Pre-Opera Talks

presented by Joy and Ronald Mankoff

Want to learn more about the opera you are seeing? Want to beat the traffic and enjoy a beverage while you learn? Join TDO for the Joy and Ronald Mankoff Pre-Opera Talks one hour before each TDO performance.

Pre-Opera Talks are informative and interactive 30-minute lectures featuring opera experts from all over DFW. Pre-Opera Talks are FREE with a ticket to a TDO performance and are guaranteed to increase your knowledge and enjoyment of opera.

Things to know about Pre-Opera Talks before you go:

• Joy and Ronald Mankoff Pre-Opera Talks are held in Hamon Hall (located in eastern corner of the lobby) beginning one hour before each TDO performance in the Winspear Opera House (6:30 PM for evening performances; 1:00 PM on Sunday Matinees).
• Seating is first-come, first-served and Hamon Hall can accommodate approximately 200 attendees.
• Attendees are free to bring in food or drink purchased at the Winspear Opera House.

2012-2013 Season Speakers

Aida

October 26, 28, 31, November 3, 9, 11, 2012

Michael Heaston

Michael Heaston is a collaborative pianist, vocal coach, and artistic administrator who principally divides his time between New York and Dallas. Maintaining active associations with The Dallas Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, and The Metropolitan Opera, he has quickly established himself as one of the most versatile artists of his generation.

Mr. Heaston returns to The Dallas Opera for the 2012–13 season as Head of Music Staff and Assistant Conductor for productions of Aida, Turandot, and the 25th anniversary presentation of Argento’s The Aspern Papers. In this, his sixth season with the company, he also celebrates the completion of 23 productions, some of which have included Salome, Porgy & Bess, Tristan und Isolde, Così fan tutte, The Lighthouse, Madama Butterfly, and the critically-acclaimed world premiere of Moby-Dick.

He is the Director of the Young Artists Program and Head of Music Staff at The Glimmerglass Festival. Now in his seventh year of appointment, he remains one of the youngest people to assume the directorship of any major training program to date.

Mr. Heaston also continues his work as Score Consultant for the Metropolitan Opera’s Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Live in HD movie theater transmission series, including this season’s Aida. Past Live in HD credits include The Enchanted Island, Faust, Die Walküre, Il trovatore, Capriccio, La fanciulla del West, Der Rosenkavalier, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Tristan und Isolde, La Cenerentola, Hansel and Gretel, Dr. Atomic, and La rondine, to name a few.

On the concert stage, Mr. Heaston is in high demand as a collaborator with many of today’s most important artists. He has most recently appeared with internationally-acclaimed dramatic mezzo soprano, Dolora Zajick. He has also partnered Rod Gilfry, Ailyn Pérez, Stephen Costello, Noah Stewart, and Laura Claycomb, to name a few. He also enjoys a long-term collaboration with Katharine Goeldner, mezzo soprano, and Amy Morris, flute as a founding member of The Prairie Song Project. The trio has performed to great acclaim in Scotland, England, Austria, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota.

Mr. Heaston has been a judge for The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, The Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition, and the Opera Columbus Irma M. Cooper Vocal Competition. A sought-after clinician, he has served as Artist in Residence, and presented master classes, at Southern Methodist University, Drake University, The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Abilene Christian University, and Dordt College. He was invited by Opera America to serve as pianist for the master classes of Harolyn Blackwell and William Burden. Additionally, he has played for the master classes of baritone Håkan Hagegård and tenor Stanford Olson. Mr. Heaston has served as collaborative pianist for the studio of operatic luminary Diana Soviero in New York. He has also played in the studios of Ruth Falcon and Ruth Golden.

Mr. Heaston’s principal teachers have included Margo Garrett, Brian Zeger, Timothy Lovelace, and Chiu-Ling Lin. He has coached with Karl Paulnack. He holds the Master of Music in Accompanying & Coaching from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and completed undergraduate studies in Piano Pedagogy and Arts Administration at Drake University in his hometown of Des Moines, IA.

Turandot

April 5, 7, 10, 13, 19, 21, 2013

Hank Hammett

Director of Opera at the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University

American lyric baritone Hank Hammett is an artist teacher, award-winning director and acting coach who has trained singing actors in the organic fields of music, voice, theatre arts, acting technique, opera, musical theatre and strategic performance skills for over two decades.

Hammett has worked on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in television and film, and at the world’s most prestigious opera houses and festivals, including The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), Gran Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona), De Nederlandse Opera (Amsterdam), Opéra de Montréal, Bilbao Opera, Concert Royal, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Los Angeles Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Glimmerglass Opera, The Dallas Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Portland Opera, Connecticut Opera and Boston Lyric Opera.

The recipient of numerous international awards, grants and prizes for singing, Hammett’s honors include First Prize in the Liederkranz Competition in New York and the Grand Prix in the Concours International d’Oratorio et de Lied in France. He made his professional operatic debut as Mercutio in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with the San Antonio Festival and his professional recital debut at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, partnered by Dale Dietert at the piano.

A native of Dallas, Hammett is currently Director of Opera at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and is the author/composer/director of Opera in a Box: Follow Your Dream. He frequently gives master classes at prominent universities and training programs and has worked with the Young Artists of The Houston Grand Opera Studio and The Dallas Opera.

Hammett is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where he was awarded B.M. and M.M. degrees. He received further musical study at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies (Aldeburgh, England) and the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara, California), and he studied acting at T. Schreiber Studio and MTB Studio in New York. His principal teachers include Dale Dietert, Gérard Souzay, Martial Singher, Mignon Dunn, Elizabeth Mannion and Mary Boyer.

The Aspern Papers

April 12, 14, 17, 20, 28, 2013

Christopher Anderson

Associate Professor of Sacred Music at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Christopher Anderson is an organist and scholar with particular interests in early musical modernism, modern German history and philosophy, the organ’s position in Western culture, and the composer Max Reger. He has written extensively on Reger and his music in two monographs (Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition, Ashgate 2003; and Selected Writings of Max Reger, Routledge 2006) and many essays in international journals. Recently, he has translated into English the second volume of Jon Laukvik’s Historical Performance Practice in Organ Playing (Carus, 2010) and edited the first complete survey of organ music in the twentieth century (Twentieth-Century Organ Music, Routledge 2011). He serves on the Governing Board for Research and Publications of the Organ Historical Society.

Dr. Anderson is active as an organ recitalist, with emphases in nineteenth- and twentieth-century repertoires. He is Associate Professor of Sacred Music at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where he teaches organ and courses in history and analysis in the Perkins School of Theology and the Meadows School of the Arts. He holds the PhD in Musicology and Performance Practice from Duke University.

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Upcoming Mainstage Performances

A Pre-Opera Talk will be held one hour before each of these performances in Hamon Hall at the Winspear Opera House.