Living Legend: Philip Glass Visits the MFA

On Wednesday, October 21, Boston Lyric Opera was honored to join the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Shapiro Celebrity Lecture Series in welcoming living legend Philip Glass to the Shapiro Celebrity Lecture Series for an interview and talk, titled Philip Glass: 40 Years of Opera


First, BLO artists kicked off the event with scenes from In the Penal Colony, performed by Neal Ferreira as the Visitor and David McFerrin as the Officer, accompanied by James Myers on piano.

 

 

Following the performance, Mr. Glass spoke with WGBH's Jared Bowen about his storied career, as well as some of his early struggles and striving, including driving cabs in New York City, working as a plumber, and much more!

Mr. Glass also addressed the difficulty of being a working artist today, as well as his own writing process, saying, "I just write it down--but it wasn't like that in the beginning." 

Stay tuned for excerpts from their talk on Jared Bowen's show Open Studio, November 6 on WGBH!

All photos by Eric Antoniou for Boston Lyric Opera.

Lizzie: Signature Series and John Conklin

I go up to Boston next week to rehearse and then present BLO's  Signature Series  "Lizzie Borden took an axe"  at the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday November 3 . This is the newest entry in a series that I have been creating over the past 4 years that deals with each of our operas in the repertory for that season but in a varied and wide range of contexts. Rather than a direct analysis of the music or a discussion of BLO's specific approach we explore how ideas or characters  derived from the opera might stretch out into novels, poetry, painting,cinema, history, popular culture. Also rather than  a lecture, we create mini -dramas, theater pieces of about an hour in length. We are lucky to be able to use the elegant and comfortable Remis auditorium at the MFA. For our LIZZIE program I am creating  a collage as it were of various views of the fascinatingly complex Lizzie herself, newspaper accounts of the murders and  excerpts from the sensational trial that transfixed the country. Mixed in with this will be the compelling  music from Jack Beeson's opera we will be presenting in the unique atmosphere of the Castle  opening November  20 (check out our Website for details ). We welcome to the Sunday afternoon event the well known Boston actress Celeste Oliva  and the dynamic  Heather Johnson who sings the title role with BLO . Together they will take  us into the tortured, ambiguous  ( still we ask...did she do it...or not?) and  highly  dramatic  excitement of the   world of Lizzie Borden . Join us
                                                                                                                                  John Conklin