Wharton Center for Performing Arts

The Wharton Center for Performing Arts is located in East Lansing, Michigan, USA, on the campus of Michigan State University.

The Center is named for former MSU president, Clifton R. Wharton, Jr..A little more than a year and a half ago (May 19, 2008) ground was broken on the first major expansion and renovation to Michigan State University’s Wharton Center for Performing Arts, since opening its doors in 1982. The 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) addition (another 9,000 square of existing space was renovated) has dramatically – and quite literally – changed the face of Wharton Center with a striking four-story glass and brick façade; an expanded front lobby, box office and gift shop; and family restrooms and additional women’s restrooms. The new addition also includes two new multi-purpose spaces to accommodate educational programs presented by the MSU Federal Credit Union Institute for Arts & Creativity at Wharton Center and also serve as reception space and a designated donor lounge in conjunction with public performances presented by Wharton Center. Consolidated administrative offices for the Wharton Center staff were also part of the expansion. “The project allows us to enhance the ‘Wharton Experience’ for patrons and performers with more space and more amenities,” said Mike Brand, Wharton Center’s executive director. “The initial response has been overwhelmingly positive.” Additionally, a new crew room, restrooms, dressing rooms, and other enhancements help address touring production issues backstage. “Previously, when we’d present a mega-hit like Disney’s THE LION KING, the show barely fit,” said Diane Baribeau, Wharton Center’s general manager. “The new spaces and enhancements help solidify our reputation among producers and performers, as well as with our patrons.” Of the $18.5 million cost for improvements, $7.5 million came from the university while $11 million is to be raised from private donations. To date, $7 million has been gifted from individuals and businesses to support the project, which reopened its doors on October 10, 2009. “This project wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of our university leadership, MSU alumni, and the greater community,” Brand said. “Although we still have dollars to raise, we understand the economic challenges people are having. We’re confident that, when things turn around, the community will step forward.”

DTE Energy Amphitheater

Originally built by the Nederlander Organization in the early 1970s, the DTE Energy Music Theatre is a 15,274-seat amphitheater located in Clarkston, Michigan. It was originally known as the Pine Knob Music Theatre, due to its proximity to the nearby Pine Knob ski area and golf course.

The name was changed in 2002 when DTE Energy (the parent company of Detroit Edison) purchased the naming rights to the amphitheater in a ten-year, $10 million deal. Despite this change, many people still continue to call the venue “Pine Knob”, “The Knob”, or “The Hill”. The amphitheater is currently owned by Palace Sports and Entertainment, owner of the Detroit Pistons, The Palace Of Auburn Hills and the Meadow Brook Music Festival. Annually, the music theater has consistently ranked among the top-selling outdoor concert venues in the nation.

Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC)

North Carolina has a new live entertainment theater like no other. Specifically designed to present the biggest shows on tour, DPAC, the Durham Performing Arts Center puts you close to the stage and allows you to experience live performances in an entirely new way.

• Spectacular Sightlines
• State of-the-Art Sound
• 10 Minutes from RDU
• Easy Freeway Access
• Convenient Parking

From Broadway to Concerts, Comedy to Family Shows…there’s Something for Everyone at DPAC. Located in the American Tobacco Historic District next to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Completed in 1981, the Bass Concert Hall is a flagship theater for Texas Performing Arts. Texas Performing Arts center is the largest in Austin, with seating for 2,900. The Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Concert Hall boasts a vast stage, an orchestra pit capable of holding 100 musicians, dressing rooms to accommodate more than 100 performers, computerized lighting, advanced sound and rigging systems, and a mammoth backstage area complete with workshops for carpentry, costumes, painting, metalwork and props.

Ranking among the finest performance spaces in the country both in size and accouterments, it is no wonder that Bass Hall attracts the world’s greatest performers and full-scale productions.

The North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center (also NC Blumenthal Center and NCBPAC) is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. It opened in 1992 and is named in honor of the people of the state of North Carolina and the Blumenthal Foundation, the largest private donor to the capital campaign. The idea for the center dates back to the late 1970s. Momentum for the project grew in the 1980s resulting in a $15 million allocation from the state of North Carolina, approval of a $15 million bond by the citizens of Charlotte and an additional $32 million contributed by individuals, corporations and foundations. In 1987 the Belk Brothers donated a valuable piece of land as the site of the new theatre complex. Total construction cost for the Blumenthal Center was over $62 million.

Blumenthal Center guests can disembark at the Charlotte Transportation Center/Arena Station on E. Trade Street, only a block from Founders Hall and the Belk Theater and Booth Playhouse. Guests attending shows at Spirit Square’s McGlohon Theatre or Duke Power Theatre will enjoy similar easy access from the Seventh Street Station.

Carlisle Floyd (born June 11, 1926, in Latta, South Carolina) is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South. His best known opera, Susannah (1955), is based on a story from the Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary, rural Tennessee, and is set in a Southern dialect.

Opera

• Slow Dusk, opera in one act
  Libretto by the composer.
  May 2, 1949, Augustana College, Syracuse, New York
• The Fugitives
  Libretto by the composer.
  1951, Tallahassee, Florida
  [withdrawn]
• Susannah, musical drama in two acts
  Libretto by the composer after the apocryphal Biblical Book of Susannah.
  composed 1953-54; premiere February 24, 1955, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
• Wuthering Heights
  Libretto by the composer after the novel of Emily Brontë.
  1958, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe, New Mexico; also revised version 1959, New York City Opera
• The Sojourner and Mollie Sinclair
  Libretto by the composer.
  1964, Raleigh, North Carolina
  [composed for television]
• Markheim, opera in one act
  Libretto by the composer after the story by Robert Louis Stevenson.
  March 31, 1966, New Orleans Opera, New Orleans, Louisiana, Norman Treigle
• Of Mice and Men
  Libretto by the composer after the novel by John Steinbeck.
  January 22, 1970, Moore Theater, Seattle, Washington
• Flower and Hawk, melodrama
  Libretto by the composer.
  May 16, 1972, Jacksonville, Florida
• Bilby’s Doll
  Libretto by the composer.
  1976
• Willie Stark
  Libretto by the composer after the novel All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.
  April 24, 1981, Houston Grand Opera, Houston, Texas
• Cold Sassy Tree, a musical play in three acts
  Libretto by the composer after the novel by Olive Ann Burns.
  April 14, 2000, Houston Grand Opera, Houston, Texas, Patricia Racette

Awards and nominations

• 1956 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1957 Citation of Merit from the National Association of American Conductors and Composers
• 1959 Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation Award from the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce
• 1964 Distinguished Professor of Florida State University Award
• 1972 Resolution of Appreciation by the State of Florida Legislature
• 1983 Honorary Doctorate from Dickinson College
• 1983 National Opera Institute’s Award for Service to American Opera – the highest honor the institute bestows
• 2001 Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2004 National Medal of Arts from the White House^[1]

John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003), and Shaker Loops (1978), a minimalist four-movement work for strings.

Adams’ music, including his two “grand operas” written with poet Alice Goodman, have been called “post-minimalist” for the way they expand on the style pioneered by composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Adams’ Doctor Atomic recently found a new production at the Metropolitan Opera, with his Nixon in China scheduled to follow in 2010.

The Curran Theatre is located in San Francisco and was named by its first owner, Homer Curran.

Curran operated another theatre with his name for several years prior to building the current theatre; however, the original Curran Theatre had various names before and after this time whereas the current theatre has never had another name. It has been claimed that the current theatre’s design is based on six different Broadway houses. It opened in February 1922 and was initially considered a Shubert house. Later, it was a showcase for Theatre Guild presentations. Subsequently, it became closely associated with the Civic Light Opera (CLO) which also operated in Los Angeles. The CLO obtained numerous prestigious bookings as well as producing their own shows (often with star names as the leads).

Curran is also noted for writing the book for the musical “Song of Norway” and co-writing the book for the less-successful “Magdalena.” He eventually left San Francisco for southern California where he rented theatrical lighting.

The ceiling above the main lobby is notable because it was handpainted to look like wood (steel wool was used to fashion a wood grain in the plaster before painting). The main lobby has a marble floor but has long since been covered by carpeting. It is less comfortable to stand on marble, became slippery when it rained, and also made the lobby colder. There are “plugs” built into the lobby floor in which to insert stanchions from which theatre ropes were hung to section off the lobby. It is claimed that its neon sign was the first in San Francisco (which replaced the original Curran sign consisting of lightbulbs). The loge section was modified prior to “Hello, Dolly!”’s first booking at the theatre. Originally, the loge section was similar to the boxes with moveable chairs in sectioned areas. The box-like loges are still evident by what remains of the metal railings in front of the loge section as well as the decorative plaster when viewed from below. The change was made because it increased the seating capacity by about 10 seats in this highly desirable area. The interior main floor lobby no longer exists. Originally, it was changed to a minor degree to accommodate the installation of a sound booth without decreasing the Orchestra seating capacity. Eventually, the lobby space was used to install a larger bar area as well as handicap accessible restrooms.

Up until the mid-1990s, the auditorium used to be much more illuminated. There are two murals in the auditorium that are little-noticed without the enhanced lighting. Both rise from the lower mezzanine level on each side.

The theatre has two front curtains: the decorative green fire curtain in front of a gold curtain. When musicals traditionally utilized each theatre’s front curtains, the first curtain would be raised five minutes prior to the start of the show. There were two coat check rooms: one off to the south of the main floor interior lobby and the other on the balcony (adjacent the ladies’ restroom). There were also two telephone “booths” on the mezzanine lobby—one on each side of the windows. These booths were actually very small rooms with formal doors. The coat check rooms and telephone booths are now used for storage. The theatre also had a central vacuum system. This system is still evident by the connection points on the walls, near the floor. The chandelier was built in San Francisco (by a company that used to be on Mission Street). There is a plaque honoring Arthur Mayer mounted at the entrance to boxes L-M-N. Mayer watched the theatre being built, was hired by Curran as part of the theatre’s opening night staff, and continued working at the theatre until he was nearly 100-years-old.

For many years, the San Francisco Opera performed their annual “Spring Opera” series at the Curran.

In 1977, the Civic Light Opera shifted its operations to the Orpheum Theatre and, by the end of that year, Carole Shorenstein Hays and James M. Nederlander took over the operation of the Curran and launched their Best of Broadway season starting with John Raitt in the national tour of Shenandoah and including the west coast debut of Annie. Later, Shorenstein, a Tony award winning producer, changed the name of her organization, SHN Theatres, and has operated the Curran as the premier theatre destination on the West Coast. In the 1950s, the theatre was used for the interior and exterior scenes of a Broadway theatre in the movie All About Eve. The original main floor interior lobby can be seen in this film. All the theatre scenes were filmed at the Curran except for the dressing room interior. The television series, The Streets of San Francisco, filmed an episode inside and outside the Curran. In the program, the Curran is used as the setting for A.C.T. In reality, A.C.T. operates at the adjacent Geary Theatre which is also visible in some shots. Luminaries such as Lenny Bruce, Mary Martin, Katharine Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Richard Taylor, Ian McKellen, Florence Henderson, Angela Lansbury, Mae West, Dorothy Loudon, Richard Kiley, Sally Ann Howe, Keene Curtis, Victor Garber, Laurence Luckinbill, Lucie Arnaz, Patti LaBelle, Rob Marshall, Georgia Brown, Ben Harney, The Smothers Brothers, Jane Connell, Ricardo Montalban, Werner Klemperer, Ethel Waters, Jean Fenn, Agnes Moorehead, Herb Edelman, Matthew Broderick, Joyce Van Patten, Elizabeth Franz, Jonathan Silverman, Zeljko Ivanek, Marcel Marceau, Ann Miller, Mickey Rooney, Joel Grey, Florence Lacey, Ron Holgate, Lee Roy Reams, Paxton Whitehead, Ann Jillian, Leslie Uggams, Andrea McArdle, Mary Alice, Jack Lemmon, Estelle Parsons, Stacey Keach, Maxwell Caulfield, James Earl Jones, Karen Valentine, Brian Dennehy, Al Pacino, Amanda Plummer, Elizabeth Ashley, Mercedes McCambridge, Stockard Channing, Judith Light and many other stars have played at the Curran. Carol Channing not only played the Curran on mulitple occasions but also claimed it is where she saw first saw a stage show.

Born March 2, 1905, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. Died Jan. 22, 1964, Fort-de-France, Martinique  

American pianist, playwright, and composer known for his unorthodox operas and plays. 

As a child, Blitzstein was a musical prodigy, performing at age 5, composing at 7, and at 15 being introduced as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the 1920s he studied piano with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Arnold Schönberg in Berlin. His first opera,  The Cradle Will Rick (1937), is the story of a capitalist’s resistance to unionization. Controversy surrounded much of Blitzstein’s work, which is experimental in subject matter and characterized by unexpected tonalities. Blitzstein believed fascism should be fought with art, and he had a gift for composing music that was dramatic and meaningful. He wrote Regina (1949), an opera based on Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, and is best known for his translation and musical adaptation of The Threepenny Opera (first performed in 1952) by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Although Blitzstein’s operatic music was in the spotlight because of its political content, it was not popularly acclaimed. He was working on a major opera, Sacco and Vanzetti, at the time of his death.

Catherine Malfitano (born 18 April 1948) is an American operatic soprano. She is generally considered to be one of America’s leading drammatic sopranos. Her vocal versatility, physical grace and dramatic abilities make her a sought-after performer in opera houses and concert halls.

Malfitano was born in New York City, the daughter of a ballet dancer mother, Maria Maslova, and a violinist father, Joseph Malfitano. She attended the High School of Music and Art and studied at the Frank Corsaro Studio and the Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1971.

Operatic career

Malfitano made her professional singing debut in 1972 at the Central City Opera playing the role of Nannetta in Verdi’s Falstaff. She soon appeared with Minnesota Opera, and, in 1974 at New York City Opera, in La bohème, as Mimi. She then appeared with the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1975) and at the Royal Opera House (1976) and in other major European opera houses. In 1978, Malfitano achieved wider recognition in a telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street from NYCO, playing Annina.

Since then, Malfitano has sung at the major opera houses throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Royal Opera House in London, Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Grand Théâtre de Genève in Geneva, Teatro Comunale in Florence, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Berlin State Opera, Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Paris Opéra, Hamburgische Staatsoper in Hamburg, De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam as well as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Houston Grand Opera and the Salzburg Festival.

One of Malfitano’s best-known roles is the title role in the opera Tosca, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1992, performing opposite Plácido Domingo as Mario Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Scarpia. The opera was broadcast live from the actual Roman settings of the opera and viewed by viewers worldwide. She is also associated with the title role in Richard Strauss’s Salome, notably for performing the “Dance of the Seven Veils” ending the dance completely nude, a rarity in opera.[1] She was also fully naked as Jenny in Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny).

Throughout her career, Malfitano has championed the music of American composers, including Carlisle Floyd, William Bolcom, Conrad Susa and Thomas Pasatieri.  Malfitano has also directed operas including Madama Butterfly at Central City Opera in 2005 and The Saint of Bleecker Street in 2007.

She is currently a member of the voice faculty at Manhattan School of Music.