About This Show
The Canadian Opera Company presents the world
premiere concert performance of Canadian composer Alexina Louie?s The Scarlet Princess. Both the music and libretto are by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang.
Based on a Kabuki play entitled The Scarlet Princess of Edo, the opera opens with a monk and his young lover climbing a mountain cliff to fulfill a suicide pact. The lover plunges to his death but, realising the monk has not jumped with him, curses him. Years later, a beautiful young princess tries to enter a monastery, hoping to become a nun. The monk, now chief abbot, recognises the princess instantly as his lover reincarnate and his obsession with her begins, but their relationship is betrayed by another monk, and the abbott and the princess are banished from the monastery. Disowned by her father, the princess becomes involved with a thief who sees her potential as a prostitute and she becomes known as the Scarlet Princess. A supporting cast of nuns, monks, bandits, outcasts, ghosts and demons round out this tormented love story.