“Prototype: Opera/Theater/Now,†a festival that presents avant-garde chamber opera, will offer its second slate of productions at Here, the cozy arts center in Greenwich Village, in January. The festival, produced jointly by Here and Beth Morrison Projects, will include five works, among them the world premiere of “Thumbprint,†a 90-minute work by the composer and singer Kamala Sankaram and the playwright Susan Yankowitz, and “Angel’s Bone,†a work-in-progress by Du Yun, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek. The festival runs Jan. 8 to 18.
Ms. Sankaram, whose music combines Western and Hindustani compositional and vocal styles, based her work on the story of Mukhtar Mai, the young Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in 2002 and brought her attackers to justice. The work’s title comes from the resolution of the case: instead of a financial settlement, Ms. Mukhtar asked that schools be built to educate Pakistani peasants so they would no longer have to use their thumbprints as their signatures. Ms. Yankowitz based her libretto on interviews with Ms. Mukhtar. The work is scored for six singers and six musicians. Steven Osgood will conduct.
“Paul’s Case,†based on the short story by Willa Cather, is a collaboration between the eclectic composer Gregory Spears and the playwright Kathryn Walat. It is a two-act 85-minute work set at the turn of the 20th century, about a Pittsburgh high school student who runs away to New York and is done in by his encounters with both luxury and the drive of a mechanistic age.
Another New York premiere, Jonathan Berger’s “Visitations,†is a pair of one-act operas - “Theotokia†and “The War Reporter†- both based on the phenomenon of auditory hallucination, with librettos by Dan O’Brien.
“Theotokia†explores ritualistic and religious hallucinations through the story of a man who is plagued by imaginary voices and is ultimately seduced by one of them. “The War Reporter†is based on the story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Watson, who is haunted by the voice of an American soldier whose corpse he photographed in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. The libretto is based on interviews with Mr. Watson. “Visitations†had its world premiere at Stanford University in April.
Ms. Du’s work, “Angel Bone,†is a one-act opera about the captivity and liberation of two angels imprisoned by a suburban family. The work is a co-production of Trinity Wall Street, and will be conducted by Julian Wachner, Trinity’s music director.
Dates for the individual productions have not been announced,nor has a fifth production, which the festival described only as an “international presentation.†The festival is also promising at least two symposiums on contemporary opera.
