Spotlight Sunday Feature - Tony Solitro
Welcome back to Spotlight Sundays! Hartford Opera Theater is proud to introduce composer, Tony Solitro! Tony is the composer of She's Fabulous, which will be featured at our New in November Festival on 11/18! We hope you enjoy learning about Tony and what Opera Without Borders means to him.
To learn more about NIN8 and to purchase tickets, visit our website: New in November 8
Tony Solitro is a composer of concert and stage music that combines rich lyricism, visceral rhythmic energy, and a varied harmonic palette. His passion for literature and drama has led him to write several song cycles, chamber pieces for voice and mixed ensemble, choral settings, incidental music for theatrical productions, and works for the operatic stage.
Recent highlights include: No More in Darkness, for Ensemble Scorrevole; Breaking Point, premiered at the Cortona Sessions for New Music; She’s Fabulous, premiered by Boston Opera Collaborative; More Beautiful Than Night, a song cycle for Lebanese-American tenor Roy Hage (Resident Artist, Academy of Vocal Arts); Shadow Confrontations, a string quintet for bassist Joseph Conyers (Assistant Principal, Philadelphia Orchestra) that was recorded in September 2016 with the Daedalus Quartet; Les Bouteilles de la Table Ronde, a surrealist drinking song for mezzo-soprano commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia for Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson’s Consider the Belvedere installation; Spectra of Morning, for magnetic resonator piano, given its west coast premiere by Richard Valitutto on a concert presented by People Inside Electronics in Los Angeles and its UK and European premiere by Ben Powell at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England; and the world premiere of Heroes and Beasts, a concerto for violoncello and chamber orchestra, with soloist Branson Yeast and the Litha Symphony Orchestra in Manhattan.
Other notable performances of Tony’s compositions: Time in Eternity at the International Guitar Research Centre (University of Surrey, Guildford, UK); Automata at the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts (commissioned and premiered by Network for New Music); War Wedding at the Red Note New Music Festival (Illinois State University); and—as the beneficiary of an American Composers Forum’s New Voices commission—The Curious Habit of Madre Usimbalda in Città della Pieve and Città di Saluzzo, Italy (International Opera Theater).
Tony has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Brevard Music Center. He earned his Ph.D. as a recipient of the George Crumb Music Fellowship and the Benjamin Franklin Teaching Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.M. from the Longy School of Music on a Nadia and Lili Boulanger Scholarship. To hear recordings, see videos, and explore his composition catalogue, visit www.tonysolitro.com.
Upcoming Engagements include a commission by Boston Opera Collaborative to write a new opera vignette for three singers and mixed octet. The world premiere of Triangle—presented in partnership with The Boston New Music Initiative—will be featured on their popular Opera Bites program, November 10-12 in Cambridge, MA.
Here is what Tony had to say about Opera Without Borders:
Opera Without Borders is a mindset. An aspiration. A challenge. It is far more difficult to break down barriers than to build walls. Yet artists, composers, and performers continually strive to make opera more diverse and inclusive.
We ask ourselves, “How can we touch hearts and open minds?” The answer: “Erase borders.”
Opera is collaborative. Political. Socially relevant. Most importantly, opera is for everyone. New stories are waiting to be told. Marginalized voices are ready to sing. Audiences are eager to listen. Now is the time for artists to create, perform, unite communities, and reach beyond borders.
