(HUDSON, N.Y.) –  Beauty Intolerable, a collection of love songs composed by Sheila Silver based on the poetry of iconoclast and libertine Edna St. Vincent Millay and performed by a trio of operatic chanteuses, including soprano Laura Flanigan, with recitations by actress Tyne Daly, premieres at the First Presbyterian Church on Saturday, June 8, 2013, at 6pm.  The event is a co-production of AOP (American Opera Projects), The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, ClaverackLanding, and Manhattan’s Symphony Space, where it will be reprised on Thursday, June 13, with Tandy Cronyn replacing Tyne Daly.

The event also marks the final production of the Hudson-based presenting organization, ClaverackLanding.

The concert will feature soprano Lauren Flanigan (La Scala, Santa Fe, Metropolitan and New York City Operas), mezzo-soprano Deanne Meek (Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, Metropolitan Opera), and soprano Risa Renae Harman (New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Opera), with Kelly Horsted and Christopher Cooley on piano. Each performance is accompanied with poetry recitations by guest actresses Tyne Daly (Cagney & Lacey and Judging Amy), and Tandy Cronyn (Once Upon a Time in America and The Story Lady).

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright known for her sensual poetic depictions of her love affairs. Receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry, her work championed feminist activism. Born in Rockland, Maine, Millay moved to New York City, living a vibrant life with fellow writers in Greenwich Village. The New York Times described her as “an idol of the younger generation during the glorious early days of Greenwich Village […] One of the greatest American poets of her time.” Beauty Intolerable has been developed in collaboration with the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society.

Composer Sheila Silver has written in a wide range of mediums: from solo instrumental to large orchestral works; from opera to feature film scores. Her opera The Thief of Love was featured in New York City Opera’s VOX program, and received its fully staged world premiere in March 2001 by the Stony Brook Opera with David Lawton, conductor, Ned Canty, director. A film of that production was recently released on DVD to critical acclaim, following its NYC premiere screening at Makor sponsored by AOP.

In 2007, Silver won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Music Composition for Opera to compose her opera, The Wooden Sword (2010). The White Rooster, A Tale of Compassion (2010), commissioned by the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries for the exhibit In the Realm of the Buddha, is a dramatic cantata composed for the vocal ensemble Tapestry, plus six Tibetan singing bowls and frame drums.

Silver has just been awarded a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and in July will begin a six-month stay in Pune, India, studying Hindustani music in preparation for her new opera, A Thousand Splendid Suns, based on the internationally best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini. Silver lives in Columbia County, N.Y., and is Professor of Music at Stony Brook University.

Named by TIME Magazine as “the thinking man’s diva” and awarded by ASCAP and the Center for Contemporary Opera for her commitment to performing the works of living composers, soprano Lauren Flanigan has firmly established herself as a unique musical presence in the world today. She has performed leading roles at La Scala, Teatro San Carlo, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, The Philadelphia Opera Company, ENO and the New York City Opera to name a few. She is considered one of the leading interpreters of the early operas of Verdi including Attilla, Giovanna D’Arco, Nabucco, Macbeth, I Lombardi and La Traviata and has been featured on the telecast “Live from Lincoln Center” in performances of I Lombardi (opposite Luciano Pavarotti).