Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Liebermann: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The opera for Halloweentide this year is a close adaptation for the lyric stage of the 1891 novel by Oscar Wilde. Dorian Gray is the first of two operas by American composer and conductor Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961), the other one being Miss Lonelyhearts (2006). Also in the Halloween frame of mind is his music for a ballet Frankenstein (2015), co-produced by the Royal Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet.

Lowell Liebermann's The Picture of Dorian Gray premiered at Monte Carlo Opera in 1996. The American premiere came in 1999 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it was produced by Florentine Opera. Steuart Bedford, who directed the Monte Carlo premiere, now leads the singers of the Florentine Opera Company and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. That Milwaukee production was recorded and is currently available to the public online courtesy of the House of Opera. Thanks to Rob Meehan, former classics DJ here at WWUH and a specialist record collector in the alternative musical stylings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, for loaning to me for broadcast his download from the House of Opera website onto two compact discs.