“Cold Mountain” Opera Goes Public
David Patrick Stearns writes: ‘Keeping a grand opera under wraps is like hiding a brontosaurus. For starters, why would you want to? But after years of Curtis Institute workshops closed to everyone who didn’t absolutely need to be there, the Jennifer Higdon/Gene Scheer opera “Cold Mountain” had its first public preview on Monday at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (It opens Aug. 1 at the Santa Fe Opera, and will be performed in February 2016 by Opera Philadelphia.) Now it’s finished and the authors no longer need to keep it private. “It was totally cool getting to hear it out of my brain and coming from the actual singers,” composer Higdon said. “We only came together at 3 p.m. this afternoon. Some of the singers I hadn’t met yet. My music is fairly hard, too.” Even on a small, bare stage in the Guggenheim’s subterranean auditorium – and with only piano accompaniment – the Civil War-era theatricality was apparent.’
