“For the first time in its history, the Metropolitan Opera is commissioning operas by women,” writes Michael Cooper in Monday’s (9/24) New York Times. “And it will venture beyond the walls of its opera house to collaborate with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Public Theater… The company has asked Missy Mazzoli to write an opera based on George Saunders’s ghostly novel ‘Lincoln in the Bardo,’ and is planning to stage Jeanine Tesori’s opera ‘Grounded,’ based on the George Brant play about a fighter pilot…. The Met … has only performed two operas by female composers in its history: (Kaija Saariaho’s ‘L’Amour de Loin’ in 2016 and Ethel M. Smyth’s ‘Der Wald’ in 1903)…. The Met is also in talks to have Mason Bates create an opera based on Michael Chabon’s novel ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.’ … In the summer of 2020 the company plans to collaborate with the Public Theater on a new, abridged English-language version of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ in the [Delacorte Theater at Central Park], directed by Lear deBessonet…. Co-commissions with [the Philadelphia Orchestra] will include [a] new work by [Mason] Bates…. Renée Fleming is to star in another co-commission, by Kevin Puts.”
Posted September 24, 2018
