According to an ancient Chinese myth, there was a human giant, Kuafu, who was arrogant enough to chase the sun from east to west. As Kuafu runs, he grows thirsty and drinks all of the water from the Yellow and Wei Rivers. Still, he is unable to reach his goal and dies of dehydration, and the wooden staff he drops grows into a vast forest of peach trees. “This simple story tells me several things,” says Huang Ruo, composer and librettist of the opera Book of Mountains and Seas, a recent opera that compiles four Chinese stories dating back more than 2,000 years. “It tells me if we abuse and don’t take good care of nature, not only is nature destroyed, but humanity also dies,” he says.

Ruo’s opera, which premiered in 2021, will be reprised by Chicago Opera Theater in November thanks in part to a Next Stage Grant from OPERA America. It is one of several operas focusing on larger-than-life mythological and spiritual tales to earn grant funding from OPERA America and other entities.

“These epic religious stories and myths are symbols we can all relate to, and opera is the perfect medium to capture their grandeur,” says composer and librettist Carla Lucero, who is currently working on The Tower of Babel, an opera that will premiere during Los Angeles Opera’s 2024–2025 season. (Los Angeles Opera received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers to produce the opera.) Lucero says she is using several languages, including English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hebrew, as well as instruments like the Chinese erhu (a two-stringed, bowed instrument). In the Babel story, multiple languages are “a ‘curse’ from God,” Lucero says, “but really the opera is about celebrating the richness of cultural diversity, expressed through music and words and dance.”

There is something to the splendor of opera that lends itself to these sorts of legendary tales, agrees stage director Roxanna Myhrum, who directed the opera MONKEY: A Kung Fu Puppet Parable (Jorge Sosa, composer; Cerise Lim Jacobs, librettist) at White Snake Projects in September. That company received a 2023 Opera Grant for Women Stage Directors and Conductors to hire Myhrum for the new opera, which uses music and puppetry to tell the ancient quest saga Journey to the West, wherein Buddha sends a monk to retrieve sutras from the Western world. “Opera can be a very formal and technical art form, but it also is very visceral in the way it can connect with a sort of spirituality and resonate deep within our bodies,” Myhrum says.

“There’s certainly magic in gritty reality storytelling, as well,” Myrhum says. “But in a world where people have infinite options in how to invest their attention, opera serves itself by finding story areas that aren’t being well-served by other storytelling methods.”

Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors

This grant program, with support from the Marineau Family Foundation, incentivizes professional opera companies of all sizes to engage women in key artistic roles in order to improve gender parity in the field. Grants, which are capped at $10,000, went to four companies:

• Arizona Opera to support Sarah Ina Meyers, director of Frankenstein
• Cincinnati Opera to support Stephanie Rhodes Russell, conductor of The Knock
• Opera Parallèle to support Yayoi Kambara, director of The Emissary
• White Snake Projects to support Roxanna Myhrum, director of MONKEY: A Kung Fu Puppet Parable

Read the press release to learn more about the grantees.

Opera Grants for Women Composers: Commissioning Grants

This program awarded $100,000 to five opera companies to support the creation of six new works by women. Commissioning Grants are made possible with the generosity of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The grantees are:

• Beth Morrison Projects, for Sensorium Ex by composer Paola Prestini and librettist Brenda Shaughnessy
• Houston Grand Opera, for The Big Swim by composer Meilina Tsui and librettist Melisa Tien
• LA Opera, for The Tower of Babel by composer/librettist Carla Lucero
• Pittsburgh Opera, for Time to Act (working title) by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist Crystal Manich
• White Snake Projects, for Ashima by composer Jingjing Luo and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs; and Is This America? The Story of Fannie Lou Hamer by composer Mary D. Watkins and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs

Read the press release to learn more about the grantees.

Next Stage Grants

OPERA America has awarded $200,000 to six American opera companies to support the second or subsequent productions of existing North American works. The grants provide opera companies with the opportunity to refine the works. The companies receiving funding are:

• Chicago Opera Theater, for Book of Mountains and Seas by composer/librettist Huang Ruo
• Los Angeles Opera, for Highway 1, USA, by composer William Grant Still and librettist Verna Arvey
• New Orleans Opera, for Blue by composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson
• Opera Parallèle, for Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera by composer David T. Little and librettist Royce Vavrek
• Opera Southwest, for Before Night Falls by composer Jorge Martín and librettist Dolores M. Koch
• Virginia Opera, for Sanctuary Road by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell

Read the press release to learn more about the grantees.

New Director-Designer Prize Exhibition

The Robert L.B. Tobin Director- Designer Prize is a biennial program highlighting the work promising stage directors and designers.

A winning team of the 2022 Director-Designer Prize is currently exhibiting its production concept for Sweeney Todd at OPERA America’s National Opera Center. The production is the work of director Kimille Howard, lighting designer John D. Alexander, set designer Kimberly V. Powers, and costume designer Danielle Preston. Visit the eighth floor of the Opera Center to see their Sweeney Todd through November.

The Director-Designer Prize is supported by the Tobin Theatre Arts Fund.