The El Paso Museum of Art joins the El Paso Opera to present Golden Age: Birth of Operaon Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 8:00 PM. American tenor Jeffrey Lentz, Mexican video artist Cocol Bernal, El Paso Opera Director David Grabarkewitz, and musician and conductor Benjamin Loeb come together for this exploration of the beginning of opera and how we began to tell stories with music.The concert is funded in part with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and United Bank of El Paso del Norte.
The performance is featured in tandem with the current exhibit, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Golden Age Painting in Europe 1600-1800 from the Speed Art Museum, on view through January 6, 2013. The exhibit, generously presented by ScottHulse and Kirk and Judy Robison,includes more than 70 paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries by Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French and English artists, including masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Thomas Gainsborough.
“The El Paso Museum of Art is honored to present such a high caliber exhibit to the El Paso community. To complement and enhance the experience of viewing these masterpieces, we are excited to present this special performance with the El Paso Opera, exploring the beginnings of opera as an art form during the Golden Age,” said Michael Tomor, Ph.D., Director of the El Paso Museum of Art. “We are certain this will be a delightful and insightful evening for our guests.”
“We hope this will be a fun way for both opera enthusiasts and novices to learn the origins of this dynamic art form. Jeffrey Lentz and Cocol Bernal are artistic visionaries, marrying the visual arts with music and modern technology in a completely new and distinct way,” said David Grabarkewitz, Artistic Director of the El Paso Opera. “We are thrilled to partner with the El Paso Museum of Art on this unique exploration of avibrant art form for what will undoubtedly be an unforgettable experience.”
One of the nation’s preeminent tenors, Jeffrey Lentz has graced the stages of many of the world’s finest opera and concert houses, including London’s Barbican Hall, Carnegie Hall, NewYork City Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Jeffrey first garnered international attention during his European debut in 1996 at the Opera de Monte Carlo performing the title role in the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray. His performances on PBS include the world premiere Andre Previn’sA Streetcar Named Desire, and a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of New York City Opera’s production of Britten’s Paul Bunyan. In 2004, Jeffrey received a Grammy Award nomination for his work in Ed Thomas’, Desire Under the Elms. Jeffrey makes his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he serves as the ongoing Artist in Residence for the Departments of Theatre and Music at Albright College.
Cocol Bernal, a Mexican visual artist who also lives and works in Reading, Pennsylvania, began her artistic career at the tender age of seven in the Philippines where, during a vacation with friends, her drawings of naked women in the shower were burned by her host family for indecency. Bernal was condemned to a week without dessert. From this painful beginning came a career involving surrealism, antique anatomical drawings, animal bones, human teeth and road kill, manifested in oil paintings, photography, mixed media, videos and action figures, which can be found in private collections all over the world.
In 2002, Bernal teamed up with stage director Jeffrey Lentz at Albright College, where she continues to create art involving unusual material and video projections –now on stage. To date, Jeff and Cocol have worked on 20 award-winning projects, most prominent among which are Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Kennedy Center, Sarah Ruhl’sEurydice, and, most recently, a critically hailed production of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire.
Bernal has also penned two original plays on the subject of art, memory and travel with Lentz: You Are Here and Fish Out of Water, both of which premiered at Albright College’s Wachovia Theatre. Bernal and Lentz have also collaborated on several staged concert evenings as part of The Nexus Project. Highlights from these interdisciplinary performance events include: Utopia Parkway, an exploration of artist Joseph Cornell’s work with manipulated imagery set to Faure’s “La bonne chanson,” and Wonderlust, an interactive digital video project animating images collected from Google Earth against Schubert’s haunting song cycle, “Die SchöneMüllerin.”
Serving as Music Director and musical accompaniment for the performance is Benjamin Loeb. A native Texan, Loeb is an accomplished conductor, accompanist, soloist, arranger, and educator.As the Associate Conductor of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, Loeb founded and served as both Executive and Music Director of the El Paso Symphony Youth Orchestras – El Paso’s only national-level, NEA-recognized, multiple-orchestra system serving the best young musicians in the El Paso, southern New Mexico and Juarez region. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of the International Conducting Workshop and Festival, now in its ninth year, hosted by orchestras around the world.
Tickets for The Golden Age: The Birth of Opera are $25 for a single EPMA member, $40 for a single non-member, and $75 for non-member couple. Tickets can be purchased by calling (915) 532-1707. Seating is limited to the first 100 guests. Attendees are invited to a post-reception and free admission that evening to the Golden Age exhibit.
An encore presentation of The Golden Age: The Birth of Opera will be offered on Sunday, December 2 at 2:00 PM at the El Paso Museum of Art. For tickets or information, please call 915-581-5534 or visit www.epopera.org.
To learn more about The Golden Age exhibit and the many related special events including lectures, zip tours, concerts and the World Cinema Series, please visit