Robert Lepage, the theatrical mastermind of the Metropolitan Opera production of Wagner's Ring, will mount a new opera for the New York house based on Stephen Hawking's popular-science bestseller A Brief History of Time.
The news emerged last week at the end of an interview on Radio France with the Argentine-born Canadian author Alberto Manguel. Manguel described himself as the author of the libretto and identified Lepage and Osvaldo Golijov, a popular Argentine-American composer of concert music, as his collaborators.
“The Met has commissioned an opera from Osvaldo Golijov, but we are not ready to confirm any other details of the project at this time,” a spokesperson for the opera house said this week.
Osvaldo Golijov has received numerous commissions from major ensembles and institutions in the U.S. and Europe and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. His music is performed regularly by musicians such as Robert Spano, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dawn Upshaw, Luciana Souza, Maya Beiser, the St. Lawrence, Kronos and Borromeo quartets, and the symphony orchestras of Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles, to name but a few. His collaborations continue to grow, most recently with the notable film director Francis Ford Coppola, for whom he has written two film scores, in a period of under two years. He is currently writing a piece for Dawn Upshaw and Emmanuel Ax, and is working on a commission for the Metropolitan Opera. He has been composer-in-residence at Merkin Hall in New York, the Spoleto USA Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Music Alive series, Marlboro Music, Ravinia, and several other festivals, and is currently composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony.
The première is scheduled for 2014.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
