Quade Winter
Encyclopedia
Quade Winter is an American composer, musical restorer and translator, specializing in the light operas of Victor Herbert
. Earlier in his career, he sang opera for over two decades.
, son of Melvin Winter, a car dealer, and Margaret Winter, a housewife. He graduated from the University of Oregon
(1975) with degrees in theater and music.
He began a musical theatre
career but soon turned to classical music. He graduated from the Merola Opera Program
in 1980. While there, he sang with San Francisco Opera
. He then began a career as an operatic tenor
, singing roles in opera and oratorio, during the next 23 years, in Germany (where he lived in the 1980s), the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. For example, in 1993, Winter sang Calaf in Turandot
with New York City Opera
. In 1994, he sang Herod in Richard Strauss
's Salome
with Virginia Opera
, a role he repeated in 2000 with Opera de las Americas in the Dominican Republic. He played Aegistheus in Strauss's Elektra
with the Canadian Opera Company
in 1996, repeating the role with the Hawaii Opera Theatre
in 1999.
's lost score to Thespis
, was given its world premiere by the Ohio Light Opera
. His second score, The Carp
, replacing Alfred Cellier
's lost score, was requested in 1998 by The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive for its Web Opera series. It is considered to be the first opera ever to be composed expressley for the Internet. It was orchestrated and performed by the Ohio Light Opera in 1999.
From 1997 to 2004, Winter was Composer-in-Residence at the Ohio Light Opera, and oversaw productions of many of his opera translations, including Boccaccio (von Suppé), The Gypsy Baron
(Strauss), The Merry Widow
(Lehàr) and Die Fledermaus
(Strauss). The OLO commissioned a number of critical editions of seldom performed operetta
s, starting with Victor Herbert
's Eileen
(1997), utilizing Herbert's original manuscripts in the collection of the Library of Congress
. Similar reconstructions followed: Herbert's The Red Mill
(2001) and Sweethearts (2002), and Reginald De Koven
's Robin Hood
(2004). These works were issued as CDs on the Newport and Albany labels.
In 2009, Winter restored Victor Herbert's The Magic Knight
. He has performed similar services for various organizations, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein
Organization's new engraving of Hammerstein's Carmen Jones
.
Winter currently lives and works in the New York City area.
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
. Earlier in his career, he sang opera for over two decades.
Early years and singing career
Winter was born in Pendleton, OregonPendleton, Oregon
Pendleton is a city in Umatilla County, Oregon, United States. Pendleton was named in 1868 by the county commissioners for George H. Pendleton, Democratic candidate for Vice-President in the 1864 presidential campaign. The population was 16,612 at the 2010 census...
, son of Melvin Winter, a car dealer, and Margaret Winter, a housewife. He graduated from the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
(1975) with degrees in theater and music.
He began a musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
career but soon turned to classical music. He graduated from the Merola Opera Program
Merola opera program
Merola Opera Program is a San Francisco training program for opera singers, coaches, and stage directors.- Merola Opera Program :Merola Opera Program is the San Francisco Opera's training and performance program for promising young artists...
in 1980. While there, he sang with San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
. He then began a career as an operatic tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
, singing roles in opera and oratorio, during the next 23 years, in Germany (where he lived in the 1980s), the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. For example, in 1993, Winter sang Calaf in Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
with New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
. In 1994, he sang Herod in Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Salome
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
with Virginia Opera
Virginia Opera
Virginia Opera is an opera company based in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Organized in 1974 by a group of Norfolk, Virginia community volunteers, Virginia Opera presented its first productions in 1975 and in the intervening four decades has become known and respected nationwide for the...
, a role he repeated in 2000 with Opera de las Americas in the Dominican Republic. He played Aegistheus in Strauss's Elektra
Elektra (opera)
Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama Elektra. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal...
with the Canadian Opera Company
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
in 1996, repeating the role with the Hawaii Opera Theatre
Hawaii Opera Theatre
The Hawaii Opera Theatre is an opera company located in Honolulu, Hawaii, which became active in 1961. The company typically performs three operas during February and March in Blaisdell Concert Hall...
in 1999.
Composing, translating and orchestrating career
In 1996, Winter's first opera score, replacing Arthur SullivanArthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
's lost score to Thespis
Thespis (opera)
Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost...
, was given its world premiere by the Ohio Light Opera
Ohio Light Opera
The Ohio Light Opera is a professional opera company based in Wooster, Ohio that performs the light opera repertory, including Gilbert and Sullivan, American, British and continental operettas, and other musical theatre works, especially of the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
. His second score, The Carp
The Carp (opera)
The Carp is a one-act comic opera with a libretto by Frank Desprez and music by Alfred Cellier. It was first produced at the Savoy Theatre from 13 February 1886 to 19 January 1887, as a companion piece to The Mikado. It was then revived as companion to Ruddigore from 21 February 1887 to 5...
, replacing Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
's lost score, was requested in 1998 by The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive for its Web Opera series. It is considered to be the first opera ever to be composed expressley for the Internet. It was orchestrated and performed by the Ohio Light Opera in 1999.
From 1997 to 2004, Winter was Composer-in-Residence at the Ohio Light Opera, and oversaw productions of many of his opera translations, including Boccaccio (von Suppé), The Gypsy Baron
The Gypsy Baron
The Gypsy Baron is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its libretto was by the author Ignaz Schnitzer and in turn was based on Sáffi by Mór Jókai. During the composer's lifetime, the operetta enjoyed great success, second...
(Strauss), The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
(Lehàr) and Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
(Strauss). The OLO commissioned a number of critical editions of seldom performed operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s, starting with Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
's Eileen
Eileen (musical)
Eileen is a comic opera with music by Victor Herbert and lyrics and book by Henry Blossom based loosely on the 1835 novel Rory O'Moore by Herbert's grandfather, Samuel Lover. Set in 1798, the story concerns an Irish revolutionary arrested by the British for treason...
(1997), utilizing Herbert's original manuscripts in the collection of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. Similar reconstructions followed: Herbert's The Red Mill
The Red Mill
The Red Mill is an operetta written by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Henry Blossom. It premiered on Broadway on September 24, 1906 at the Knickerbocker Theatre and ran for 274 performances, starring comedians Fred Stone and David Montgomery. It was revived on October 16, 1945, opening at the...
(2001) and Sweethearts (2002), and Reginald De Koven
Reginald de Koven
Henry Louis Reginald De Koven was an American music critic and prolific composer, particularly of comic operas.-Biography:...
's Robin Hood
Robin Hood (comic opera)
Robin Hood is a comic opera by Reginald De Koven , Harry B. Smith and Clement Scott . The story is based on the Robin Hood legend, during the reign of King Richard I . The opera was composed in Chicago, Illinois during the winter of 1888-1889.Robin Hood was first performed at the Chicago Opera...
(2004). These works were issued as CDs on the Newport and Albany labels.
In 2009, Winter restored Victor Herbert's The Magic Knight
The Magic Knight
The Magic Knight is a one-act musical burlesque with music by Victor Herbert and a libretto by Edgar Smith. The piece parodies the Richard Wagner opera Lohengrin....
. He has performed similar services for various organizations, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
Organization's new engraving of Hammerstein's Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones
Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical starring Muriel Smith in the title role, later made into a 1954 musical film; the play also ran for a season in 1991 at London's Old Vic and most recently in London's Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre in 2007. It is an updating of the Georges Bizet...
.
Winter currently lives and works in the New York City area.
External links
- Quade Winter Online
- Victor Herbert Renaissance Project
- WVD Press
- Quade Winter profile at The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
- Quade Winter at Classical Composers Database