UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Center for the Performing Arts will present “A Standing Witness,” a song-cycle set to poetry, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, in Eisenhower Auditorium.
The performance is a monumental collaboration between Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and accompanied by Music from Copland House.
Visit “A Standing Witness” online or call 814-863-0255 for more information.
Multiple “testimonies” are narrated by a figure embedded in American history, the standing witness revealed only at the end of the program. Each testimony reflects on an era in our country’s tumultuous past, including the Vietnam and Gulf wars, the ongoing fight for civil rights, the rise and fall of the American Dream, and the overripe 1990s.
These are “songs America needs to hear,” Opera News wrote. “Powerful, serious and important poems … The music is gorgeous,” Musical America reported.