Grendel

Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal and Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor collaborate on Grendel, a groundbreaking opera inspired by the Beowulf legend. Over 1,000 years ago, two anonymous scribes wrote down an epic poem about a Scandinavian hero who ended the bloody reign of the monster Grendel. John Gardner’s 1971 novel, Grendel, approached the classic story from the monster’s point of view. Estranged from nature and outcast from the world of men, Grendel is a passionate thinker trapped in the body of a beast who struggles with his own existential conflicts and observations about humanity and about himself.

Using projections, puppetry, masks, and Goldenthal’s richly layered, highly emotional score, Taymor creates an enthralling visual landscape. In this world of kings, queens, storytellers and warriors, she and co-librettist J. D. McClatchy present a Grendel that is a quintessentially modern anti-hero. With language ranging from medieval to modern, Grendel serves as a gripping theatrical allegory of the human struggle.

Part of the Lincoln Center Festival.