An acclaimed Iowa novel adapted from a Shakespeare play is now slated to take a third form: opera. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, published in 1991, won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for its artful re-envisioning of the harrowing King Lear drama in a 1970s Iowa farm setting. The Des Moines Metro Opera announced Thursday it will premiere the operatic version on July 9, 2022, thanks in part to a $1.5 million gift by Des Moines art lovers Linda and Tom Koehn.
The performance will be the centerpiece of the Indianola-based opera s 50th anniversary year, the organization said in a news release. It comes as the company and its patrons commemorate the life of Robert Larson, the longtime director and stage conductor who helped found the opera as a Simpson College music professor. Larson died March 31.
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 o
The Des Moines Metro Opera has announced they will be hosting the world premiere of the new opera A Thousand Acres next July, and in addition to the new opera the company has received a $1.5 million leadership gift from Linda and Tom Koehn in anticipation of the Company’s upcoming 50th anniversary campaign.
A Thousand Acres features a reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear on an Iowa farm in the 1970’s, and is based off of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and will be a centerpiece of DMMO’s 50th Anniversary Season in 2022.
Linda Koehn was a past president of the Des Moines Metro Opera Board, and was a 2020 recipient of Opera America’s National Opera Trustee Recognition Award. The donation also creates the Linda Koehn General and Artistic Director, currently held by Michael Egel.
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An acclaimed Iowa novel adapted from a Shakespeare play is now slated to take a third form: opera. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, published in 1991, won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for its artful re-envisioning of the harrowing King Lear drama in a 1970s Iowa farm setting. The Des Moines Metro Opera announced Thursday it will premiere the operatic version on July 9, 2022, thanks in part to a $1.5 million gift by Des Moines art lovers Linda and Tom Koehn.
The performance will be the centerpiece of the Indianola-based opera s 50th anniversary year, the organization said in a news release. It comes as the company and its patrons commemorate the life of Robert Larson, the longtime director and stage conductor who helped found the opera as a Simpson College music professor. Larson died March 31.