Between Two Palms with Mike Rezendes

in Conversation with Stephen Kitsakos

Monday, February 10, 6pm

Helmerich Theater

$20, $15 mbrs.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rezendes was one of the Boston Globe‘s “Spotlight” team which exposed the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal. Now a member of the Global Investigative Team at the Associated Press, he comes to Key West to talk to Stephen Kitsakos, Artistic Advisor, about his work as an investigative journalist, screenwriter and Jimmy Breslin’s biographer.

sponsored by Berkshire Hathaway

Workshop of a new opera

Staged Concert of Act I

Performed in English, runtime 80″

Featuring Singers and Musicians from the Jacobs School of Music, Opera & Ballet Theater at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
With Narration by Rosi Ware

Friday, March 21, 8pm

Helmerich Theater

$125 front row, $75, $65 mbrs.

Saturday, March 22, 8pm

Helmerich Theater

$125 front row, $75, $65 mbrs.

Music by Martin Hennessy, Libretto by Stephen Kitsakos

Adapted from the international bestselling novel by Tomasz Jedrowski, and named a top 20 LGBTQ book for 2020 by NPR, The Guardian, O Magazine, Publishers Weekly & the New York Review of Books, Swimming in the Dark is an opera about choice and political freedom. Set in Poland in 1980, it is an opera about a consuming love affair engulfed by a political thriller in a country being torn apart. At its center is a story of two young men, Ludwik and Janusz, who meet one summer after graduating from college and bond over their discovery of the American novelist James Baldwin’s seminal work of gay & bisexual literature, Giovanni’s Room. A tale of subversion, entrapment and identity set against the beauty and rapture of the Polish countryside at the rise of the Solidarity movement. With soaring melodies and a moving libretto (sung in English) the opera is sure to resonate with American audiences.

in partnership with the Jacobs School of Music, Opera & Ballet Theater at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Thank you to our generous sponsors

Based on the best-selling novel by Tomasz Jedrowski

Martin Hennessy, Composer, is a prolific composer of opera and art song. With librettist Stephen Kitsakos, he composed An Incident in Sutton Square (finalist for the 2023 Dominic Argento Chamber Opera Prize), The Woman in Penthouse A, and The Pleasing Recollection: A Cabaret Opera. His opera A Letter to East 11th Street, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, was the first winner of the Domenic J. Pellicciotti Opera Composition Prize in 2014. Other chamber works include The Young King, with a libretto by Tom Rowan, commissioned by the University of Maryland; and The Good Friar, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, for the Center for Contemporary Opera and Urban Arias. His Ben Jonson Songs won grand prize at the San Francisco Song Festival, and he has been honored with Copland House and Millay Colony residencies as well as commissions from the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS and the Sorel Foundation. Recent commissions include Nous Deux, a setting of Paul Eluard’s incantatory love poem, for mezzo-soprano and string quintet, commissioned by mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert. He is currently commissioned by Madrid’s Teatro Real’s La Joven to write a new Maria Estuardo, with a libretto by Irma Correa.

photo by Aramis Ikatu

Stephen Kitsakos, Libretto, is an opera librettist, theatre director and educator. Writing commissions include the National Endowment on the Arts, the American Opera Project, NYSCA, Catskill Watershed Corporation, ASCAP Foundation and The Woodstock Cycle for the Episcopal Diocese of NY. With Martin Hennessy he wrote the libretti for An Incident in Sutton Square (finalist for the 2023 Dominic Argento Chamber Opera Prize), The Woman in Penthouse A, and The Pleasing Recollection: A Cabaret Opera. With composer Sheila Silver he wrote the libretto for A Thousand Splendid Suns, commissioned by Seattle Opera, based on the bestselling book by Khaled Hosseini, nominated for “Best New Opera 2023” at the International Opera Awards in Warsaw, Poland. Other libretti for Silver include the chamber opera The Wooden Sword, and the Tibetan-themed operatic cantata The White Rooster, commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution. A member of the Theatre Arts Faculty at SUNY New Paltz for fifteen years, Kitsakos was a contributing writer at The Sondheim Review as well as Music in American Life for ABC-CLIO.

photo by Aramis Ikatu

Michael Shell, Stage Director, is an Associate Professor of Music in Voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Resident Stage director for the Jacobs School of Music Opera and Ballet Theater. His “visionary” and “masterful storytelling” (Opera News) is steadily leading him to be one of the most sought after directors in the United States. His “thoughtful and detailed score study” (Opera Today) is shown in character development and relationships onstage as well as the complete visual world he creates. Shell has directed productions for Atlanta Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Opera Omaha, Opera San Jose, Opera Tampa, Opera North, Virginia Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Wexford Festival Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. He holds a B.M. and M.M. in Music/Vocal Performance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and was a Corbett Scholar at The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Tyler Readinger, Conductor has served as cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic and Allentown Symphony Orchestra, assistant conductor of the Reading Philharmonic Orchestra, and guest conductor for the Reading Pops Orchestra. As a student of Arthur Fagen and Thomas Wilkins, he was assistant conductor for the Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater. Tyler was named semifinalist in the 2022 V Nino Rota International Conducting Competition. He has participated in numerous other conducting programs, most recently being the VIII Atlantic Coast Conducting Competition and Masterclass. He is also an avid conductor of film music both in live-to-picture performances and recording sessions.

Rosi Ware, Narrator, is an inspirational speaker and ambassador of Arts & Culture in Key West. Formerly the CEO of Millward Brown, the world’s largest advertising research agency, and a consultant for Kantar & WPP, the world’s largest marketing services group, she was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 as one of 75 women in business who had made a difference to the UK. A Founding Board Member, and past President/Board Chair of The Studios of Key West, she was awarded “Humanitarian of the Year” in 2016 by the Red Cross for her work with disabled adults at MARC House. A Board Member and Past President of the Key West Garden Club, and Board Member of Art In Public Places, her hobbies include gardening, theater, literature, music, movies and travel. Rosi narrated the first NEA-funded workshop of A Thousand Splendid Suns which saw its world premiere at Seattle Opera in 2023.