East Village Opera Company

Of all the classical music forms, romantic, opera, twentieth century, modern, or baroque; opera is perhaps the most scorned and the least understood. Until now. In forming the East Village Opera Company founders Peter Kiesewalter and Tyley Ross have fused opera and rock music to create a whole new sound in the two genres. With a voice that is reminiscent of Freddie Mercury male singer Canadian Tyley Ross and the rest of East Village Opera company pick up where Queen left off with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and like The Who did with "Tommy".

The East Village Opera Company is comprised of a five piece rock band - two electric guitars, a bass, drums, and keyboards -, a string quartet, and two singers - one male and one female. Multi-instrumentalist Kiesewalter says that he sees himself just playing cover tunes; only the band is covering pieces from 150 to 250 years ago as opposed to the more recent hits. Kiesewalter feels that the East Village Opera Company is playing the pieces the same way that the composers would have wanted them played if they were alive today in a world of fancy keyboards and electronic instruments. Peter says that he loves opera and just wanted to bring it into the twenty first century when he and Tyley created the band in 2004.

The band released their self titled major label debut album with Universal and Decca in September of 2005. The album contains 11 works from the more popular operas like Rigoletto, La Bohemme, Madame Butterfly, Turandot, Tosca, and Carmen; with works by composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Puccini. All the works are performed in their entirety and in the original languages. The liner notes to the album contains the literal translations for each song. While the translations may not make sense they provide an accurate translation of the words sung in each piece. A part of Nessun Dorma was used in a documentary which appeared on Showtime earlier this year.

The East Village Opera Company also has a previous release their self released debut album "le Donne" which includes La Donne E Mobile from Rigoletto by Verdi and Ave Maria by Franz Schubert and is available the independent internet CD sales and distributor company CDBaby at www.cdbaby.com. The East Village Opera Company have provided some samples of their music which are available on their website at www.eastvillageoperacompany.co m. And click on the music tab.