Project

HEART OF DARKNESS
Music by Tarik O'Regan
Libretto by Tom Phillips
Based on the novella by Joseph Conrad

About Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is the latest work from composer Tarik O' Regan, whose CD Voices was released to much acclaim in Europe and North America. O' Regan has been singled out by The Observer (London) as "one of the most original and eloquent of young composers... tonal but cutting-edge" and by The London Times, which noted, "O'Regan's gift for lyric flight seems boundless. You might have to reach back to Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, or even Tallis, to find another British vocal work so exultant. He's a composer of generous passion and imagination..." Heart of Darkness is being written as an opera in one act for 8 singers and 13 instruments.

Voted one of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century by The Modern Library, Joseph Conrad's masterpiece Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, a riverboat captain, on a voyage into the African Congo at the height of European colonialism. Astounded by the brutal depravity he witnesses, Marlow becomes obsessed with finding Kurtz, a notorious ivory trader stationed farther along the river.

About the Creators

TARIK O'REGAN (composer)
Born in London in 1978, two-time British Composer Award winner Tarik O'Regan was educated at Oxford University, completing his postgraduate studies at Cambridge. His 2008 recording for the Harmonia Mundi label, Threshold of Night, debuted at #10 in the American Billboard® chart and received two GRAMMY® nominations (Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance). Prior releases include Scattered Rhymes, also on Harmonia Mundi, and his 2006 debut disc, VOICES.

O’Regan divides his time between New York City and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts, having previously held the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship in Music Composition at Columbia University and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard. His compositions have been performed internationally by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Los Angeles Master Chorale. He is currently working on an operatic version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in development with American Opera Projects in New York and OperaGenesis at the Royal Opera House, London. www.tarikoregan.com

AOP Spotlight on Tarik O'Regan

AOP Spotlight on Tarik O'Regan #2

TOM PHILLIPS (librettist)
Tom Phillips, born 1937, is one of Britain's premier artists with an international following. He is a Royal Academician and best known for his use of text within artworks, as in his treated novel A Humument (Thames & Hudson 1980, revised 2005). He is a visitor at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton on a regular basis and is also well known as a writer and composer in his own right. His own opera, Irma , has been frequently performed and twice recorded; he has also acted as set designer for English National Opera. www.tomphillips.co.uk

AOP Spotlight on Tom Phillips

Joseph Conrad (author)
1857-1924, English novelist, b. Berdichev, Russia (now Berdychiv, Ukraine), originally named Jósef Teodor Konrad Walecz Korzeniowski. Born of Polish parents, he is considered one of the greatest novelists and prose stylists in English literature. His notable early works include The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord Jim (1900), and the novellas Youth (1902), Heart of Darkness (1902), and Typhoon (1903). The novels Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), and Chance (1913) are regarded by many as Conrad's greatest works. Of his later works, Victory (1915) is the best known. Marked by a distinctive, opulent prose style, Conrad's novels combine realism and high drama. Their settings include nautical backgrounds as well as high society, and international politics. Conrad was a skilled creator of atmosphere and character; the impact of various situations was augmented by his use of symbolism. He portrayed acutely the conflict between non-western cultures and modern civilization. His characters exhibit the possibilities for isolation and moral deterioration in modern life.

UPCOMING - WORLD PREMIERE! - 2011
in association with Opera East, OperaGenesis and the Royal Opera House
Linbury Studio Theater - Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London, UK
Directed by Edward Dick
Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Oliver Gooch
Developed by American Opera Projects & Opera East Productions
Workshop development in OperaGenesis, an ROH2 initiative, in association with the Genesis Foundation

May 27, 2010 - 8pm
Concert scenes from opera
21c Arias presented by Beth Morrison Productions
Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn
16 Main Street (corner of Water St.)
Brooklyn, NY
DIRECTIONS

Conducted by J. David Jackson
Performers: Hai-Ting Chinn

April 22, 2010 - 7pm
Piano-vocal reading of opera
in association with Opera East
Boas Charitable Trust concert series
22 Mansfield Street, London W1G 9NR

Conductor: Oliver Gooch
Repetiteur: Robert Bottriel

Performers: Jeanine De Bique, Miranda Westcott, Philip Sheffield, Darren Abrahams, Steven Ebel, Alex Ashworth, Ronan Collett, James Gower

This piano/vocal reading was made possible in part with funds from the
National Endowment for the Arts and the hospitality of Bob and Elisabeth Boas

April 15 & 17, 2010
Semi-staged excerpts of opera
ROH2 EXPOSURE series
Linbury Studio Theater - Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London, UK
Music Direction: Oliver Gooch; Directed by Edward Dick.
Performances by Miranda Westcott, Darren Abrahams, Steven Ebel

Aug 3 - 8, 2008
Staged concert workshop of opera
in association with OperaGenesis and the Royal Opera House
Linbury Studio Theater - Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London, UK
Music Direction: Oliver Gooch; Directed by Edward Dick.
Performances by Robert Hoyt, Kevin Burdette, Angela Caesar, Liora Grodnikaite, Peter Van Hulle, Darren Abrahams, Paul Carey-Jones, Roderick-Earle

Nov. 9 & 11, 2007
Concert reading of scenes
in association with the Institute for Advanced Study
Nov. 9 - Institute for Advanced Study - Wolfensohn Hall Princeton, NJ
Nov. 11 - South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY
Music Direction: Steven Osgood and Oliver Gooch
Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips will speak in a panel discussion about the piece.

May 19, 2007
Orchestral reading of scenes
in association with Wall to Wall Opera
Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway - NYC

November 3-4, 2006
Concert reading and libretto reading of scenes w/ panel discussion
South Oxford Space Brooklyn, NY (11/3)
Institute for Advanced Study - Wolfensohn Hall Princeton, NJ (11/4)
Music Direction and piano accompaniment: Steven Osgood, Kelly Horsted
Performers: Jeanine DeBique, Jack Anderson White, Jessica Miller, Benjamin Sosland, Ross Benoliel, Robert Hoyt, and Michael Zegarski. Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips spoke in a panel discussion about the piece.

June 2-3, 2006
Concert reading of scenes w/ panel discussion
South Oxford Space Brooklyn, NY
Music Direction and piano accompaniment: Steven Osgood, Kelly Horsted
Performers: Kyle Pfortmiller, Kevin Burdette, Amy van Roekel, Anne Graczyk, Robert Hoyt, Chad Johnson, and Michael Zegarski.
Tarik O’Regan spoke in a panel discussion about the piece.