A World Premiere Commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts
W.A. Mozart never imagined his classic opera The Marriage of Figaro would be transformed with text from gay rights activist Larry Kramer’s incendiary novel Faggots and performed by countertenors, dancers, and actors—but it has, and this is it.
Part theater, part opera, and part disco—this project is set on Fire Island in 1977 at a “utopian” moment of liberation. Figaro/Faggots investigates the complexities of same-sex partnership and fight for marriage equality through documentary, devised choreography, transfiguration of objects, and the most glorious music ever fucking created.
The 90-minute chamber work has a score by W.A. Mozart, with a new libretto made entirely from found text by Larry Kramer, renowned playwright of The Normal Heart. While that play focuses on the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City, Figaro/Faggots encounters his roman à clef just four years prior in a thinly veiled true love story.