…after Aristophanes’ comic tragedy on love and war, is my second opera. Like Little Women, Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera and introduced there in 2005: that production, directed by Michael Kahn and conducted by Stefan Lano, made its East Coast début at New York City Opera in March of 2006. I was grateful for Alex Ross’s generous assessment of the world première in The New Yorker, and for Russell Platt’s astute observations in Playbill: the New York production attracted, as well as the mainstream press, the attention of classicists Peter Meineck in Arion and Ralph Hexter in the American Journal of Philology.
Here you’ll find several conversations I’ve had with journalists about the piece, and imagery from the New York production. G. Schirmer can provide the CD, the libretto, and the vocal score; here you’ll find my notes on the opera, and its technical details; Hal Leonard offers six of the opera’s arias. New York City Opera commissioned its overture for the New York première in 2006; you’ll find the score here, and the recording here. Peggy Monastra, my stalwart representative at G. Schirmer, knows more.
Critical response
