"Dream Team" reunites for Ricky Ian Gordon's Green Sneakers

Cellist Kathryn Bates Williams and baritone Jesse Blumberg

If you missed the amazing performance of Ricky Ian Gordon's one-man opera Green Sneakers in San Francisco, you'll have another chance to see it on May 10 & 11, 2012 at Opera Piccola of San Antonio.

The opera was written by Gordon for barihunk Jesse Blumberg, who will be reprising the role for these performances. The San Francisco performances were transformative for the piece when the sensational young director John de los Santos was brought in for the West Coast premiere of the opera. He creatively integrated the string quartet into the action, creating some of the most magical and emotionally compelling moments seen on an opera stage in years.    

Jesse Blumberg and the brilliant Del Sol Quartet

Opera Piccola of San Antonio was founded in 2012 by Mark A. Richter, with the intent of building a professional chamber opera for San Antonio. The company has produced Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, Mollicone's Face on the Barroom Floor, Menotti's The Telephone and Donizetti's Don Pasquale.  Operas are performed in English and ticket prices are quite affordable.

The company will also be performing Menotti's The Medium, as well as a double-bill of Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne and Robert X. Rodriguez's La Curandera. Visit their website for additional information or tickets.  

Green Sneakers, which is broken into nineteen songs and runs about 80 minutes is scored for Baritone, String Quartet, and Empty Chair. It premiered on July 15, 2008 in Vail, Colorado and has had a number of subsequent performances since, mostly with Blumberg. 

Remarkably, the opera, which deals with AIDS,  didn't have its New York or San Francisco premiere until this year. Jesse Blumberg performed the piece at Lincoln Center on April 6th with the Voxare Quartet and on February 19th with the Del Sol Quartet in San Francisco.

Ricky Ian Gordon recently completed an opera of Giorgio Bassani's Garden of the Finzi Continis with librettist Michael Korie. He is wrapping up commissions for the Metropolitan Opera with playwright Lynn Nottage, as well as new operas for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Houston Grand Opera. Last year,  he completed a new operatic monologue for Renee Fleming, Harper's other monologue from Tony Kushner's "Angels In America."