A little more than a decade ago, when I was at the Metropolitan Opera to see Leoš Janáček's From the House of the Dead, I spotted the composer Missy Mazzoli passing by in the outer lobby. We'd known each other for a few years by then, and waved to one another from a distance. Then I pulled out my phone and posted a tweet: "I've spotted Missy Mazzoli at the Met for House of the Dead. One day I'll be here to hear her. Bank on it." I doubled down on that prognostication a few weeks later in The New York Times, recounting that tweet at the start of a year-end essay in which her work – and that of a few other composers of her generation, who were starting to achieve success in major mainstream institutions – was called out for attention and celebration.
If you'd like to check my work, I posted my receipts in the blog post I wrote on Sept. 24, 2018: the day an article by Michael Cooper in The New York Times revealed that Mazzoli was one of two composers commissioned to create new works for the Metropolitan Opera under the leadership of its new music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Mazzoli and Jeanine Tesori also had the distinction of being the only women composers commissioned by the Met in the company's history.
What prompts me to bring this all up yet again is because when all this buzz was transpiring to make me look insightful in 2018, I ventured one more opinion, posted in conjunction with the New York City premiere of Proving Up, the most recent opera Mazzoli had created with her gifted librettist partner, Royce Vavrek:
One, as of this minute there are 14 tickets remaining for tomorrow night, and one of them OUGHT to have your name on it. Two, the @MetOpera, having announced a future @missymazzoli commission, should fast-track 'Breaking the Waves' into its 2019-20 season. That is all.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) September 27, 2018
Granted, Cooper's article about Mazzoli's Met commission stipulated that, in the words of general manager Peter Gelb, "the Met Orchestra would perform a Mazzoli chamber opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Mr. Nézet-Séguin conducting." Anyone who knows Breaking the Waves knows that it is no chamber opera, but a full-blown stage drama, for a sizeable cast and a substantial orchestra.
But lo and behold: late today, BAM announced a substantial new festival titled Yours Theirs Ours—including three performances of Breaking the Waves. The production is one by Opera Ventures and Scottish Opera, introduced to widespread acclaim at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival. (The same two producers previously brought Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek to BAM in 2018.) The director is Tom Morris, who helmed the Edinburgh presentation; Nézet-Séguin will conduct the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra together with the Scottish Opera Chorus. As yet, no casting has been announced.
Tickets for Breaking the Waves – and all other Yours Theirs Ours events – go on sale to BAM patrons on January 28, to BAM members on February 4, and to the general public on February 11.
I'm tempted, naturally, to make some bold claim about my powers of perception… but really, this was a no-brainer, even a decade ago.
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