Victoria Bond joins the Indie Opera Podcast team for a broad and fascinating discussion about her career and her operas. With infectious charm and humor, she shares stories about singing in the NYCO children’s chorus, visits from the hoi polloi of the classical music world to her childhood apartment, studying acting at UCLA, being introduced to conducting by Leonard Slatkin, and building an expansive and impressive career despite the institutionalized misogyny and sexism of the music business.
NOTES
- Artistic Director of Welltone New Music
- Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival
- She is principal Guest Conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago
- Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center lecturer
- HD broadcasts at Guild Hall in East Hampton lecturer
- “Clara”, a new opera about Clara Schumann
- Berlin Philharmonic’s Easter Festival
- Baden-Baden, Germany, April 2019.
WHAT WE’VE SEEN:
Victoria
- Road Show, a musical
- Stephen Sondheim, music & lyrics
- John Weidman, book
- Jonathan Tunick, orchestrations
- New York City Center
- Encores! Off Center
- About the Mizner Brothers
- The Public Theater, original NYC premiere production
- John Doyle
- Classic Stage Company
Walker
- A Hard Day’s Night
- Beatle’s movie musical from 1964
- Richard Lester, director
Chuck
- The Farewell, a movie
- Lulu Wang, director/writer
- Awkwafina, lead role
- The Constitution
- Vertical Player Repertory as part of
- New York Opera Fest 2019
- Ben Yarmolinsky, composer
- Peter Szep, conductor
- Stonewall, a new opera
- New York City Opera
- Iain Bell, composer
- Mark Campbell, librettist
- Jessica Fishenfeld, Leah
- Liz Bouk, Sarah
- Ink, a new play with music
- about Rupert Murdoch and The SUN
- James Graham, playwright
- Rupert Goold, director
- Bertie Carvel, Rupert Murdoch
- Jonny Lee Miller, Larry Lamb
- Adam Cork, original music & sound design
- A Strange Loop, a new musical
- Playwrights Horizons
- Michael R. Jackson, book/music/lyrics
- 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant
- William Finn
- In Trousers
- Falsettos
- A New Brain
- The Magic Flute by Mozart & Schikaneder
- Mostly Mozart Festival – Lincoln Center
- Suzanne Andrade & Barrie Kosky, co-directors
- Aleksandra Olczyk, Queen of the Night
- Aaron Blake, Tamino
- Vera-Lotte Bocker, Pamina
- Styled after the original American silent movie stars:Buster Keaton, Louise Brooks, etc.
Victoria Bond
- Jane Bond, her mother was an international concert pianist and accompanist, who also taught singers at the American Theater Wing
- Philip Bond, her father was an operatic bass, and part of NYCO’s resident company
- Victoria was a member of the New York City Opera Children’s Chorus
- Carmen by Bizet
- Julius Rudel, conductor
- La Boheme by Puccini
- The Moon by Carl Orff
- Carmen by Bizet
- Jane Bond studied with Bartok in Budapest, Hungary after winning the Liszt Competition.
- Mikrokosmos, piano suite by Bartok
- Victoria took piano lessons at the Mannes School of Music in NY, then went back to California to Hollywood High School and continued on for college at UCLA as a theater major for acting. For Graduate school she went to The Juilliard School for composition and conducting
- Richard Engel, drama teacher at Hollywood High
- The Crucible by Miller
- Salome by Wilde
- Wozzeck by Buchner
- Jean Morel, her professor of conducting at Juilliard
- Roger Sessions, her composition teacher at Juilliard
- Victoria had done ghostwriting and orchestration for movies and documentaries for Universal & Metromedia Studios LA:
- The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau for example
- Journey to Truck Lagoon
- Paul Glass, composer/orchestrator
- Stewart Copeland, composer – the best way to learn to write for opera is writing movie music, dialogue cues (underscoring).
- The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau for example
- Role Models/Teachers
- Samuel Barber was her role model to be a composer and singer William Vennard was her voice teach at University of Southern California
- Marilyn Horne’s teacher
- Aspen
- Jennie Tourel, became her voice teacher in Aspen
- Leonard Slatkin became her first conducting teacher in Aspen
- Senior Citizens Orchestra of Los Angeles, California
- Victoria became the guest conductor after her Aspen studies.
- Eve Queler, one of the first major female conductors in America
- Bel Canto Opera Company
- Victoria’s first opera conducting job as artistic director and everything else, coaching singers, contracting musicians, managing the books…
- Manon Lescaut by Daniel Auber
- Temistocle by Johann Christian Bach
- Halka by Stanisław Moniuszko
- Clara, The Life and Loves of Clara Schumann, a new opera
- Victoria Bond, composer/orchestrator
- Barbara Zinn Krieger, librettist
- Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival, Baden-Baden, Germany
- Friedrich Wieck, her father as well as her teacher
- Robert Schumann, began as her father’s student for piano, however after an accident he switched his focus to composition.
- Scenes from Goethe’s Faust, an oratorio
- Johannes Brahms, the composer that became their life-long friend
- I’m Not Getting Married Today from Company by Sondheim was the basis for one of the second act scenes in Clara between her, Brahms and Robert.
- Death and the Maiden by Franz Schubert
- Brahms House, located in Baden-Baden, Germany
- Barbara Zinn Krieger, writer/producer
- New York City Children’s Theater, founder
- formerly known as Making Books Sing
- Executive Director & Founder of The Vineyard Theatre
- Barbara Zinn Krieger, writer/producer
- A Shelter In Our Car, 2007
- Book and Lyrics by SOPHIE JAFF
- Music by ROBERT L. WILSON III
- Based on the book by MONICA GUNNING
- Directed and choreographed by RAJENDRA RAMOON MAHARAJ
- Music Directed by Victoria Bond
- Nancy B. Reich, author
- Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman
- This biography published in1985 of Clara Schumann established her as an important musical figure independent of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann, and helped turn the musicological spotlight on female composers
- Theater for Clara’s premiere in April 2019:
- Festspielhaus of Baden-Baden
- Michael Hasel, music director
- Carmen C. Kruse, director
- Otello by Verdi, also part of Easter Festival 2019
- Robert Wilson, production
- Zubin Mehta, conductor
- Stuart Skelton, Otello
- Sonya Yoncheva, Desdemona
- Andrei Serban, director
- A production of Otello at Paris Opera
- Walker Lewis, assistant director
- Welltone Music & Cutting Edge Concerts
- Pierre Boulez, conductor and mentor
- Teaching at Juilliard
- Contemporary Music Ensemble of Juilliard
- Music Director of the NY Philharmonic
- Perspective Encounters, a concert program series where he would interview the composers on stage and then sometimes play their work again.
- Teaching at Juilliard
- Victoria was music director and conductor of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Southwest Virginia Opera
- She was offered one of the Portrait Concerts at Greenwich House.
- They liked what she had done and offered her to create her own series.
- Close Encounters was the original title of her concert series
- It was renamed Cutting Edge Concerts, eventually the series was moved from Greenwich House to the Thalia Theater at Symphony Space.
- The German Forum
- Clara will be receiving two concert performances
- Symphony Space Thalia Theater – November 8,2019
- The Church of the Messiah Parish Hall, Rhinebeck, NY 11/10/19
- Mrs. President, an opera about Victoria Woodhull
- Victoria Bond, composer
- Hillary Bell, librettist
- dell’Arte Opera Ensemble 17th Summer Festival
- Scenes are being presented on August 21st & 24th
- Summer Shares at La MaMa
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Frederick Douglas
- Henry Ward Beecher
- Susan B. Anthony
- Cutting Edge Concerts will present Mrs. President in April 2020
- Anchorage Opera, 2012 a semi-staged production
- As Victoria sings the lyrics: “Arise, arise” there were a whole group female politicians there for opening night who then came out from the wings lining up along the stage.
- Rochester Lyric Opera presented scenes with piano in 2017.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO:
Peter
- The Constitution will be produced in September 2019
- The Millay Sisters
Walker
- Wozzeck at Metropolitan Opera
- William Kentridge, director and designer
Brooke (missing saw)
- Blue, a new opera
- Glimmerglass Festival 2019
- Jeanine Tesori, composer
- Tazewell Thompson, librettist and director
Chuck
- What the Constitution Means to Me
- Heidi Schreck, playwright and lead actress
- The Black Clownadapted from the Langston Hughes poem
- Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center
- Gerald W. Lynch Theater
- Davone Tines & Michael Schachter, adapters
- Davone Tines, lead performer
- Michael Schachter, composer and orchestrator
- Zack Winokur, director
- The Adventures of Superbunny, Episode 5
- C. Colby Sachs, composer
- Michael MacKenzie Wills, book & lyrics
- Rabbit Hole Theatricks, producer
- New York Theater Fest, October 2019
Victoria
- The Adventures of Gulliver
- Victoria Bond, composer
- Stephen Greco, librettist
- Doug Fitch, director and designer
- received an OPERA America Commissioning Grant
- American Opera Projects
- Victoria also has a number of operatic works adapted from James Joyces, Ulysses
- Molly ManyBloom
- Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming (on a Naxos recording
- Sirens
- Cyclops
BIO
Internationally acclaimed composer/conductor Victoria Bond’s compositions have been praised by the New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding,” and her conducting has been called “impassioned” by the Wall Street Journal and “full of energy and fervor” by the New York Times.
Bond has composed operas, ballets, concertos, orchestral, chamber, choral and keyboard compositions. She has been commissioned by the Houston and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, Cleveland and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, Michigan Philharmonic, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Young People’s Chorus, American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and American Opera Projects. Her compositions have been performed by the Dallas Symphony, New York City Opera, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Anchorage Opera, Irish National Orchestra (RTE), Shanghai Symphony and members of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony. Her opera “Clara” about Clara Schumann receives its premiere at the Berlin Philharmonic’s Easter Festival in Baden-Baden Germany in April, 2019.
Ms. Bond is the recipient of the Victor Herbert Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Walter Hinrichsen Award, the Perry F. Kendig Award and the Miriam Gideon Prize. Bond produces Cutting Edge Concerts and is a frequent lecturer for The Metropolitan Opera.
Credits: Victoria Bond, Peter Szep, Walker Lewis, Chuck Sachs, Rossa Crean (Theme Music), Peter Szep (Editor)