An Evening with Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz
Schedule
Thu May 02 2024 at 06:00 pm
Location
Joslyn Castle | Omaha, NE
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Join Opera Omaha for a special conversation and Q&A with the GRAMMY Award-winning composer and Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist of the new opera El último sueño de Frida y Diego.Thursday, May 2, 2024
Joslyn Castle | 6 PM
FREE Admission. Advance Registration Requested.
GABRIELA LENA FRANK
Identity has always been at the center of the music of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank, who was included in The Washington Post's 2017 list of the 35 most significant women composers in history. Her music often reflects not only her own personal experience as a multi-racial Latina, but also refracts her studies of Latin American cultures, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.
Winner of a Latin GRAMMY and nominated for GRAMMYs as both a composer and pianist, Frank also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Frank’s recent premieres include Pachamama Meets an Ode for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered at Carnegie Hall under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Seguín; Haillí Serenata, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony; and Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra under Marin Alsop. El último sueño de Frida y Diego, her first opera, will be staged by the Metropolitan Opera in a future season, following the company’s staging of her Conquest Requiem in 2024.
NILO CRUZ
A Cuban American playwright, Nilo Cruz gained national prominence in 2003 when he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, for which he also received a Tony Award nomination. The immigrant experience is a common theme in many of Cruz's plays and he has become known for his ability to successfully weave strains of magic realism and other literary traditions into his works.
As a playwright, he is the author of more than 13 plays and four translations. His work has been seen at numerous theaters around the world. As a lyricist, he is a frequent collaborator with composer Gabriela Lena Frank. He has written the libretti for The Conquest Requiem and The Santos Oratorio for Frank and the text of orchestral songs, La Centinela y la paloma. Cruz also adapted Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel Bel Canto for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, with Peruvian composer Jimmy López and recently premiered the oratorio Dreamers by López at Cal Performance in Berkeley, California.
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Where is it happening?
Joslyn Castle, 3910 Davenport St, Omaha, NE 68131-2316, United States,Omaha, NebraskaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
