On July 9, 2022, Des Moines Metro Opera will add a new American work to the operatic canon with its world premiere of A Thousand Acres with music by Kristin Kuster and libretto by Mark Campbell. The evening-length work is based on Jane Smiley's 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and will be a centerpiece of DMMO's 50th Anniversary Season in 2022. Set on an Iowa farm in the late 1970s, this powerful reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ambassador Book Award for Fiction. "As this seminal novel approaches its 30th anniversary later this year, the occasion is right to bring the words of a major American novelist to life on the opera stage," said Michael Egel, General and Artistic Director. "The choice of A Thousand Acres for an opera company in Iowa is the perfect melding of subject and locale and an ideal one for us in celebration of our 50th Anniversary. The novel is perfectly placed in history to receive an operatic treatment - modern enough that we know these characters and their stories but just distant enough to provide some perspective and lend the story a universality that will make it an enduring contribution to the American repertory." The production will be led by Marshall and Judy Flapan Music Director and Principal Conductor David Neely and envisioned for the stage by director and dramaturg Kristine McIntyre.