critically acclaimed director. In work that has been called “joltingly powerful”, “audacious” and “engagingly freewheeling”, he has brought his unique vision to more than 100 productions spanning classical and modern theatre, opera, musicals and film.
From 1997 through 2006, Banno served as artistic director of Washington DC’s groundbreaking Source Theatre Company, where he nurtured the development of new scripts and directed works by a who’s-who of contemporary American playwrights, including a multi-year cycle of plays by David Mamet.
Celebrated for his culturally relevant updating of classic plays, Banno’s Shakespeare productions have been seen at the Folger Theatre (where his staging of Romeo and Juliet won him a Helen Hayes Award for his direction), Washington Shakespeare Company, and the American Shakespeare Center (for a twice-extended, year-long run of King Lear).
Known as well for his work in musical theatre, Banno’s production of Evita – a collaborative project between Open Circle Theatre’s company of artists-with-disabilities and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange – was a critical and popular hit. His world-premiere staging of Executive Leverage at Source received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Musical.
Banno’s productions at DC-Area theatres have, to date, been nominated for 32 prestigious Helen Hayes Awards, and have won 8 of them. Banno is also the recipient of the Mary Goldwater Theatre Lobby Award and the Bud Yorkin Award, both for excellence in directing.
As an opera director with over 30 productions to his credit, Banno’s recent successes with The Marriage of Figaro for Opera Delaware, Otello for Washington Summer Opera, Sweeney Todd with Wolf Trap Opera, and La Tragédie de Carmen at the Alba Music Festival (in Northern Italy) have reconfirmed him as a challenging and original interpreter of the artform.
Banno’s work has been seen on stages across the US, including a co-production with New York’s Blue Heron Theatre and the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, the inaugural production of LA’s Mutineer Theatre, a national tour for Opera Northeast, and productions at Theatre J and Adventure Theatre (DC), Milwaukee’s Renaissance Theatreworks (WI), Studio Roanoke and Aurora Opera Theatre (VA) and Marin Opera (CA).
Having recently begun taking on film projects, Banno completed his first independent feature, Sleeping and Waking, in 2008 (currently available on DVD and through Netflix), and has a Shakespeare-based film project in development, scheduled to shoot next year.
A frequent acting coach, guest lecturer, conference panelist, competition judge and theatre consultant, Banno has also served as general manager for a NYC-based classical radio station, headed a new-works funding initiative for Opera America and, for two years, co-hosted the official U.S. telecast of the Golden Globe Awards to the Arab world on Alhurra television. He has contributed reviews and articles on music and film to a number of publications, including Washington City Paper, where he was the opera critic from 1989 to 2008. He has been a classical music critic for The Washington Post since 1993, and for TheClassicalReview.com since 2009.
The last two seasons have seen Banno collaborating in the development of, and directing, five new works: the plays Elvis Blossom and Dear Abe (at Virginia’s newest incubator for original scripts, Studio Roanoke), the play Ngala Muti and the punk-rock musical Requiem (for the School of Drama at Catholic University, in Washington, DC), and the American premiere (in a freshly revised and newly orchestrated version) of the British theatre-for-youth musical, Spot’s Birthday Party (at Maryland’s Adventure Theatre).
He recently staged a double-bill of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Ernesto Lecuona’s Cuban zarzuela Maria La O (set in 1950s Little Italy and Havana), as well as developing and directing a new musical-revue of songs from the 1930s and ‘40s by émigré Hollywood composers, From Berlin to Sunset – both productions for DC’s innovative music/theatre/dance collective, The In Series.
Last year, he guest-lectured in Pulitzer-Prize winner Tim Page’s seminar at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. And earlier this year, he began directing an internet video series with nutritionist Janis Jibrin, for the website TheBestLife.com, ranging from interviews to cooking programs to on-site restaurant features.
Coming up, Banno will be returning to Opera Delaware to direct The Magic Flute, and will direct his first show for DC’s American Century Theatre, a revival of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.
