Renowned Composers to Talk about the Journey from Page to Stage By Marci Janas ('91)
	Back to main story		David Bamberger David Bamberger, general director of Cleveland Opera, has led the organization since its founding in 1976, guiding it to its current status as one of the major regional opera companies in the United States. To open Cleveland Opera's 25th Anniversary Season in 2000, he secured The Three Tenors--José Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, to perform in concert at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Bamberger's more than 150 productions on three continents includes The Barber of Seville at Lincoln Center for the New York City Opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe at the Los Angeles Music Center, Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor for the National Opera in Santiago, Chile and La Boheme and La Cenerentola for the Israel Academy of Vocal Arts. Among the opera luminaries he has directed are Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Jerome Hines and Roberta Peters. At home on the non-musical stage, he directed the first major New York production of Sophocles' classic tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, and a national tour of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. His writings include several articles for Opera News and a two-volume history of the Jews based on Abba Eban's My People. Once banned in the former Soviet Union, it is now available, in Russian translation, in Russia and Israel. In 1990, Bamberger was selected by OPERA America to represent the opera industry before Congress, testifying in that year's successful effort to garner support for the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served on the board of directors of OPERA America, the music panel of the Ohio Arts Council, and the board of directors of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. He is a recipient of the Ohio Governor's Award for Arts Administration. Sheldon Harnick Sheldon Harnick, winner of two Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards and two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, has also earned three gold and one platinum record throughout a diverse career in American musical theatre. His collaboration with composer Jerry Bock produced such Broadway classics as Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello, She Loves Me and The Rothschilds. Harnick has written many operatic translations, including those for Bizet's Carmen, Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, Mozart's The Goose from Cairo, and Lehar's The Merry Widow. He has also written libretti for Dr. Heidegger's Fountain of Youth, Cyrano and Love in Two Countries. A member of the Dramatists Guild and the Songwriters Guild of America, his first song for a Broadway show was "Boston Beguine" from New Faces of 1952. Harnick, who was born in Chicago, began taking violin lessons while in grammar school and earned a bachelor of music from Northwestern University following his service in World War II. Henry Mollicone The Washington Post has called Henry Mollicone "one of the most distinctive American opera composers." His full-length opera Coyote Tales (with libretto by Sheldon Harnick), commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, premiered in March 1998. Another full-length opera, Hotel Eden, premiered at Opera San Jose in 1989 and has been produced in New York and Baltimore. His one-act operas, Emperor Norton, Starbird, The Face on the Barroom Floor, and The Mask of Evil, have been performed extensively in the United States and Europe. Mollicone was composer-in-residence at the Brevard Music Festival in 1999, and has been music director and conductor of the Santa Clara University Orchestra since 1985. Besides opera, Henry Mollicone has written numerous works for orchestra, including Celestial Dance, commissioned by the Long Beach Symphony, Inner Light, composed for the Eastman School Orchestra, the overture Kathy's White Knight Revisited, commissioned by the Santa Cruz Symphony and the Fremont Symphony, and in collaboration with the playwright William Luce, A Rat's Tale: The Pied Piper Revisited, commissioned by the El Camino Youth Symphony. He has also composed music for solo voice, chorus, ballet and various chamber combinations. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Mollicone studied composition with, among others, Donald Martino and Seymour Schifrin. Robert Ward Composer Robert Ward received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critic's Citation for his opera The Crucible. He has received numerous commissions for his works, which have been performed by, among others, the New York Opera, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Central City Opera, Charlotte Opera and the Greater Miami Opera. He has conducted his own works with many orchestras throughout the world. A member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Ward has held three Guggenheim fellowships and received grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his many awards are the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts, the Eastman School Achievement Award and the Cleveland Arts Prize. Before and after World War II, he served on the faculties of Queens College, Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music. He later became music director of the Third Street Music School and conductor of the Doctor's Orchestral Society of New York. In 1956, he became executive vice president and managing editor of Galaxy Music Corp. and Highgate Press. In 1967, he was named president of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and, in 1979, he became the Mary Duke Biddle Professor of Music at Duke University, a post he held until his retirement in 1989. He serves on many distinguished panels, boards and advisory committees. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1917, Ward received his early musical training in Cleveland's public schools. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. He studied composition with Frederick Jacobi and conducting with Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman while at Juilliard for graduate work in composition. He holds an honorary degree in fine arts from Duke University and an honorary doctorate of music from the Peabody Institute. Richard Wargo The Philadelphia Inquirer calls Richard Wargo "a fresh new voice in American opera," and Opera News says he is "a born opera composer." Wargo is composer-in-residence at Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee, an appointment made possible by the National Theatre Artist Residency Program, jointly developed by Theatre Communications Group and the Pew Charitable Trusts. While at the Skylight, he will develop two new operas: Sive, a large-scale opera based on the play by John B. Keane and Molly Sweeney, a chamber opera based on the play by Brian Friel. Wargo has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Institute for Music Theatre, and was twice awarded the F. Lammot Berlin Arts Scholarship. In 2000, he received a Goddard Lieberson fellowship, conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Wargo has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, and served as composer-in-residence with the Greater Miami Opera. Wargo's A Chekhov Trilogy, premiered by Chatauqua Opera in 1993, was produced each of the past three seasons at Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, at the DiCapo Opera Theatre in New York, and at the Skylight. Ballymore, his opera based on Brian Friel's stage play, Lovers, premiered at the Skylight in 1999. Wargo is a native of Scranton, Penn., and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music.
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