MSU Opera: The Rape of Lucretia
John J. Cali School of Music
Jeffrey Gall, Director | Brent Chancellor, Conductor
In the corridors of power, jealousy and ambition lead to sexual violence and a suicide. Where is meaning in a world where crimes like these go unpunished? In collaboration with the MSU Symphony, MSU Opera explores these questions in a fully staged production of Benjamin Britten’s transcendent 2-act chamber opera. Sung in the original English.
Program
Artists
Jeffrey Gall made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1988, the first countertenor ever to sing at the Met. He sang Tolomeo in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, and in 1994 returned to the Met for Britten’s Death in Venice. He studied voice at the Yale School of Music with Blake Stern, and holds degrees in Slavic languages from Princeton and Yale Universities. He sang with such early music ensembles as the Waverly Consort and Pomerium Musices early in his career and then moved on to solo roles in Baroque and contemporary opera. He has sung principal roles at La Scala, Teatro San Carlo (Naples) and La Fenice in Italy; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Salle Garnier in France; the Monnaie in Brussels; the Netherlands Opera; the Cologne and Frankfurt Operas in Germany; the Canadian Opera, as well as the Spoleto, Edinburgh, Innsbruck, Halle, Schwetzingen, and Bordeaux Festivals. In the United States he has sung at the San Francisco, Chicago Lyric, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Boston Operas, and has made many concert appearances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington. He has recorded for CBS, Harmonia Mundi, Erato, Nonesuch, Titanic, and Smithsonian Records, and appears in the title role on the London video of Peter Sellars’ production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Prof. Gall has conducted clinics and master classes in both standard repertory and early-music techniques at music schools across the United States. In addition, he is a founding member of the Italian vocal ensemble Il Terzo Suono.