The idea that new work is essential for the continued health of American opera has been one of OPERA America’s core beliefs for decades. As part of its mission to bring new North American works to opera stages, the organization recently awarded a total of $225,000 to 11 companies through its Repertoire Development grant program. These grants are drawn from The Opera Fund, a growing endowment that since 2002 has provided more than $13 million in support for new works and related programming for audiences. Applications for these Repertoire Development grants were adjudicated by an independent panel consisting of director Laine Rettmer, conductor and coach Stephanie Rhodes, composer and conductor Huang Ruo, librettist Joan Ross Sorkin, and soprano Talise Trevigne.

2018 REPERTOIRE DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS/OPERA PARALLÈLE
Today It Rains
Laura Kaminsky, composer
Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, librettists

Today It Rains presents Georgia O’Keeffe on the momentous 1929 train ride when she left New York and her fraught marriage with photographer Alfred Stieglitz behind and headed toward her new artistic home in Santa Fe.

BETH MORRISON PROJECTS
Magda/Max
Garrett Fisher, composer and librettist
Amy Schrader, librettist

Max, a gay prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, imagines himself in a fever dream as Magda, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA
Schoenberg in Hollywood
Tod Machover, composer
Simon Robson, librettist
Based on a scenario by Braham Murray

Arnold Schoenberg, settling in Los Angeles in the 1930s, attempts to adapt to Hollywood culture: a struggle full of pathos, humor and heroism.

THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
Blue
Jeanine Tesori, composer
Tazewell Thompson, librettist

Examining the grief of an African-American couple who lose their teenage son to a policeman’s bullet, Blue will be part of “Breaking Glass,” a podcast and series of national forums linking opera and topical issues.

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA
The Phoenix
Tarik O’Regan, composer
John Caird, librettist

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s friend and librettist, flees Europe for America, pursued by tax collectors and wronged women.

LONG BEACH OPERA
Five
Anthony Davis, composer
Richard Wesley, librettist

A revised version of a piece that premiered in 2016, Five follows the five African-American and Latino teenage boys who were wrongly convicted for the 1989 rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA
Eurydice
Matthew Aucoin, composer
Sarah Ruhl, librettist

This reimagining of the Orpheus myth, based on the play by Sarah Ruhl, is told from the perspective of Eurydice, and uses contemporary language to present the young lovers as quirky and conflicted.

MINNESOTA OPERA
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Paola Prestini, composer
Mark Campbell, librettist

The family-friendly Edward Tulane, based on the young adult novel by Kate DiCamillo, follows the adventures of toy rabbit named Edward whose comfortable life in a loving household abruptly ends when he is thrown into the sea from the Queen Mary.

OPERA COLUMBUS
The Flood
Korine Fujiwara, composer
Stephen Wadsworth, librettist

A collaboration with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, The Flood follows multiple generations of a single Columbus family devastated by the Great Flood of 1913.

OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Terence Blanchard, composer
Kasi Lemmons, librettist

Based on the memoir by New York Times columnist Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones describes the author’s coming of age on the site of a Louisiana plantation, and his fight to break his community’s cycles of violence.