Women in the Opera
Women in the Opera: Panel
Thursday, July 15; 8 pm
Location: Yerba Buena Gardens/Center for the Arts, 701 Mission @ 3rd,
Screening Room
$3 YBC members, $5 others
Tickets: YBC: 415.978-2787 (ARTS)
Carla Lucero, composer/librettist
Sandra Bernhard, director
Pauline Oliveros, composer
Sara Jobin, conductor
Kip Cranna
An interactive program exploring the lives of women in music and opera will feature four Bay Area women who will discuss their experiences as opera professionals. The panel will focus on both historical and contemporary issues relating to professional women active in the male-dominated world of Western classical music. The panelists include: Sandra Bernhard, a stage director active at San Francisco Opera and other companies nationwide; composer, performer and humanitarian, Pauline Oliveros; Tassajara Symphony Orchestra music director, and assistant conductor at Opera San Jose, Sarah Jobin; and composer/librettist Carla Lucero – who is currently writing the new opera, Wuornos – which will debut as a gala showcase in the Forum at Center for the Arts on Saturday July 17th. Dr. Clifford (Kip) Cranna, Musical Administrator of the San Francisco Opera, will moderate the panel.
The evening is presented by the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, the Harvey Milk Institute, the Queer Cultural Center’s Opera Project and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Debut of Wuornos
Wuornos: Gala Showcase
Saturday July 17; 8 pm
Location: Yerba Buena Gardens/Center for the Arts, 701 Mission @ 3rd,
The Forum
$15 YBC members / students, $17 general
Tickets: YBC: 415.978-2787 (ARTS)
This evening features a gala showcase performance of excerpts from Wuornos, a new opera by Carla Lucero. Wuornos is a tragic, contemporary love story of operatic proportions based on the surreal life of a real person. At once the villain and the heroine, Aileen Wuornos makes the ultimate sacrifice for the love of her life – a woman. Incredibly, this opera becomes darkly humorous as it glares unflinchingly at the media, which has become our moral watermark in a tabloid society. This full-scale original opera by Carla Lucero is in development at the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts. It is the story of Aileen Wuornos, a woman currently on death row for the killing of seven men in Florida. The opera examines the painful journey of a woman exploited at virtually every step of her life. It also explores the lure of the media, and to what extent the people seduced by its power will go to manipulate a story and exploit the subjects at the center. Provocative and controversial, the deepest, darkest roots of feminism are exposed as the rage of one woman speaks for centuries of pain. Wuornos is being co-produced by Brava! for Women in the Arts and the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts and will have its world premiere at the Brava! Theatre Center in June 2000.The July 17th showcase performance is directed by San Francisco Opera director Sandra Bernhard.
