War Memorial Opera House
Photo by Lisa Hirsch
Well, not exactly, since there isn't a press release yet. What we have, though, is an article from The Guardian. The article starts by discussing John Berry, former artistic director of the English National Opera, but as it progress, it turns out that he's developing an opera about the opiod crisis, and eventuall you learn that Missy Mazzoli, composer of the magnificent Breaking the Waves, is writing the music to a story by Karen Russell and Royce Vavrek. Vavrek was the librettist for both Breaking the Waves and Du Yun's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel's Bone.
And even deeper in the article, you learn that the San Francisco Opera is among the commissions of the new opera. It will have its premiere in 2026, though it's not clear from the article where the first performances will take place.
2 comments:
I've been waiting for news that someone has snapped up Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, also focused on the opiod epidemic, for an operatic treatment. I'd love to do it myself, but don't quite have that level of connections yet....
I haven't read Demon Copperhead yet, in part because I feel I should first read David Copperfield and....I'm a Trollope fan.
Nonetheless, Kingsolver is a fabulous writer and I should just read it or bite the bullet and read the Dickens. As far as whether it could be the basis of an opera, I hope that there would not be rights issues.
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