Festival Preview: Kicking the Tires

Superconductor breaks down this year's Prototype Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Images from four of the operas at this year's Prototype Festival:
(clockwise from upper left: Fellow Traveler, Acquanetta, The Echo Drift and IYOV).
All images © 2018 Prototype Festival.

The two weeks of the New York-based Prototype Festival are the first important event of the new calendar year. Here is the cutting edge: fearless contemporary composers presenting bold, brilliant new works (OK sometimes they're less than brilliant) but they are always at least interesting. Superconductor offers this short field guide to this year's Festival, which opens on Sunday, January 7th with this year's Festival Soirée. The operas are....

Opera Review: But You Can Never Leave

PROTOTYPE Festival presents The Last Hotel.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

She's ready to check out: Claudia Boyle (center) flanked by Katherine Manley (left)
and Robin Adams (right) in The Last Hotel. Photo by Teddy Wolff © 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival.

The PROTOTYPE Festival, an annual celebration of the avant-garde in opera and modern music crossed the East River on Friday night, with the New York premiere of The Last Hotel. This is a new work, a collaboration between Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy and librettist/stage director Enda Walsh. Set in a grim seaside hotel on the coast of Ireland in contemporary times, it is part exploration of life, death and uncomfortable triangular relationships. The work was presented in the newly refurbished St. Ann's Warehouse, a former tobacco storage that is now gorgeous arts space under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Festival Preview: The Prototype Opera Festival

Four new operas and three concerts offer the best of new opera in New York.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Image from La Reína by Jorge Cano, © 2016 Prototype Opera Festival.

Let's face it. Things are not good for opera this year. The New York City Opera is showing signs of revival (we'll know more after the Jan. 20 premiere of NYC Opera Renaissance's Tosca) and the Gotham Chamber Opera upped and folded its movable tents last October. Into that void steps Prototype, the downtown opera festival that has inspired  attendees for three straight years. Its fourth season, opening Jan. 6, boasts seven shows that aim to push the envelope of contemporary opera for listeners. Perhaps there are more interesting things going on than endless revivals of Puccini?