Photos by Louis Stein and Leviseur
“A Vividly Immersive Thriller” (NYTimes)
January 16–19, 2025
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
66 East 4th Street NYC
Tickets available soon
Join us at PROTOTYPE, the annual festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works by pioneering contemporary artists, for the New York Premiere of composer Christopher Cerrone and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann’s opera, In A Grove.
Inspired by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s classic story, In A Grove is a haunting meditation on the impossibility of truth and the subjectivity of memory and perception. Set in a ghost forest in the aftermath of a wildfire in the Pacific Northwest, this searing adaptation plunges the listener progressively deeper into the ever more fallible regions of the human heart, interrogating how we see, hear, remember and believe.
Directed by Mary Birnbaum
Conducted by Andrew Cyr with the Metropolis Ensemble
Produced by Cath Brittan
Designed by Beth Morrison Projects
Sets by Mimi Lien and Steve Grair
Lights by Yuki Nakase-Link
Costumes by Oana Botez
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera. Co-Produced by the Pittsburgh Opera and Metropolis Ensemble. With additional creative and development support provided by Raulee Marcus and Steven Block. Co-Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
About the Opera
The 2022 World Premiere of In A Grove was produced by Pittsburgh Opera, conducted by Antony Walker, and designed by Mimi Lien, Yuki Nakase Link, and Oana Botez; featuring a cast of Andrew Turner, Madeleine Ehlinger, Yazid Gray, and Chuanyuan Liu.
“Moody, haunting… the instrumental soundscape, with fragments of melody subtly woven into a foundation of percussion, remains alluringly and dramatically hypnotic. Vocal lines are direct and unembellished… Like the instruments, the voices are amplified and sometimes electronically manipulated and distorted, alerting the listener to the fact that a character may be lying, or remembering wrong. (Wall Street Journal)
About the Album
The 2023 studio recording (In A Circle Records with Metropolis Ensemble), produced by Mike Tierney, Andrew Cyr, and Christopher Cerrone, was named one of the best classical albums of the year by The New York Times.
“The album — vividly produced by Christopher Cerrone, Mike Tierney and Andrew Cyr, who here also conducts the nimble Metropolis Ensemble — is not a mere document of the premiere, but a creation of its own, carefully considered for the studio in the manner of Meredith Monk’s stage works.” (New York Times)
Christopher Cerrone
Composer
Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.
Recent commissions include In a Grove, a new opera co-produced by LA Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony, an antiphonal brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner and the Phoenix and Albany Symphonies, a percussion concerto for Third Coast Percussion, and three works for the LA Philharmonic. His first opera, Invisible Cities, based on Italo Calvino’s novel, was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and he is the recipient of multiple GRAMMY nominations. He is the winner of the 2015–2016 Rome Prize and is a resident at Laurenz Haus in Basel, Switzerland from 2022–23.
Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from Yale and the Manhattan School of Music and is published by Schott NY. He is on the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music and lives in Brooklyn with his wife. More info »
Stephanie Fleischmann
Librettist
The recipient of Opera America’s 2022 Campbell Librettist Prize, Stephanie Fleischmann is an award-winning librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds.
Opera libretti include: Poppaea (Wien Modern; Basel Zeiträume) and Medea (Ensemble MusikFabrik, Cologne), both with composer Michael Hersch; Dido with Melinda Wagner (for Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano Quartet, touring throughout the US); Another City (Houston Grand Opera) and The Long Walk (Opera Saratoga/ALT/Utah Opera), both with Jeremy Howard Beck; and operas in progress with David Hanlon (Santa Fe Opera), Yevgeniy Sharlat (Hub New Music), Matthew Recio (West Edge), Alex Weiser (ALT), and Peter Knell (Jacaranda/Seattle Opera). The Visitation, a soundwalk with Christina Campanella, can be accessed via URHERE. More info »
Mary Birnbaum
Director
Mary Birnbaum creates new ways for audiences and artists to encounter music theater. New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini called Mary’s direction “viscerally overwhelming” (The Rape of Lucretia at Juilliard) and “genuinely insightful...vibrant” (The Classical Style at Carnegie Hall). In standard repertoire, Mary uncovers stories that have been overlooked or buried within a text, at times recentering the narrative to include a wider expression of human experience. All her shows include artistic sleight of hand, the collision of classical and pop culture, and rigorously fun ensemble work.
She is in demand as a director of new work for her skills as a collaborator and a dramaturge, and has created world premieres with Elise Thoron/Frank London, Kristin Kuster/Megan Levad, Jeremy Denk/Steven Stucky and Rene Orth. Most recently, Mary directed the world premiere of Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann’s In A Grove, which was deemed “alluring and dramatically hypnotic” by The Wall Street Journal.
Mary was nominated for Best Newcomer at The European Opera Awards in 2015 and won the Opera America Director/Designer Showcase for her production of Gertrude Stein & Virgil Thompson’s Four Saints in Three Acts. More info »
Andrew Cyr
Music Director
Grammy-nominated conductor and artistic director, Andrew Cyr, founded Metropolis in 2006 to create new platforms for outstanding composers and performing artists.
He has led premieres at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Celebrate Brooklyn!, Radio City Music Hall, Kimmel Center Verizon Hall, Sounds from a Safe Harbour, New Victory Theatre, Cité de la Music, Paris, Hamer Hall, Melbourne, and The Tonight Show. More info »
Prototype
PROTOTYPE: OPERA l THEATRE l NOW is a co-production of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, two trailblazers in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works.
The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and is a model now emulated around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking. More info »