Dolores Ferraro to perform highlights of William Penn opera at Renaissance Center
Release Date: 8/24/2006. Expired: 9/29/2006
Dolores Ferraro has captivated audiences in the United States and abroad as an operatic heroine, soloist with orchestra and recitalist. The acclaimed soprano presents a vocal concert at The Renaissance Center on Friday, Sept. 29, that will feature highlights from award-winning American composer Romeo Cascarino’s opera William Penn.
Tickets for the 7 p.m. concert are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $10 for children under 13 and include a reception in the center’s rotunda following the performance. The concert is presented with the support of Community Arts Development of Dickson County.
The Dawn of America will feature Ferraro, baritone Keith Moore, The University Singers of Cumberland University under the direction of Brian Kilian and a professional orchestra.
Included in the performance will be parts of William Penn, an opera written about the founder of Pennsylvania by Ferraro’s late husband Cascarino, a Philadelphia native who died in 2002.
Ferraro has performed around the world with a repertoire that includes art songs, lyric theater pieces, operatic roles, arias and contemporary works. She has sung leading roles in La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, La Serva Padrona, The Medium and Don Giovanni. She has done concert versions of and excerpts from L’Elisir d’amore, Der Rosenkavalier, Manon, La Rondine, Le Nozze di Figaro and La Traviata, among others. She also has performed leading roles in most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the Gilbert and Sullivan Players.
She received her Master’s Degree at Combs College of Music in Philadelphia and then studied with legendary soprano Licia Albanese and with Thomas LoMonaco. She received several vocal scholarships and was a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera auditions. In 1992, Ferraro filled in for the soprano solos in the Mozart Requiem at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center with the Metropolitan Opera. She performed in Paris for the Revolutionary Bicentennial and at the Sala Baldini in Rome.
Several composers have written pieces especially for Ferraro and her strong interest in contemporary American composers has provided opportunities to premiere works at Carnegie Hall and Hunter College. She actively promotes the music of Cascarino, which has resulted in performances, workshops and master classes of his music in the United States, Italy and England. She created the role of Gulielma Penn in the premiere of Cascarino’s William Penn at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
A teacher as well as a performer, Ferraro headed the Voice Department at Combs College of Music until 1990, has taught at Drexel University and is presently adjunct professor at Immaculata University.
When asked in 1950 to compose a work for a choral group in Philadelphia, Cascarino began working with the text from Prayer for Philadelphia by William Penn, the English Quaker who founded the Pennsylvania colony in search of religious freedom.
“As I was writing the Prayer, I felt that something bigger was germinating; I felt it was to be an opera,” said Cascarino in notes about his composition. “Immersing myself in everything I could find on William Penn, I was struck not only by the man’s ideas but the poetic way in which he expressed them. To me, he was a supreme artist.”
Starting with passages from Penn’s treaty with the Indians, Cascarino created a three-act opera that is intended to reflect Penn’s belief that “We are all one flesh and blood,” as written in the treaty. William Penn debuted at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in 1982.
“Although the opera is based on historical fact, it is not a historical document but a poetic representation of what I consider to be the essence of Penn’s message,” Cascarino said.
Cascarino’s musical career included composing, teaching, performing, conducting, orchestrating and arranging. He composed orchestral works, ballets, chamber music, pieces for chorus, piano, voice and his opera. A gifted pianist, he participated in a number of recordings of his works, which have been performed by orchestras in the United States and abroad, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New Orleans Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic of London and the Nord Deutches Symphony.
For more information on or to purchase tickets for The Dawn of America, being performed at The Renaissance Center Sept. 29, call (615)740-5600 or (888)700-2300.
The Renaissance Center is a fine arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.
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