Conspiracy! Muhly & Gotham Chamber Opera

Tomorrow night will not be the first time Nico Muhly has played piano. Here’s proof.

Tomorrow night, Gotham Chamber Opera is celebrating. Consider it a little anticipatory yelp of pleasure, prior to its tenth-anniversary season and the world premiere, next month, of Nico Muhly’s opera Dark Sisters. The scene will be New York’s chic cabaret Le Poisson Rouge (on the site of the legendary Village Vanguard), and the program features both Muhly and Gotham’s founding artistic director, Neal Goren, on piano, in song selections ranging from Purcell to Sibelius, from Mozart to some guy named … Muhly.

That wide range of periods and styles is representative of Gotham’s ten seasons, of course. It will be fun to see Goren at work (or, perhaps more accurately, to see the side of his head instead of the back of it, since he’s most often seen conducting from the pit) and I’m hoping to get to know more of Muhly’s approach not only to his own music but to that of other composers.

But I confess that much of the evening’s excitement lies in the singers. Neal Goren has introduced me to dozens of terrific young artists, beginning with Gotham’s first production, Il Sogno di Scipione, and two pretty much unforgettable sopranos, Celena Shafer and Georgia Jarman.

Tomorrow night’s lineup features tenor Michele Angelini, soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, and mezzo- sopranos Vanessa Cariddi and Eve Gigliotti, a knockout in the preview of Dark Sisters I attended (but did not review). Clarice Jensen on cello and Yuki Lee Numata on violin will join in — and I expect I’ll be there, too.

Gotham Chamber Opera and Nico Muhly Conspire
Le Poisson Rouge
Thursday, 13 October
Doors open at 7PM, Performance at 8PM.
158 Bleecker Street
$15 seats; two-item minimum at table seats.
For tickets and information, visit the website of Le Poisson Rouge…

…And for tickets and information regarding Dark Sisters, performances beginning 9 November, click here.

Interior photographs from Le Poisson Rouge website.