COMING MAY 2024

Children’s Opera Festival

The debut festival from FBN Productions, featuring the premiere of The Red Song Bird!

Now accepting audition applications for The Children’s Opera Festival!

Audition Requirements:

Applicants should submit the following materials to FBNProductionsKids@gmail.com.

  1. Resume

  2. Headshot

  3. Video submissions of

    • an English aria

    • a Mozart aria

    • a 20th or 21st C aria

    • a musical theatre selection

Submission deadline: March 25

Program Information:

May-June 2024

  • The Red Song Bird (premiere) - Redler/Lister

  • The Three Little Pigs - Mozart/Davies

Program Dates:

May 13-June 3, 2024

FBN Productions, Inc. is presenting The Children’s Opera Festival in locations in the Midlands of South Carolina. It will feature the premiere of a new children’s opera by composer, Zach Redler, and librettist/soprano, Marquita Lister - THE RED SONG BIRD. The festival will also feature the beloved THE THREE LITTLE PIGS with music by W. A. Mozart and libretto by John Davies. The festival will include multiple performances of each opera and interactive Q&A sessions with young audiences around the Midlands.

Compensation is provided. Housing and transportation included.

For questions, please contact FBNProductionsKids@gmail.com.

The Red Song Bird (2023)

Composed by Zach Redler | Libretto by Marquita Lister

About the composer

Zach Redler is a music theater composer whose work has been performed in concert halls, opera houses and theaters around the world. In 2014, the American Theatre Wing awarded Zach and Sara Cooper the Jonathan Larson Grant for their work together (The Memory Show, Loving Leo, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, and WINDOWS). Other favorite theater compositions include: Movin’ Up In The World (Jerre Dye), A Song for Susan Smith (Mark Campbell), Emily Sutton (Jerre Dye), and, their American Prize award winning piece, The Falling and The Rising (libretto by Jerre Dye). Currently, Zach is working on a number of projects across various genres from children’s music and jazz to opera and musical theater. Zach also works as a music copyist, music director, pianist, and musicologist working with orchestras and Broadway shows around the world. Additionally, Zach has served on the faculties of New York University, Manhattan School of Music, and Molloy College; mentors young opera writers for Seattle Opera’s creation lab; teaches music, yoga, and meditation; loves cooking plant based meals for their family; and runs ultramarathons when time allows. Love to their wife Brittney and two children, Skylar and Ellis.

 

About the librettist

Marquita Lister has earned worldwide critical praise for over two decades for an impressive  repertoire that includes the masterworks of Verdi, Strauss, Puccini and Gershwin. Ms. Lister has  sung with major opera companies such as the San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Montreal  Opera, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg, La Scala, Semperoper  Dresden, Staatstheater Stuttgart, Arena di Verona, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opera Bastille Paris,  Michigan Opera Theater, to name a few. Her convincing performance as Bess in New York City  Opera's Emmy nominated production of Porgy and Bess earned her the ''NYCO Diva Award." Ms.  Lister also received the "Artist of the Year Award," from the Pittsburgh Opera, and has appeared in  television broadcast productions of An Evening with the Pops; Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops (PBS), A Christmas Celebration: Dallas Symphony Orchestra (KXAS- TV), and Live from Lincoln  Center (PBS). In studio, Ms. Lister recorded George Gershwin's Blue Monday and Excerpts from  Porgy and Bess for Telarc Records with Erich KunzeI and the Cincinnati Pops (Grammy  nominated), Where the Sunsets Bleed: The Chamber Music of Edward Knight on Albany Records,  and the critically acclaimed Porgy and Bess recording on the Decca label hailed by Opera News as  one of the best recordings of 2006. In 2012, Ms. Lister recorded composer Michael Ching’s  contribution to the Opera America Songbook commissioned for opening celebrations of the National  Opera Center in New York. Ms. Lister is presently collaborating with soprano Louise Toppin to  pioneer The African American Art Song and Arranged Negro Spirituals for a New Generation  Project. She is the Coordinator of Vocal Studies and Director of Opera at Morgan State University,  Vice President and Auditions Chair for the MD/MD Chapter of the National Association of Teachers  of Singing, Inc., as well as a Board member. She is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Opera  Ebony, the longest surviving African-American opera company in American history and a faculty  member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera.