Lee Hoiby's 'Summer and Smoke' at New England Conservatory

This month the New England Conservatory presents Lee Hoiby's opera Summer and Smoke. With a libretto by Lanford Wilson, the opera is based on the play by Tennessee Williams that relates the story of longing and unrequited love between a minister's daughter and a charismatic yet dissolute suitor. Paul Hume of The Washington Post exclaims that, "Hoiby's opera proves to be a vehicle of immense emotional power, flooded with music of great beauty...Hoiby has found music to emphasize every shade of Williams' emotional situations." Lee Hoiby had this to say on setting Tennessee Williams' play as an opera:

Life has often been kind to me, and never more so than when Tennessee Williams asked if I would like to make an opera from one of his plays. (He had just been to see my Natalia Petrovna and said he liked "all those voices singing together"- he meant the octet.) I was stunned, and asked which play he would like me to use. "Take your pick," said he. I read all the plays again and again, but kept coming back to Summer and Smoke, with its changing moods, its continual shifts of feeling, from innocent to casual, gritty to demented, comic, pathetic, violent, anguished, desperate, heart breaking - all very singable feelings.

Led by NEC guest conductor Dean Williams and directed by Marc Astafan, the NEC run of Summer and Smoke in Boston's Cutler Majestic Theatre commences on Friday, December 7 with two more performances on Saturday, December 8 and Sunday, December 9.

Also this spring American Opera Projects presents the world premiere of Hoiby's one act opera This is the Rill Speaking. The performance takes place on April 24 at Purchase College, SUNY.

For more information on the music of Lee Hoiby, please visit www.schott-music.com or www.leehoiby.com.

For precise ticketing information on the New England Conservatory's performance of Summer and Smoke, visit www.newenglandconservatory.edu.

To learn more on American Opera Projects' premiere of This is the Rill Speaking, please visit www.operaprojects.org.

Lee Hoiby
Summer and Smoke (1971)
Opera in 2 Acts
Libretto by Lanford Wilson
for 2 Soprano, Lyric Soprano, 2 Mezzo-soprano, Tenor, 3 Baritone, 2 Bass-baritone and orchestra
2121-2110-timp.perc-pno.hp.cel-str;(offstage 2tpt.pf.gtr.2vn.cb)
115'