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Biography
During a span of fifty years in the theater, Paul Boesing has done nearly everything. He received an undergraduate degree in Music and Drama from Indiana University and holds an MFA in Voice from the University of Minnesota. Paul is an actor/singer, composer, dialect coach and voice teacher. He is currently the voice/text/dialect coach for productions at the University of Nebraska, Omaha Department of Theatre.
Paulbegan composing music for the theater during the mid-sixties, including the musical Jack Jack by Megan Terry. With his former wife, Martha, he wrote a folk opera for the Minnesota Opera Company called The Wanderer, which toured Minnesota and was produced by the Houston Grand Opera. Their oratorio, Journey to Canaan, received a reading and recording at The Unitarian Society in Minneapolis. Paul created a song cycle for baritone and piano from the Journey material. A new version with chorus premiered at UNO March 2012.
Paul's many scores for At the Foot of the Mountain Theater included Calamity Jane and Carol Churchill's Vinegar Tom. His musical setting of Gertrude Stein's Photograph was produced by Actors Theater of St. Paul and the Red Eye Theater, co-sponsored by The Walker Art Center and Nautilus Music-Theater. Paul also wrote the music and lyrics for The Secret of the Old Queen, a musical parody of the Hardy Boys mystery that had successful runs at Stage Left Theater in Chicago, in San Francisco, Madison and Omaha's Snap Productions.
Paul created a concert of songs (with dance) set to the poetry of W.H. Auden, called Tell Me the Truth About Love, which premiered at DanceSpace in New York City with Tom Bogdan, tenor, a member of the Meredith Monk Ensemble. For the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival he wrote the songs and incidental music for As You Like It, and scores for Othello and Antony & Cleopatra. He wrote a different set of songs for As You Like It for the University of Kansas, Lawrence, which won a Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Award. Paul created a score for glass instruments for The Glass Menagerie, which was played by Dennis James in the Madison Repertory Theatre production, and a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, Wachsenden Ringen, a setting of ten poems by Ranier Maria Rilke, which premiered in Omaha conducted by Hal France.
Paul's music-drama, The Mothers of Ludlow, with a script and lyrics by Martha Boesing, premiered at Youth Musical Theatre Company in Berkeley. It will be performed by The Bluegrass Opera of Lexington, KY this August, which will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the event it depicts. Paul just won an international art song competition with his setting of Yeat's poems entitled Like an Old Song. They will be performed by Boston Metro Opera this year.
As an actor Paul was a company member of the Academy Theater in Atlanta, Joe Chaikin's Open Theater Workshop in NYC, the Firehouse Theater in Minneapolis and an original member of Peter Brook's International Workshop in Paris and London. His acting career has taken him to many regional theater centers, including St. Paul, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Jose, Milwaukee and Madison, WI. Some of his favorite roles are James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night, Frank Hardy in Faith Healer, and George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His singing career included many leading roles in the oldest and largest dinner theatre in the country in Chanhassen, MN. Paul has appeared in nine plays with the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, including Polonius in Hamlet, The Chorus and French King in Henry V and the title role in King Lear. Recent roles include Johnnypateenmike in The Cripple of Inishmaan for UNO Theatre and in A Walk in the Woods for Great Plains Theatre Conference. His most recent role was as Diabelli in 33 Variations at the Blue Barn Theater.
Productions
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Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
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