Life and career[edit]

Pasatieri was born in New York City, United States. He began composing at age 10 and, as a
teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger. He entered the Juilliard School at age 16 and eventually
became the school's first recipient of a doctoral degree.
studying with Vittorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti

He also studied with Darius Milhaud at Aspen where, at 19, his chamber opera, The Women, won
the Aspen Festival Prize. Other honors include the Richard Rodgers Scholarship, the Marion Freschl
Prize, the Irving Berlin Fellowship, and an Emmy Award.

Pasatieri has taught composition at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the
Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. From 1980 through 1984, he held the post of artistic
director at Atlanta Opera.

His operas and hundreds of songs have been performed by such prominent artists as Janet Baker,
Elizabeth Söderström, Frederica von Stade, Shirley Verrett, Catherine Malfitano, Evelyn Lear,
Thomas Stewart, and the late Jennie Tourel.
he has also directed the Atlanta Opera (1980–84). Early in 1984 he moved to
California to work in films and television.

He has composed 24 operas, the best known of which is The Seagull, composed in 1972. Two of his
operas were premiered in 2007: Frau Margot by the Fort Worth Opera and The Hotel
Casablanca in San Francisco. Other popular operas include La Divina and Signor Deluso.
In 1984, Pasatieri moved to Los Angeles, California, where he formed his film music production
company, Topaz Productions. His film orchestrations can be heard in Billy Bathgate, Road to
Perdition, American Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Shawshank Redemption, Fried Green
Tomatoes, Legends of the Fall, Thomas Newman's Angels in America and Scent of a Woman,
among many others.
In 2003, Pasatieri returned to New York to continue his concert and opera career.

Now in New York he divides his time between composing, conducting and the presidency of his film
production company, TOPAZ PRODUCTIONS.

Change Slide

nNeo-tonal compositional style,

the vaulting vocal lines, the colorful orchestration, the ripe Romantic/Impressionistic harmonies,
and the theatrical value
cannot be considered avant garde. It is not painfully dissonant. The melodic line is not riddled
with jagged leaps and jarring rhythms.”10 The consonant, melodic style that both Dyer and
Schoep depict was welcomed by performers and audiences, but not appreciated by avant garde
oriented critics and especially other composers of the time.

Highly emotional characters in strong theatrical situations became

characteristic of many of Pasatieri's operas, just like Puccini

Primarily interested in composing for the voice, Pasatieri wrote two operas
His first opera to be staged was The Women (1965), performed at Aspen, Colorado,
where he was a pupil of Milhaud. Its success convinced him that opera was his
natural medium.

Houston Grand Opera afforded The Seagull a favourable critical reception.

entirety.

THE HOTEL CASABLANCA Summary

fl, ob, cl, bsn - hrn, tpt, tbn - Perc, Pn, Hp - Str.7tet

Thomas Pasatieri: The Hotel Casablanca SanFrancisco 2007

World Preimere at University of Kentucky
“A Flea in Her Ear” by Georges Feydeau.

Set to an original libretto by Mr. Pasatieri, the comedy, set in 1948, tells the story of a wealthy Texas
couple who want to "toughen up" their 25-year-old nephew from New York (tiny tim all grown up).
The action takes place at the Double-T Ranch and a seedy hotel, recently under new ownership. A
pair of suspenders left by the nephew during a clandestine visit to the questionable hotel before it
changed hands causes suspicion of infidelities in many quarters. All the characters eventually
converge on the hotel, where, after teetering on the brink of a disastrous outcome, everything is
resolved, as one by one, the misunderstandings are cleared up.

The Seagull Summary and Nina’s Aria HGO 74

Kenward Elmslie Librettist

Von Stade, Frederica

In 1974 she created Nina in Pasatieri’s The Seagull

https://youtu.be/hst3e-SlOB4

Plot Synopsis
Act I

The garden of Sorin's summer estate.

Constantine, a young, would-be writer is presenting his avant-garde play, performed by Nina, an aspiring artist with
whom he is in love. Present are Constantine's mother Arkadina, a celebrated actress and her lover Trigorin, a
successful author. Arkadina disrupts the performance with disdainful comments, humiliating her son. Nina meets and
is attracted to Trigorin. .

INTERLUDE

Act II

Scene One: A summer picnic on the estate.

Constantine appears with a seagull he has shot; he lays it at Nina's feet, bitter about the failure of his play and at
Nina's subsequent coolness. He senses her attraction to Trigorin, who arrives. Attempting to deflect Nina's hero-
worship, Trigorin modestly describes his own empty life as a writer. He is intrigued by the dead seagull and imagines
a story of a young girl devastated by a man passing by her lakeside home.

Scene Two: Sorin's dining room

Constantine has made a clumsy attempt to shoot himself and failed. Alone with her son, Arkadina soothes him and
they recall his happy childhood when they were always together. Abruptly, Constantine bereates his mother for her
affair with Trigorin whom he has challenged to a duel. They quarrel but then reconcile. Trigorin enters and reveals his
attraction to Nina, infuriating Arkadina. She speaks of her great passion and Trigorin's resistance crumbles. Trigorin
agrees to depart at once, remaining long enough to whisper to Nina to secretly meet him in Moscow. She has
decided to leave home and pursue a career as an actress.

INTERLUDE

Act Three

Several years later.

When the guests go in for dinner, Constantine remains behind and Nina bursts in, weary and frightened. He claims
he still loves her, despite her affair and death of her child with Trigorin. But she goes off alone, leaving Constantine
behind, desperate. The guests return from dinner. Arkadina remembers her triumph as Queen Jocasta and re-enacts
the scene. She is interrupted by the sound of an explosion. Constantine has killed himself.