Thomas Pasatieri Composer
Thomas Pasatieri composed and wrote the libretto for his first opera,
The Trysting Place, while an undergraduate at the Juilliard School. His first staged opera was
The Women, a one-act work based on an original story. It premiered at the 1965 Aspen Festival and won the composition contest for that year. Among his 19 operas are
La Divina (1966),
Padrevia (1967),
Black Widow (1972),
The Trial of Mary Lincoln (1972),
Signor Deluso (1974),
Washington Square (1976),
Before Breakfast (1980),
Three Sisters (1986) and his best-known work,
The Seagull (1972), which received its world premiere recording in 2003 (Albany Records). In 2007, Pasatieri made his return to opera with the premieres of two new works.
Frau Margot, an opera in three acts, was commissioned by Fort Worth Opera and premiered with Joseph Illick conducting and librettist Frank Corsaro directing. August 2007 saw the premiere of a new two-act comic opera,
The Hotel Casablanca, with a libretto by the composer.
The Hotel Casablanca was premiered by the San Francisco Opera Center Merola Singers, also under the baton of Joseph Illick, with direction by Richard Kagey. Both operas were well-received by audience members and critics alike. In the words of Georgia Rowe (
Contra Costa Times), "
The Hotel Casablanca is one of those rarer-than-hen’s-teeth works: contemporary, well-crafted, richly musical and riotously funny…" And
Frau Margot, replete with "a score of a voluptuous splendor that suggests Klimt’s gilded paintings set to music… has all the markings of a masterpiece" (Wes Blomster, operatoday.com). In addition to opera, Pasatieri has composed hundreds of songs, which have been performed and recorded by such artists as Janet Baker, Jane Eaglen, Sheri Greenawald, Thomas Hampson, Evelyn Lear, Catherine Malfitano, Ashley Putnam, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Stewart and Shirley Verrett. These works include
Heloïse and Abelard (1971),
Rites of Passage (1974),
Three Poems of James Agee (1974),
Canciones del barrio (1983),
Three Sonnets from the Portuguese (1984),
Sieben Lehmannlieder (Seven Lehmann Songs to texts by Lotte Lehmann) (1988),
Three Poems of Oscar Wilde (1998) and the orchestral song cycle, with chorus,
Letter to Warsaw (2003).