FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

World Premiere of GRÂCE, a new opera in English by Roger Rudenstein

Opera about AIDS

Gay man dying of AIDS meets 18^th Century courtesan in a world somewhere between fantasy and reality (for mature audiences)

June 18 - 26 at Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, Durrell Hall featuring Ryan Turner, tenor, Karyl Ryczek, soprano and the orchestra from Boston’s Emmanuel Music. Opening night benefit for AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts

Opera on the Edge announces the world premiere of GRÂCE, a new opera in English by New England composer Roger Rudenstein. Lewis is an AIDS patient in Manhattan in the 1980’s. In his dreams he befriends the Countess DuBarry, a doomed 18^th Century courtesan. The audience will both laugh and cry as Lewis shuttles between the French Court and his tragic experiences with his family and lover. Beautiful music, sumptuous costumes and innovative design bring the guilt, love, and passionate emotions of the story to life.

Performances of GRÂCE will take place in June at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, 820 Massachusetts Ave in Central Square, Cambridge (Central Square Station T stop, Red Line; ample, free or inexpensive parking). Tickets will be on sale at the Cambridge Y in mid-April by telephone (617-661-9622) or at the front desk and on the Internet at www.ticketweb.com.

The production is fully staged, with professional singers from the Boston area and the orchestra from Emmanuel Music, one of Boston’s pre-eminent music organizations, under the baton of Timothy Steele.

Opening night is Friday, June 18, starting with a 7 PM reception, including refreshments and prominent speakers and will be presented as a benefit for the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, a community-based AIDS service organization whose mission is to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and optimize the health of those already infected. Additional performances will be Sunday, June 20 at 2 PM, and Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, June 22, 24 and 26 at 8 PM. Tickets cost $50 for Friday night’s benefit with performance and $35 for the performance alone. All other performances are $35.

Rudenstein’s opera is based on the 1988 Durham Stage Company’s original production of GRÂCE written by New Hampshire natives John Carmichael and Edouard Langlois. The play was critically acclaimed by New Hampshire Public Radio as “the best produced new play of the year.” The play depicts its characters with humor and fantasy, amid the harsh reality of a contemporary American dysfunctional family. It explores the nature of love, the paradoxes of human sexuality, the notion of redemption and the mystery of the death experience. It is also a moving appeal against bigotry and intolerance which are on the increase today.

The play took its inspiration from Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" where DuBarry's last moments are described to Prince Myshkin: "She was terrified...she did not understand what was happening. But when [the executioner] seized her head, and pushed her under the knife with his foot, she cried out: 'Wait a moment! wait a moment, monsieur!' Well, because of that moment of bitter suffering, perhaps the Saviour will pardon her other faults, for one cannot imagine a greater agony...give rest to that great sinner, the Comtesse DuBarry, and to all unhappy ones like her."

The composer attended a revised production of the play in 2001 in Dover, New Hampshire at the Edwin Booth Theatre. He was drawn to the compelling comic and spiritual development of its characters, and the “operatic” overlapping of its dialogue, especially in the fantasy scenes. The play, larger than life, called out for this musical adaptation.

Although a modern work, Rudenstein’s opera contains tonal, accessible but complex music. Rudenstein’s previous works have been performed in New York and New Hampshire. The 1999 production of his opera ULYSSES, based on the famous novel of James Joyce, was described as follows by the Portsmouth Herald: “Rudenstein has penned a score that manages to parallel the profundity that's imbedded, sentence by sentence, in the writing of Joyce.”

The cast consists of local Boston-area singers. Ryan Turner, tenor, will sing the role of Lewis and Karyl Ryczek, soprano, the role of DuBarry. Other cast members are Deborah Rentz-Moore, mezzo, and baritones Donald Wilkinson, Nikolas Nackley and John Whittlesey. Billy Butler is stage director and production and costume design will be supplied by Edouard Langlois.

About Opera on the Edge

Opera on the Edge, founded in 2004, is the production organization of composer Roger Rudenstein. A veteran producer and dramatist, as well as composer, Rudenstein founded the company in hopes of winning an audience for a contemporary opera theatre that speaks to today’s issues and concerns and is composed in a modern, tonal and accessible musical idiom.

About AIDS Action

Founded in 1983, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts is a not-for-profit, community-based health organization whose mission is to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and optimize the health of those already infected. Through a cooperative and mutually supportive effort between over 70 staff and hundreds of volunteers, AIDS Action seeks to assist and constructively work with people of all cultures by providing services, education, advocacy and prevention.

AIDS Action accomplishes that mission by providing support services for people living with AIDS and HIV; educating the public and health professionals about how to prevent HIV transmission; and advocating for fair and effective AIDS policy at the city, state and federal levels. AIDS Action provides free, confidential services to 2,500 men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS.

About the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre (Durrell Hall)

Originally opened in 1897, this lovely Victorian theatre was extensively renovated in 2001, after having lain dormant for thirty years. The YMCA staff and Board decided the need for civil, lecture and theatre space in the City of Cambridge was great and vowed to install up-to-date lighting, sound, electric and video technology, while still maintaining the architectural structure and beauty from the nineteenth century. Historical preservation was so successful that in May of 2003, the Cambridge Historical Commission presented the YMCA with an award for outstanding achievement in historic preservation. Rudenstein’s opera will be the first opera production to be performed in Durrell Hall.

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