Creators of Bon Appetit & The Italian Lesson 

Composer: Lee Hoiby

American composer Lee Hoiby is beloved by performers as diverse as Leontyne Price and Jean Stapleton, for his numerous settings of texts from Shakespeare to Julia Child. Mr. Hoiby was introduced to opera by his teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music, Gian Carlo Menotti, who involved him closely in the famed Broadway productions of The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street in the early 1950s. In 1957 Hoiby's one-act opera, The Scarf, was cited by Time Magazine and the Italian press as the hit of the first Spoleto (Italy) Festival. His next opera, Natalia Petrovna (New York City Opera, 1964; revised version, A Month in the Country, 1980) was praised by the distinguished Washington critic Paul Hume, who wrote that the closing octet was "of overwhelming beauty, a supreme moment in opera" comparable to the Meistersinger quintet and the Rosenkavalier trio. Harold Schonberg of the New York Times wrote that it was "truer by far" than the quintet in Barber's Vanessa. Still, the mid-twentieth century intellectual prejudice against tonality and lyricism, combined with Hoiby's own professional modesty, (carried almost to the point of reclusiveness), worked against widespread recognition of his importance.

Hoiby's 1971 setting of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke (with libretto by Lanford Wilson) was declared "the finest American opera to date" by Harriet Johnson of the New York Post; and in 1981 Peter Davis wrote in New York Magazine that "Perhaps ten years ago, music of this sort, unabashedly drenched in ardent melody, was considered something of an embarrassment. Today such an attitude seems childish and irrelevant." Hoiby accepted the challenge of setting a Shakespearean libretto with his 1986 setting of The Tempest, of which Opera Magazine (London) wrote that it was "redolent of Das Rheingold and Richard Strauss, but even so was melodically, harmonically, and musically, pure Hoiby," while the Christian Science Monitor found it "superbly singable and downright beautiful". The Tempest had its third production at the Dallas Opera in 1996, and a two-act revision will be presented at SUNY Purchase and New York’s Symphony Space this coming April.

Mr. Hoiby has also made significant contributions to the piano repertory, including two piano concertos, and his choral music is widely performed in churches throughout the USA. He has written chamber music in numerous combinations and continues actively to compose and garden in upstate New York. Further information at www.leehoiby.com

Librettist / text adaptation: Mark Shulgasser

Since 1979 Mark Shulgasser has been composer Lee Hoiby's literary collaborator on numerous projects including the libretti of The Tempest, the one-act comic opera Something New for the Zoo, the Ruth Draper musical monolog The Italian Lesson, the Julia Child Bon Appetit!, the Lanford Wilson one-act opera This Is the Rill Speaking, and the Virginia Woolf What Is the Light?. He has also produced and directed Mr. Hoiby's work at venues throughout the United States. He has been a classical music host and producer at NPR affiliate WJFF/Radio Catskill in Jeffersonville, New York. His paper "The True Horoscope of Sigmund Freud" appeared in the Astrological Journal (of the Astrological Association of Great Britain) in 2000. He operated the gallery ArtSpace at CityPlace in West Palm Beach from 2001 to 2004 and is currently proprietor of Who Killed Kenny Books in Callicoon, New York.