Lee Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke Featured at Manhattan School of Music

Lee Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke takes center stage at Manhattan School of Music this month as MSM's main winter production on December 8, 10, and 12. Directed by Dona D. Vaughn and conducted by Steven Osgood, Hoiby’s opera stands as one of four ambitious productions presented by MSM’s Opera Studies Department in the 2010-11 season.

Based on the 1948 play by Tennessee Williams, Summer and Smoke is tantalizingly complex and true to the play’s illuminating study of sexual repression, with a libretto by Lanford Wilson. John O’Connor of the New York Times wrote:

With Mr. Wilson's libretto remaining carefully faithful to the play, capturing the essence of each scene with its more memorable lines, Mr. Hoiby has composed something of a haunting tone poem, its underlying sadness punctuated occasionally by the ironic sounds of everything from bright Mexican mariachi music to a snappy marching parade band.

Summer and Smoke premiered in 1971 with the St. Paul Opera in Minnesota under the directorship of Igor Buketoff. The opera has since seen dozens of additional performances throughout the United States, including productions by New York City Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, and television broadcasts courtesy of PBS.

MSM will host a free one hour discussion with the opera’s artistic team in Greenfield Hall prior to the performance.

Also this month Duaine Wolfe and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform Hoiby's A Christmas Carol in seven performances.

For precise ticketing information on the Manhattan School of Music performances, please visit www.msmnyc.edu.

Lee Hoiby-Composer Profile.

Summer and Smoke (1971)
an opera in two acts
libretto by Lanford Wilson
for 3 Sopranos, 2 Mezzo-sopranos, Tenor, 3 Baritones, 2 Bass-baritones
2.1.2.1-2.1.1.0-timp.perc-hp.cel-str(offstage: 2tpt.pno.gtr.2vn.cb)
130’

A Christmas Carol (1990)
for mixed chorus and orchestra
2.2.2.2-4.2.2.1-timp.perc-hp-str
4’