American Opera Initiative: Three 20-Minute Operas

The first season of WNO’s American Opera Initiative opens with the premieres of three new 20-minute operas in a concert performance, accompanied by a small chamber orchestra, and followed by a Q&A session with the artists and creative team.

Composer Douglas Pew and librettist Dara Weinberg present The Game of Hearts, a comedy about a group of widows in a Seattle nursing home. Pew and Weinberg first met in Poland last year while studying music composition and theater as Fulbright Scholars.

Part of the Act by composer Liam Wade and librettist John Grimmett is a comic opera set in a New York City vaudeville theater in 1924. Sparks fly backstage between actresses when a glamorous star is accused of infidelity by her rival.

Composer Scott Perkins and librettist Nat Cassidy have created Charon, an allegorical tale of the ferryman on the River Styx and the cross-section of American characters he transports from the land of the living to the world beyond.