Opera Maine’s 2025 Studio Artist Program presents

Credit to DeviantArt

Music By Gregory Spears
Libretto by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat

Directed by Richard Gammon

Saturday, June 28, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, June 29, 2:30 p.m.
Stevens Square Theater

The 2025 Studio Artist Program will present two performances of Paul’s Case, a two-act opera based on the short story By Willa Cather.

Paul’s Case follows a high school student living in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century. After getting expelled from school his father forces him to give up being an usher at Carnegie Music Hall, which he loves, and get a paying job. Feeling confined by his teachers, his father, and the dull middle-class life in Pittsburg, he steals the company’s weekend deposit and takes a train to New York City. He uses the money to buy a new wardrobe and books himself a room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In the city Paul meets a freshman from Yale who takes him around the city. He is enthralled with the luxuries and excitement of city life, but it doesn’t take long for his escape to come to an end.  

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“In “Paul’s Case,” …. the composer Gregory Spears combines minimalism, baroque gestures, and extended vocal techniques into a distinctive and pungent musical language . . . Unlike many contemporary opera composers, Mr. Spears has a gift for writing ensembles, and they are original . . . the pacing is taut, … and the denouement appropriately wrenching.” – Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal Click here to read the full review
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” . . . an arresting little piece that communicates its haunting story with clarity and a sense of inevitability . . . ” – Roger Catlin, The Washington Post Read the entire review here
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“I can’t shake the mysterious, disturbing, and yet powerful atmosphere that has been created in Paul’s Case, . . . There is something rare and appreciable about hearing and seeing an opera in such an intimate space.” – Susan Galbraith, DC Theatre Scene Click here to read the full review
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“The words ‘world premiere’ don’t always translate to ‘Must-See,’ but in the case of Paul’s Case, a post-minimalist, compact opera… they’re synonymous.” – Terry Byrne, DCMetroTheaterArts For the full review, click here
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“Hurry, while there are still a few performances of composer Gregory Spear’s new opera Paul’s Case … Everything about this 90-minute chamber opera organized in two acts and five scenes works.” – Karren Alenier, Scene 4 Magazine Click here to read the full review
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MORE ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION

Paul’s Case
Music by Gregory Spears
Libretto by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat based on the short story by Willa Cather 

Click the link to read the short story by Willa Cather: Paul’s Case | Willa Cather Archive  

Gregory Spears is a New York-based composer whose music has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory” (The Boston Globe). He has been commissioned by The New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, Volti, BMI/Concert Artists Guild, Vocal Arts DC, New York Polyphony, The New York International Piano Competition, the JACK Quartet, and The New York Youth Symphony among others.  

He holds degrees in composition from Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, and Princeton. He also studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen with Hans Abrahamsen. He currently teaches composition and orchestration at Purchase College Conservatory (SUNY). His music is published by Schott Music and Schott PSNY. 

Paul’s Case is Spears’ first opera and was well received by audiences and critics alike. It was developed by American Opera Projects and premiered by Urban Arias in 2013. The opera was restaged at the Prototype Festival in New York and presented in a new production by Pittsburgh Opera in 2014. 

Kathryn Walat is an award-winning playwright, whose work has been produced across the country, as well as an opera librettist. Her play CREATION – about music, obsession, and the artistic process – was developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center/National Playwrights Conference, and premiered at the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, for which she was nominated for an LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Playwriting.

Her play VICTORIA MARTIN: MATH TEAM QUEEN premiered Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project, and was published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007 (Smith & Kraus); and her politically resonant BLEEDING KANSAS premiered at the Hangar Theatre (Ithaca) and received a Francesca Primus Citation (American Theatre Critics Association). Other works include SEE BAT FLY (Kilroy’s List 2014; Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep, Providence), ANCIENT GODS OF THE BACKWOODS (New Georges’ Germ Project, NYC), KNOW DOG (Salvage Vanguard Theater, Austin), and her one-act JOHNNY HONG KONG (Perishable Theatre, Providence). 

This spring her co-adaptation (with Jeffrey Hatcher) of the Elizabethan thriller ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM is running Off-Broadway with Red Bull Theater, directed by Jesse Berger, and commissioned with an individual artist grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. 

She is currently working on BELL (with composer Richard Einhorn) — an opera about Alexander Graham Bell — as a commission for Sign & Sing, a company which explores stories and issues of accessibility through opera and American Sign Language (ASL). There will be a workshop presentation of BELL at Skidmore College this spring, featuring The Musicians of Maalwyck. 

About the Studio Artist Program
Opera Maine’s prestigious Studio Artist program (formerly known as the Young Artist Program) was inaugurated in 1996. Originally conceived as an educational activity for local music students, it has grown into a professional development program for emerging opera talent who perform featured roles in fully staged contemporary operas, supporting roles in Opera Maine’s mainstage opera, and participate in master classes. Studio Artist Program alumni have gone on to successful careers in major theaters nationally and internationally. For more information, contact Opera Maine at (207) 879-7678.