East Meets West at Eastman
A new opera by Tony Award- and Grammy Award-winning Charles Strouse '47E, The Future of the American Musical Theatre, was premiered by Eastman Opera Theatre in November 2004. The opera was presented alongside and performed as a companion piece to Strouse's 1985 opera Nightingale. The operas together were billed as East and West, which Strouse calls "both myths, one having to do with a great emperor and his victory over death, and the other with American 'royalty' and their victory over the Broadway stage." Strouse's new score was arranged for orchestra by graduate student Jairo Duarte-Lopez and Michaela Eremiasova, and the production was directed by Benton Hess.
