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![Mark Adamo]()
Mark Adamo
Hailed by The New Yorker as “one of America’s most formidable lyric composers,” composer-librettist
Mark Adamo made his mark on the opera world in 1998 with the debut of his first work Little Women,
which The New York Times described as “a bona fide American classic.” Known for his “way of finding a
drama’s emotional nerve and projecting it to an audience,” (Financial Times, London) his four
subsequent operas– Lysistrata, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Becoming Santa Claus, and The Lord of
Cries–have “opened yet other pathways on his remarkable exploration of what an opera can be”
(American Record Guide.) As opera and symphonic performances have resumed in 2021-2022, his work
has returned to stages in Santa Fe, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and London.
In July 2021, Santa Fe Opera returned to live opera with the celebrated world premiere of The
Lord of Cries, for which Adamo wrote the libretto to a score composed by his spouse, John
Corigliano. Last Year: Concerto for Solo Cello and String Orchestra was given its world premiere
in November 2021 by co-commissioner New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco,
followed by its Houston debut given by co-commissioner ROCO. A month later, Lidiya
Yankovskaya, music director of Chicago Opera Theater, led the regional premiere of Becoming
Santa Claus, in a new production directed by Kyle Lang; the following month, Opera Holland
Park announced the U. K. premiere of Little Women, to be conducted by Sian Edwards and
directed by Ella Marchment, and in July of 2022, and Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires announced
the Argentine premiere of the same opera in December 2022.
Introduced by Houston Grand Opera in 1998 and revived there in 2000, Little Women is one of
the most frequently performed American operas of the last twenty-five years; it has been given
more than 140 national and international engagements in cities ranging from New York to
Adelaide, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Banff, Bruges, Calgary, Chicago, Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas
City, Mexico City, Minneapolis, Perth, San Francisco, Toronto, and Tokyo, where it served as
the official U.S. cultural entrant to the 2005 World Expo. The Houston Grand Opera revival
(2000) was telecast by PBS/WNET on Great Performances in 2001 and released on CD by
Ondine that same year; in fall 2010, Naxos released this performance on DVD and on Blu-ray.
Comparable enthusiasm greeted the debut of Adamo’s second opera—the larger-scaled
Lysistrata, adapted from Aristophanes’ comedy and including elements from Sophocles’
Antigone. Lysistrata was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera for its 50th anniversary and
introduced in March 2005. Its New York City Opera debut in March 2006 led to concert
performances by Washington National Opera (May 2006) and Music at the Modern by the Van
Cliburn Foundation (May 2007) before a new staging at Fort Worth Opera in May 2012. San
Francisco Opera commissioned and introduced Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene in
June of 2013, which re-centered the title character at the heart of the Christianity origin myth;
and Becoming Santa Claus was commissioned and introduced by Dallas Opera in 2015 and
released on DVD/Blu-Ray in September of 2017 before its recent Chicago revival.
While Adamo’s principal work continues to be for the opera house, he has spent the last
decade venturing into both chamber music and symphonic and choral composition. In April
2013, baritone Thomas Hampson and the Jupiter String Quartet introduced Aristotle, after the
poem by Billy Collins, in concerts at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California before continuing
to Boston and New York under the auspices of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The
preceding December, Sasha Cooke and the New York Festival of Song introduced The Racer’s
Widow, a cycle of five American poems for mezzo-soprano, cello, and piano.
Adamo’s first concerto, Four Angels, for harp and orchestra, was commissioned by the National
Symphony Orchestra and debuted in June 2007; the Utah Symphony, led by their Music
Director Emeritus, Keith Lockhart, presented Four Angels in January 2011. In May 2007,
Washington’s Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, for which Adamo served as its first composer-in-
residence, performed his Late Victorians, a cantata for singing voice, speaking voice, and
orchestra. Naxos released Late Victorians in 2009 on Eclipse’s all-Adamo CD, which also
included Alcott Music, from Little Women, for strings, harp, celesta, and percussion; “Regina
Coeli,” an arrangement of the slow movement of Four Angels for harp and strings alone; and
the Overture to Lysistrata for medium orchestra. In April of 2010, Harold Rosenbaum’s New
York Virtuoso Singers paired six of Adamo’s newly-published choral scores with the complete
chamber-choral work of John Corigliano. This concert featured the New York premieres of
Cantate Domino (after Psalm 91,) Pied Beauty and God’s Grandeur (Gerard Manley Hopkins;
commissioned by the Gregg Smith Singers,) Matewan Music (Appalachian folk-tune
variations,) Supreme Virtue (Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao te Ching,) and The Poet
Speaks of Praising (Rilke: commissioned and introduced by Chanticleer.)
During Adamo’s time as the composer-in-residence at New York City Opera from 2001 through
2006, he led the VOX: Showcasing American Composers program. The Atlantic Center for the
Arts also named Adamo one of their Master Artists in May 2003. Since 2007, he has served as
the principal teacher of American Lyric Theatre’s Composer-Librettist Development Program
in New York, where he coaches teams of composers and librettists in developing their work for
the stage.
Adamo began his education in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where, as a
freshman in the Dramatic Writing Program, he received the Paulette Goddard Remarque
Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate achievement in playwriting. He went on to earn a
Bachelor of Music Degree cum laude in composition in 1990 from the Catholic University of
America. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.