Opera
Life is Short | Make Opera
Marianna Mott Newirth hails from an eclectic background of theatre & book binding. She was bit by the opera bug somewhere between 2007 & 2009.
The effects lay dormant until 2010 when she was seen standing on queue at the MetOpera with her teen-aged son to purchase tickets to Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Today, Marianna is a librettist, creative producer and active member of the NY IndieOpera scene. She is premiering two new operas in 2024. touch with composer Carla Lucero for Opera Birmingham and Mechanisms with composer J. E. Hernandez for Opera Theatre of St Louis.
Full bio here
The Really Spicy Opera
Aria Institute
Over spring & summer of 2022, Marianna was a librettist fellow in a fantastic gathering of librettists & composers for the RSO Aria Institute. Arias were written over a two-week span, presented, vettend and ultimately recorded. Here are two of her recent Really Spicy Opera arias with composers Jane Kozhevnikova & Del’Shawn Taylor
Opera Projects Pre-Pandemic!
TRANSPORTATION TRANSFORMATION is a 10-minute operatic pastiche of Mozart’s music married with contemporary story and lyrics. Commissioned by the New York Opera Alliance and performed at WQXR’s studios, this opera was conceived, written, produced and performed in one 24-hour period. Its world premiere was Saturday April 13, 2019 broadcast live at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space.
This work sample shows the opening three minutes of a three-part piece, as the passengers wait on the subway platform to board the F train and make their way towards another day in NYC.
Creative Team: Richard Pearson Thomas - Music Director; Marianna Mott Newirth – Librettist; Mike von der Nahmer – Dramaturge; Jennifer Williams - Stage Director; Alexa Rosenberg, Production Stage Manager. Featuring the vocal talents of Danielle Buonaiuto, La Toya Lewis, Melisa Serluco & Brian Alvarado.
Return here for updates on OTSL’s NWC 2nd cohort world premiere in March 2024.
This work sample shows part two, the dramatic peripeteia of the three-part piece, where our passengers realize they have boarded a magical subway car which appears to have just lifted off the track and is now airborne.
Creative Team: Richard Pearson Thomas - Music Director; Marianna Mott Newirth – Librettist; Mike von der Nahmer – Dramaturge; Jennifer Williams - Stage Director; Alexa Rosenberg, Production Stage Manager. Featuring the vocal talents of Danielle Buonaiuto, La Toya Lewis, Melisa Serluco & Brian Alvarado.
This was a project that brought us right up to the very edge of global pandemic and had us peering into the abyss.
When Falling…Dive was recorded in studio March 10, 2020! Filming was to take place the 13th & 14th in NYC.
The project will never be complete and remains a relic of the ‘before times.”
A heartbreaking aria for John Macy, husband to Anne Sullivan who was teacher and life-long aide for Helen Keller. This piece is from the new opera 'touch' with music by Carla Lucero and libretto by Carla Lucero and Marianna Mott Newirth commissioned by Opera Birmingham: world premiere in January 2024.
Performed live at the Seagle Festival New Works Workshop
August 29, 2022.
FEATURING Tenor - Patrick Bessenbacher
Accompianist - Neill Campbell
Music Director - Tyson Deaton
Video Audio Engineer - Spencer Keene
This work sample shows the dramatic conclusion of the three-movement work, wherein our passengers embrace the magical realism of the moment and make connections, unpredictable a mere five minutes earlier. Everything works out and the four new friends fly to Central Park to spend the day together – showing that just because it looks like another Monday morning commute, it does not mean the ordinary cannot suddenly become extraordinary.
Creative Team: Richard Pearson Thomas - Music Director; Marianna Mott Newirth – Librettist; Mike von der Nahmer – Dramaturge; Jennifer Williams - Stage Director; Alexa Rosenberg, Production Stage Manager. Featuring the vocal talents of Danielle Buonaiuto, La Toya Lewis, Melisa Serluco & Brian Alvarado.
My entry into the opera ecosystem began with Wagner - captured here by film maker Susan Froemke.
Blue Hum is an art song collaboration depicting the traumatic memory of a mother and daughter who together fled their homeland to eventually settle in a new land. The daughter, now a mother, brings her child to visit her grandmother who struggles to connect with her granddaughter. Healing is found through story-telling and the mother/daughter duo finally find home in one another again. Commissioned by the Art Song Collaborative and performed at Tapestry Opera in Toronto, ON in July 2018.
This documentary by Susan Froemke on Robert Lepage’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, depicts my literal entry into opera with 15 year old son, Max Newirth.
