Stucky

The regional premiere of “The Classical Style: An Opera (of Sorts),” by the late Cornell emeritus professor of composition Steven Stucky, will be presented Sunday, Oct. 30 by Triphammer Arts.

The fully staged studio performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the CRS Barn Studio, 2622 N. Triphammer Road, Ithaca. A reception will follow. Tickets are $20, $15 for students and senior citizens, available in advance from brownpapertickets.com. A limited number of remaining tickets will be sold at the door.

Written with librettist Jeremy Denk, “The Classical Style” was the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer’s last large-scale work before his death in February. Inspired by musicologist and pianist Charles Rosen’s 1971 book, “The Classical Style,” the opera follows Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven as they visit the 21st century.

The curtain rises on the three composers playing Scrabble (and bickering) in heaven; they soon return to earth in search of Rosen. Their mission is to check on how their music is doing, and the state of classical music, in the contemporary world. “The Classical Style” was praised in a San Francisco Chronicle review as an “exuberantly witty and often touching one-act opera.”

The cast features nine singers from across Central New York, including David Neal ’76. Each performs multiple roles, from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Rosen to operatic characters Don Giovanni, Donna Anna and the Commendatore; and abstract characters such as the Dominant and Tonic chords.

Heather Buchman is conducting the performance, working with pianist Sar Shalom Strong, stage director Victoria King and set designer-artist David Harper. Triphammer Arts’ artistic directors are Jeanne Goddard and Steven Stull, a visiting lecturer in the Cornell Department of Music, which provided partial funding for the production.

Triphammer Arts’ co-production of “The Classical Style” with The Society for New Music will be presented Nov. 10 in Syracuse with a chamber orchestra.

Stucky was the Given Foundation Professor of Composition at Cornell and chaired the Department of Music from 1992 to 1997. He earned a master’s in 1973 and a DMA in 1978, both in musical composition. A prolific composer and active conductor, writer and lecturer, Stucky taught at the university from 1980 to 2014, when he was named professor emeritus. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his Second Concerto for Orchestra.

Denk is a classical pianist who frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has performed with violinist Joshua Bell and with several symphony orchestras; he’s also written numerous liner notes, program notes, critical essays and articles on music. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013.