About the Project
Yeltsin in Texas!
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For its inaugural season, Blueprint Project selected Yeltsin in Texas! by composer Evan Mack and librettist Joshua McGuire. Yeltsin in Texas! was commissioned and premiered as a 60-minute opera and premiered in Texas right before COVID-19 shut the world down. Based on a true story, it’s it tells the story of Boris Yeltsin's unscheduled stop at a grocery store while visiting Texas in 1989. It changed the course of history. He was in awe of America’s bounty—including the Jello Pudding Pops—and realized Communism was a lie.
Evan and Josh were approached by Broadway producers to reimagine the opera as a 90-minute, no-intermission musical. Blueprint Project selected Yeltsin to help the creative team craft a final draft and workshop performances of the new musical in preparation. This began during a weeklong summer residency, with Evan and Josh joining stage director Christopher Mirto to reimagine the piece. In this new realization, Yeltsin hilariously gets a taste of the absurdity of an American grocery store while the clerk, manager, and rent-a-cop learn a thing or two from him. The pandemic showed the world the awe and wonder of the American grocery store, and that is now folded into the new version of the show. |
About the Artists
Evan Mack, composer
Believing that opera should be theater grounded in climatic expression that delivers larger-than-life stories and music that harnesses the full athletic thrill of singing, Evan Mack has devoted much of his compositional life to opera and song. His first major operatic composition, where he served as both composer and librettist, was Angel of the Amazon. “Angel” premiered in May of 2011 by Encompass New Opera Theatre at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and was subsequently released on CD worldwide by Albany Records. Two years later, Fresno State Opera Theater premiered The Secret of Luca. This was the first of several collaborations with librettist Joshua McGuire. In August 2016, their American grand opera Roscoe premiered at Seagle Music Colony to rave reviews. Roscoe received its orchestral world premiere with the Albany Symphony starring Metropolitan Opera star Deborah Voigt. In between the two large scale projects, Mack & McGuire found time to write the first ever opera for Twitter #IsOperaDead – an opera in 5 acts lasting one minute and forty seconds.
Their multi-cultural Christmas opera for children, Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena is quickly becoming a holiday standard with yearly productions by San Francisco Opera, Opera in the Heights and Fresno State Opera who commissioned the opera. The one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby premiered by Samford Opera in Birmingham, AL in 2019 and won the National Opera Association’s Argento Chamber Opera Competition. Mack & McGuire’s latest, Yeltsin in Texas! will get a world premiere in 2020 by TCU and Opera in the Heights.
Evan Mack has proven as deft at song writing as he is in opera. His song A Little More Perfect is a setting of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final paragraph of the Marriage Equality Decision by the Supreme Court in 2015. Premiering at Seagle Music Colony in 2015, it has quickly become a favorite of many baritones including Michael Mayes, Daniel Okulich and Michael Miller to name a few. The song had its professional premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016 and the orchestral premiere at the Fort Worth Opera Festival in 2017. His new cycle If Only Lenny Were Here, which celebrates the life of Leonard Bernstein had its world premiere with the Schenectady Symphony in October of 2018.
Evan was named “2018 Professional of the Year” by Musical America, was a composing fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute and a resident artist at Yaddo. He is currently published with Hal Leonard, Alfred, and Amazon. Evan is a Teaching Professor at Skidmore College. He lives in Albany with his wife, Kristin and two sons, Carter and Henry.
Their multi-cultural Christmas opera for children, Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena is quickly becoming a holiday standard with yearly productions by San Francisco Opera, Opera in the Heights and Fresno State Opera who commissioned the opera. The one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby premiered by Samford Opera in Birmingham, AL in 2019 and won the National Opera Association’s Argento Chamber Opera Competition. Mack & McGuire’s latest, Yeltsin in Texas! will get a world premiere in 2020 by TCU and Opera in the Heights.
Evan Mack has proven as deft at song writing as he is in opera. His song A Little More Perfect is a setting of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final paragraph of the Marriage Equality Decision by the Supreme Court in 2015. Premiering at Seagle Music Colony in 2015, it has quickly become a favorite of many baritones including Michael Mayes, Daniel Okulich and Michael Miller to name a few. The song had its professional premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016 and the orchestral premiere at the Fort Worth Opera Festival in 2017. His new cycle If Only Lenny Were Here, which celebrates the life of Leonard Bernstein had its world premiere with the Schenectady Symphony in October of 2018.
Evan was named “2018 Professional of the Year” by Musical America, was a composing fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute and a resident artist at Yaddo. He is currently published with Hal Leonard, Alfred, and Amazon. Evan is a Teaching Professor at Skidmore College. He lives in Albany with his wife, Kristin and two sons, Carter and Henry.
Joshua McGuire, librettist
JOSHUA McGUIRE has written librettos for The Secret of Luca, (based on the novel by Ignazio Silone) and Roscoe (based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy) with music by Evan Mack. In October 2016, Roscoe received a full performance by the Albany Symphony featuring soprano Deborah Voigt in the lead role of Veronica. His collaboration with Mack also produced #isoperadead, the first-ever opera for Twitter, as well as Lucinda y Las Flores de la Nochebuena, a children's opera commissioned by the Fresno State Opera Theatre. Since premiering in 2016, the opera has played for over 15,000 children, including annual performances by Opera in the Heights (Houston) and the San Francisco Opera Guild. Mack & McGuire’s one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby, based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, was commissioned and premiered by Samford University in 2018. They are currently fulfilling a multi-company commission for a new comedy entitled Yeltsin in Texas!
In 2015, McGuire was commissioned to write a libretto for Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, and the resulting one-act opera, Alexandra, with music by David Clay Mettens, was premiered at the Kennedy Center. He is also the author of The Secret of Music: a look at the listening life, a book of essays on music and mindfulness. McGuire is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, and from the Susan Shames Feinstein Librettist Fellowship at the American Center for New Works Development. He is represented by Margaret O'Connor of Innisfree Literary.
McGuire currently teaches at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. McGuire studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he pursued Master’s work in both guitar and orchestral conducting, holding assistantships in both areas. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he took the Bachelor of Music summa cum laude as well as High Honors in English Literature for his thesis on musical structures in the work of James Joyce. He currently resides in Nashville with his wife, pianist and conductor Jennifer McGuire, their son Thomas, and a basset hound.
In 2015, McGuire was commissioned to write a libretto for Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, and the resulting one-act opera, Alexandra, with music by David Clay Mettens, was premiered at the Kennedy Center. He is also the author of The Secret of Music: a look at the listening life, a book of essays on music and mindfulness. McGuire is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, and from the Susan Shames Feinstein Librettist Fellowship at the American Center for New Works Development. He is represented by Margaret O'Connor of Innisfree Literary.
McGuire currently teaches at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. McGuire studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he pursued Master’s work in both guitar and orchestral conducting, holding assistantships in both areas. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he took the Bachelor of Music summa cum laude as well as High Honors in English Literature for his thesis on musical structures in the work of James Joyce. He currently resides in Nashville with his wife, pianist and conductor Jennifer McGuire, their son Thomas, and a basset hound.
