Event

NYMVAE Ã LA CARTE

NYMVAE presents a delicious operatic double bill, NYMVAE Ã LA CARTE, featuring J.S. Bach's Coffee Cantata and Jeffrey Lependorf's The Art of Eating. Performances take place at The Bernie West Theater at Baruch College Performing Arts Center, 17 Lexington Avenue (between 22nd and 23rd Street), 9th floor, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, May 20, 21 and 22 at 8PM, with a Sunday matinee at 3PM. on May 23.

Written between 1732 and 1734, Bach's Coffee Cantata (libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici) amusingly presents the dangers of coffee addiction, a pressing social problem in eighteenth century Leipzig, where this work premiered. Originally written for concert performance but frequently staged as a miniature comic opera, NYMVAE's charming production (featuring a new translation by John Schenkel) sets the action in the post-war 1940s. Sopranos Elizabeth Munn and Mary Thorne alternate performing the coffee-addicted Lizzie, while baritones Dennis Blackwell and David Morrow alternate as Lizzie's cantankerous father Mr. Schlendrian, with tenors Aram Tchobanian and Tim Thomas trading off as the Narrator.

The Art of Eating provides a second delectable bonbon of opera-theater. Taking their inspiration from the life and stories of legendary food writer MFK Fisher, playwright Joseph Goodrich and composer Jeffrey Lependorf dish up a delicious tale of memory and romance. Mary Francis (double cast with sopranos Wendy Baker and Christine Cornell), a food writer on assignment in Burgundy, stops at an unassuming country restaurant for some lunch. Frustrated by the dearth of the fine French food she has been in search of for her article, she resigns herself to what she assumes will be yet another menu created for tourists, but the profusion of spectacular cuisine brought forth by waiter and chef Andre (baritone Adam Menninga) steals not only her breath away, but her heart as well.