November 23, 2004 -

OTTAWA -- When the spectacular 2005 Black and White Opera Soiree illuminates the National Arts Centre’s Southam Hall stage on February 19, 2005, one of Canada’s most talented performers will be in the spotlight. Host for the evening – entitled From Vienna to Broadway -- will be international superstar Christopher Plummer. The National Arts Centre Orchestra will be conducted by the NAC’s Principal Pops Conductor Jack Everly, and the Opera Lyra Ottawa Chorus will also be featured.

The Black and White Opera Soiree, presented by Bell Canada, is an annual winter benefit for the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Opera Lyra Ottawa. From Vienna to Broadway – the eighth version of this fabulous fundraiser -- was developed by Jack Everly, and it features accessible and entertaining selections from operas, operettas, and Broadway musicals. This evening of popular favourites and memorable melodies is sure to warm the heart of thousands of music lovers on a frigid February evening.

Canada’s own Christopher Plummer was hailed by The New York Times as “the finest classical actor in North America,” Mr. Plummer belongs to that rare species of elegant, classically trained actors who can embody equally both devils and angels. Mr. Plummer has radiated discipline, grace, and intensity in over 130 movies and in dozens of stage roles, garnering numerous awards for his work.

Proceeds from this year’s Black and White Opera Soiree will help to maintain and further develop the already high level of artistic excellence that is a hallmark of National Arts Centre Orchestra and Opera Lyra Ottawa performances.

The Black and White Opera Soiree takes place on Saturday, February 19, 2005 at the National Arts Centre.  Tickets are $125, $75, $65, and $50 and are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC’s web-site at www.nac-cna.ca.

Information:
Gerald Morris
National Arts Centre
(613) 947-7000, x249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca

Nina La Chapelle
Opera Lyra Ottawa
(613) 232-9200, x229
marketing@operalyra.ca

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER
Hailed by the New York Times as "the finest classical actor in North America," Christopher Plummer belongs to that rare species of elegant, classically trained actors who can, as critic John Simon puts it, "embody equally both devils and angels." On stage or on screen, in roles ranging from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to journalist Mike Wallace in the Oscar-nominated The Insider to the complex and legendary John Barrymore, Mr. Plummer radiates versatility, discipline, and a confident grace and intensity.

Mr. Plummer was born in Toronto in 1929 and grew up in Montreal. He began acting professionally immediately after graduating from high school, and in 1950 joined the Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, where he played nearly 100 roles in two years. He made his Broadway debut in 1954 in The Starcross Story, and the following year appeared as Jason opposite Dame Judith Anderson’s Medea at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, and as Marc Antony in Julius Caesar, the inaugural production of the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. Mr. Plummer has triumphed on the world’s three premiere Shakespearean stages: Stratford-upon-Avon, England; the early Stratford, Connecticut; and Stratford, Ontario. His association with the Stratford Festival of Canada goes back to its formative years under Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Michael Langham: he made his debut there in 1956 as the young and fiery Henry V, and over the next decade played a succession of leading roles including Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Macbeth. He returned to Stratford in 2002 to play King Lear, a role he repeated on Broadway in 2004, garnering a Tony Award nomination (his sixth) for ‘Lead Actor’. Mr. Plummer was recently appointed to Stratford’s Board of Governors. He was a leading actor at Great Britain’s National Theatre (under Sir Laurence Olivier) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (under Sir Peter Hall), and played major roles on the stages of Broadway and London’s West End. Selected later Broadway successes include Iago in Othello, Macbeth (opposite Glenda Jackson), and his multi-award-winning solo performance in Barrymore (1997), a production developed at Stratford, Ontario. Since Mr. Plummer’s first screen role in Sidney Lumet’s Stage Struck (1957) he has appeared in over 130 films, including the Academy Award-winning The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, Murder By Decree, The Pink Panther, Twelve Monkeys, The Insider, and Full Disclosure. Since television’s golden age, his appearances number in the hundreds, including the award-winning BBC Hamlet at Elsinore, Oedipus Rex, Don Juan in Hell, The Thorn Birds, The Money Changers, the Counterstrike series, Winchell, and recently On Golden Pond. With conductor Sir Neville Marriner he created a new concert version of Walton’s Henry V, and with Michael Lankester, new concert versions of Peer Gynt, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible. His own one-man show A Word or Two Before You Go, which he arranged and performed, has raised money for World Literacy and theatre companies in Canada and the U.S. Awards and honours include: Companion of the Order of Canada (1968); Great Britain’s Evening Standard Award; two Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, three New York Drama Desk Awards, the Theatre World Award, the New York Drama League Award, the Edwin Booth Award, and in Canada, a Genie Award; Austria’s Golden Badge of Honour and Salzburg’s Chalice of Honour; inducted into Theatre’s Hall of Fame (1986); Commonwealth Award (1998); Canada’s Walk of Fame (1999); honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School of Performing Arts.

JACK EVERLY, Conductor
Jack Everly has been appointed to the new position of Principal Pops Conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra beginning with the 2004-2005 season. He is well known to National Arts Centre Orchestra audiences for CJOH Pops concerts such as Pops Goes British (2004), A Gershwin Celebration and Those Glorious Hollywood Musicals (2003), Celtic Celebration and Broadway Spectacular (2002), and Gotta Dance! (2000). A multi-faceted artist, Jack Everly is a frequent guest conductor on the world’s concert, opera and ballet stages. He is Principal Pops Conductor of the Baltimore and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras, and has been ongoing Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s annual holiday production of Yuletide Celebration since 1994. Some of his guest appearances include the National Symphony of London, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the Teatro Colon, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the Hawaii Symphony, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and the Opera House Orchestras of Sao Paulo and the Teatro Massimo. Since 1998, Mr. Everly has been the Music Advisor for the Symphonic Pops Consortium (SPC), an alliance formed by the Indianapolis, Detroit, St. Louis, Milwaukee, National and Seattle Symphony Orchestras to create and produce theatrical pops events of the highest quality. Mr. Everly served as American Ballet Theatre’s Music Director for fourteen seasons.  Originally appointed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, his international schedule with the renowned company included thousands of performances and dozens of world premiere productions at Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House, including Othello (Goldenthal-Lubovitch), Everlast (Kern-Tharp), and Requiem (Lloyd-Webber-MacMillan).   Mr. Everly conducted PBS’s Dance in America at New York’s City Center in the repertoire of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.  He also conducted the PBS telecast of the Prokofiev-MacMillan Romeo and Juliet starring Natalia Makarova from the Metropolitan Opera House. Another PBS credit is his orchestration of “A Salute to Broadway” for the In Performance at the White House series. Mr. Everly was invited by composer Marvin Hamlisch to conduct his National Companies of They’re Playing Our Song and A Chorus Line.  Most recently, the two joined forces for the Broadway musical version of Neil Simon’s film The Goodbye Girl starring Bernadette Peters and Martin Short.   Additional Broadway Music Director credits include two different productions of Hello Dolly, starring the legendary Carol Channing and Show Boat with the great Donald O’Connor. Other artists with whom Everly has collaborated include Ella Fitzgerald, Diane Schuur, Sarah Brightman, Mary Martin, Marilyn Horne, Carol Burnett, Gary Morris, Itzhak Perlman, and Frederica von Stade.Mr. Everly’s Hollywood assignments include serving as Music Director for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  His discography also includes numerous Broadway cast recordings and Everything’s Coming Up Roses: The Complete Overtures of Broadway’s Jule Styne.  For this recording, he created the critical editions and conducted all of the overtures of the famous Broadway composer. Jack Everly is an avid collector of classic films and music from the stage and cinema.