2011 Grant Awards: Access to Artistic Excellence

[ March 11, 2010 deadline ]

Artists Communities | Dance | Design | Folk & Traditional Arts | Literature
Local Arts Agencies | Media Arts | Museums | Music | Musical Theater
Opera | Presenting | Theater | Visual Arts

Some details of the projects listed below are subject to change, contingent upon prior Endowment approval.

Opera

Boston Baroque, Inc.
Belmont, MA
$10,000
To support performances of Les Indes Galantes (The Gallant Indians) by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The production will feature a period orchestra, seven vocal soloists coached in the French-baroque style, modern dancer and choreographer Marjorie Folkman, and stage direction from Sam Helfrich.

Boston Lyric Opera Company, Inc.
Boston, MA
$20,000
To support a new production of Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis) by Viktor Ullmann and a commissioned companion vocal chamber work by Richard Beaudoin to serve as a prologue. Death serves as both the historical and dramatic backdrop of Ullmann's 1943 opera which he composed while a prisoner in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic.

Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre
Cedar Rapids, IA
$12,500
To support a new production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. The performance will be broadcast live by Iowa Public Radio and will include interviews with the singers, stage director, and conductor.

Central City Opera House Association
Denver, CO
$25,000
To support a new production of Amadigi di Gaula by George Frideric Handel. The artistic team comprises director Alessandro Talevi, conductor Matthew Halls, and set and costume designer Madeleine Boyd.

Chicago Opera Theater
Chicago, IL
$27,500
To support the production of Death and the Powers by American composer Tod Machover. The opera tells the story of an inventor named Simon Powers who wants to live forever and so he "downloads" himself into his environment.

Cincinnati Opera Association (aka Cincinnati Opera)
Cincinnati, OH
$25,000
To support the production of A Flowering Tree by 2009 NEA Opera Honors recipient John Adams. The production will feature conductor Joana Carneiro, soprano Jessica Rivera, tenor Noah Stewart, and baritone Eric Owens.

Curtis Institute of Music
Philadelphia, PA
$10,000
To support a new production of Elegy for Young Lovers by Hans Werner Henze. The work will be realized through a joint collaboration with the Curtis Opera Theater, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Chicago Opera Theater, and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

Dallas Opera
Dallas, TX
$30,000
To support a production of Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner. Accompanying outreach activities will include lectures, panel discussions with the artists, and a radio broadcast on classical WRR-FM.

Florida Grand Opera, Inc.
Miami, FL
$35,000
To support a production of Cyrano by 2010 NEA Opera Honors recipient David DiChiera. Education and outreach activities will include a family festival, school lectures, open dress rehearsals, and resource materials on the website.

Fort Worth Opera Association, Inc.
Fort Worth, TX
$15,000
To support the production of Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) by George Frideric Handel. In keeping with the company's mission to produce a variety of work spanning the history and breadth of the art form, these performances mark the company's first production of a work from the baroque repertoire.

Gotham Chamber Opera, Inc. (Consortium)
New York, NY
$20,000
To support the world premiere of Dark Sisters by composer Nico Muhly and librettist Stephen Karam. In collaboration with the Music Theatre Group, performances of the opera will serve as the centerpiece of the company's 10th anniversary season.

Houston Grand Opera Association, Inc.
Houston, TX
$50,000
To support the production of Dead Man Walking by American composer Jake Heggie. The opera is expected to attract less traditional opera audiences because there is familiarity with Prejean's book by the same title and the 1995 film; the company plans to engage the community in preview and discussions on topics such as the death penalty and the creation process in opera.

Intermountain Opera Association of Bozeman
Bozeman, MT
$12,500
To support the production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) by Gioachino Rossini. Educational and outreach activities to build audiences will include a public workshop, a performance for elementary school students, a class for students at Bozeman High School, and a class for adults at Montana State University.

Los Angeles Opera Company (aka LA Opera)
Los Angeles, CA
$75,000
To support the production of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten. Based on the novella by Henry James, performances of the opera will launch the company's four-year commemoration leading to Britten's centenary in 2013.

Lyric Opera of Chicago
Chicago, IL
$90,000
To support a new production of Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber and widely considered one of the most influential pieces of American musical theater, the work is largely operatic and will be brought to the stage through a production by director Francesca Zambello that will feature baritone Nathan Gunn.

Merola Opera Program
San Francisco, CA
$20,000
To support master teachers and instructors at the professional training program for singers, apprentice coaches, and an apprentice stage director. Participants will receive private coaching and attend master classes for intergenerational exchange between veterans in the opera field and emerging newcomers.

Metropolitan Opera Association, Inc. (aka the Met)
New York, NY
$100,000
To support a new production of Nixon in China by 2009 NEA Opera Honors recipient John Adams. Set during the Cold War, the opera dramatizes President Nixon's 1972 visit to China to meet Mao Zedong and other Chinese officials.

Minnesota Opera Company
Minneapolis, MN
$20,000
To support a new production of Wuthering Heights by American composer Bernard Hermmann. Based on the novel by Emily Brontë, the four-act work directed by Eric Simonson and conducted by Michael Christie is the only opera written by this Academy Award-winning composer who scored nearly every Hitchcock film.

New York City Opera, Inc. (aka City Opera)
New York, NY
$50,000
To support a new production titled Monodramas comprising Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung (Expectation), Morton Feldman's Neither, and John Zorn's La Machine de l'etre. Each of the three operas was written for solo soprano voice and orchestra and has the unifying theme of a woman's introspective recollection of her journey through a spiritual crisis.

Opera Boston, Inc.
Boston, MA
$20,000
To support a regional premiere performance of Maria Padilla by Gaetano Donizetti. The opera and its production, featuring local soprano Barbara Quintiliani, meets the organization's mission to present lesser-known works by well-known composers.

Opera Company of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
$40,000
To support the American premiere of Phaedra by Hans Werner Henze. The cast will comprise mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford (Phaedra), tenor William Burden (Hippolyt), counter-tenor Anthony Roth Constanzo (Artemis), soprano Elizabeth Reiter (Aphrodite), and bass-baritone Jeremy Milner (Minotauros).

Opera Memphis, Inc. (Consortium)
Memphis, TN
$14,500
To support the world premiere of A Midsummer Night's Dream by American composer Michael Ching. In collaboration with Playhouse on the Square, the work will blend the operatic and contemporary a cappella traditions using an orchestra of voices to accompany singers on stage.

Opera Southwest
Albuquerque, NM
$10,000
To support the opera production of Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) by Giachino Rossini. The company began its Rossini cycle in 2009; this production advances their goal to complete the cycle in 2012.

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
St. Louis, MO
$55,000
To support a new production of The Death of Klinghoffer by 2009 NEA Opera Honors recipient John Adams. In cooperation with the composer, changes were made to the score and this new version -- the first in the United States since the premiere in 1991 -- will be performed at Webster University's Loretto-Hilton Center.

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (Consortium)
St. Louis, MO
$25,000
To support a commission and the development of a new jazz opera by American composer and arranger Terence Blanchard. In collaboration with Jazz St. Louis, the new work will blend the American tradition of jazz with the dramatic capabilities of opera and will be written and orchestrated for performance by a symphony orchestra and/or jazz ensemble.

Pittsburgh Opera Theater, Inc. (aka Opera Theater of Pittsburgh)
Pittsburgh, PA
$15,000
To support a new production of The Gospel at Colonus by composer Bob Telson and librettist Lee Breuer. Based on Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, performances will occur at the Carnegie Museum of Art's Hall of Architecture, where the elements of classical and religious architecture will further assist in crossing cultural boundaries.

Pittsburgh Opera, Inc. (Consortium)
Pittsburgh, PA
$30,000
To support a new production of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot. In partnership with Austin Lyric Opera, the production will be realized through shared resources and the collaboration among the Utah Symphony & Opera, Cincinnati Opera, and Minnesota Opera.

Pittsburgh Opera, Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
$35,000
To support a production of Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francis Poulenc. The opera will be directed by Eric Einhorn, conducted by Antony Walker, and will feature contralto Sheila Nader, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop, soprano Julianna Di Giacomo, and baritone James Maddalena.

San Diego Opera Association
San Diego, CA
$40,000
To support a production of Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) by Richard Strauss. Activities will include a student dress rehearsal for youth from schools in San Diego County and Tijuana, Mexico; pre-performance lectures; and an artists' roundtable discussion.

San Francisco Opera Association
San Francisco, CA
$90,000
To support the world premiere of Heart of a Soldier by American composer Christopher Theofanidis. The work is based on the non-fiction book by James B. Stewart about a Vietnam War veteran who uses his prior training to rescue victims trapped in the World Trade Center towers.

Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe, NM
$50,000
To support a new production of Antonio Vivaldi's seldom-heard opera Griselda. The cast will feature contralto Meredith Arwady (Griselda), countertenor David Daniels (Roberto), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Costanza), and countertenor Yuriy Mynenko (Corrado).

Sarasota Opera Association, Inc.
Sarasota, FL
$20,000
To support a new production of The Crucible by American composer Robert Ward. The production signals a new artistic initiative for the company called American Classics, which will be realized through conductor David Neely, stage director Michael Unger, set designer Michael Schweikardt, costume designer Howard Kaplan, and lighting designer Ken Yunker.

Seattle Opera
Seattle, WA
$60,000
To support a new production of Don Quichotte by Jules Massenet. The artistic team will comprise director Linda Brovsky, set designer Donald Eastman, costume designer Missy West, conductor Carlo Montanaro, bass-baritones John Relyea and Eduardo Chama, and mezzo-soprano Malgorzata Walewska.

Tacoma Opera Association
Tacoma, WA
$12,500
To support a double-bill performance of Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti. In addition to public performances, educational programs associated with the production will include a course for educators, pre-show lectures, and a student night.

Toledo Opera Association
Toledo, OH
$10,000
To support a concert program of selections from Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The Romance of the Ring will be performed by guest singers and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Conlin.

Virginia Opera Association, Inc.
Norfolk, VA
$15,000
To support a production of Richard Wagner's Die Walkure (The Valkyrie). The company will create a reduced, re-designed version of the opera, making it more affordable for mid-sized opera companies to produce and more accessible for audiences to enjoy.

Washington Concert Opera
Washington, DC
$10,000
To support a concert opera presentation of Attila by Guiseppe Verdi. The cast will include bass-baritone John Relyea, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, baritone Jason Stearns, and tenor Roger Honeywell.

Washington National Opera
Washington, DC
$50,000
To support a production of Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigeneia in Tauris) by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Based upon the play by Euripides, the company will use the work as a vehicle to attract a wider audience, including those that are traditionally more likely to attend theater performances. The cast will be led by soprano Patricia Racette (Iphigénie) and tenor Plácido Domingo (Oreste).

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