Composer and pianist and Nicolas Reveles earned his Master of Arts in choral conducting from the University of Redlands, as well as a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music. He has produced theater scores for the Old Globe Theatre, North Coast Repertory Theatre, and others.
Since 1998, Reveles has served as the Geisel director of education and outreach for the San Diego Opera. As of 2010, he’s also the host of UCSD-TV’s OperaTalk with Nick Reveles.
He wrote the music and libretto for Sextet, launched in summer 2010 by San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre. “Sextet is a queer opera in six scenes,” says Reveles. “It is nearly completely sung throughout in a style that I would call ‘American eclectic.’ My influences are many: Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, Benjamin Britten, church music, jazz...but I spend a lot of time trying to chase all of the composers out of the room while I’m working. They nag.
“Sextet came to me in a dream. After deciding that I wanted to write a chamber opera for a small space, I was awakened at three in the morning with the scenarios of four of the six works pretty much complete. The dialogue came easily. The music, however, took three or four years of percolating, writing in fits and starts, waiting for the right forms and structures to match these six unrelated episodes, unrelated in the narrative sense.
“Thematically, they are explorations of gay male desire...they all reflect things that have been special or unique in my own life; a search for the real Jesus and spirituality; a love for fairy tales, for the horror genre and grand guignol; a deep respect for Walt Whitman, who I believe was not only our greatest poet but our greatest gay poet; and for those little domestic tragedies and tender moments that brush by us every day.”