Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek: Proving Up

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John Moore as Pa (whose heartiness devolves into a kind of heartlessness) and Talise Trevigne (who is heartbreaking in her grieved outpouring in Part 4) anchor the performance as the parents;... — Fanfare, March/April 2021 More…

Release Date: 28th Aug 2020
Catalogue No: PTC5186754
Label: Pentatone
Length: 79 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

August 2020
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2020

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Mazzoli: Proving Up

Work length4:41

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

John Moore (baritone)
International Contemporary Ensemble
Christopher Rountree

Prologue (Uncle Sam's Farm)

Track length4:41

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Proving Up, Pt. 1

Work length9:39

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Talise Trevigne (soprano), Michael Slattery (tenor), Abigail Nims (mezzo-soprano), Cree Carrico (soprano)

The Settler’s Scar

Track length9:39

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Proving Up, Pt. 2

Work length7:16

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Miles Will Prove Up

Track length7:16

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Proving Up, Pt. 3

Work length10:05

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

How Pa Obtained the Glass

Track length10:05

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

Proving Up, Pt. 4

Work length7:01

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Strange Dreams

Track length7:01

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Proving Up, Pt. 5

Work length12:38

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

Nore at a Soft Canter

Track length12:38

$3.00

$3.85

$5.25

Proving Up, Pt. 6

Work length20:16

Album only

Andrew Harris (bass)

Sodbuster

Track length20:16

Album only

Proving Up

Work length8:07

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Epilogue (All That's Required)

Track length8:07

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

About
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About

Opera Omaha presents Missy Mazzoli’s opera Proving Up (2018) in its premiere recording with the International Contemporary Ensemble, and conductor Christopher Rountree. Crowned as “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” by Time Out New York, Mazzoli is one of today’s most exciting young composers. Her music is state of the art, frequently employing electronics, but simultaneously full of nostalgia and melancholy. Mazzoli has received considerable acclaim for her operatic compositions, including Breaking the Waves (2016) and Song from the Uproar (2012). For Proving Up, she works together with librettist Royce Vavrek. Proving Up is based on a short story by Karen Russell, and offers a surreal and disquieting commentary on the American dream through the story of a Nebraskan family homesteading in the late 19th century. Commissioned by the Washington National Opera, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, and Opera Omaha, the piece has been receiving rave reviews, and will be presented in several of the biggest US opera houses in the coming years. The Washington Post called it “harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time”. Royce Vavrek returns to PENTATONE after The House Without a Christmas Tree (2018, music by Ricky Ian Gordon). Missy Mazzoli, Opera Omaha, the International Contemporary Ensemble and Christopher Rountree all make their PENTATONE debut.

Reviews

March/April 2021

John Moore as Pa (whose heartiness devolves into a kind of heartlessness) and Talise Trevigne (who is heartbreaking in her grieved outpouring in Part 4) anchor the performance as the parents; and Michael Slattery gives Miles the right combination of misguided bravado and vulnerability. Christopher Rountree and his chamber orchestra play the music as if they’ve lived with it for years.

October 2020

Mazzoli’s Proving Up is one of the most successful and striking of a new generation of American operas…her score is rich in percussion, touches on folk fiddle tunes and includes a small complement of winds and a trumpet, along with piano, harpsichord and harp. But the dominant texture is one of smooth, sustained, tremulous sounds, which underscore the eeriness of [the] story.

January 2021

The opera’s idiom is perhaps best described as consisting of uncommon but exceedingly effective sonorities…Captivating and beautifully crafted, this is nonetheless some of the most ominous music I have heard in a long time...Andrew Harris brings the role [of the Sodbuster] compellingly to life, his powerful, menacing bass suggestive of a frighteningly evil presence...It’s an experience not to be missed.

August 2020

An unsettling tale of Nebraskan settlers chasing the American Dream, Mazzoli’s taut one-act opera is as bleak as it is beautiful, its soundworld echoing the uncanny chill of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and the American pastoral of Copland’s The Tender Land; the writing for the symbiotic two young daughters of the struggling Zegner family (shades of the Nieces in Peter Grimes here) is especially memorable, and Michael Slattery is wonderfully wide-eyed and plangent in the pivotal role of their brother Miles.

Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek: Proving Up

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