Hagen-McFall Opera Amelia Set for May 2010 Premiere

Gardner McFall, Daron Hagen

Seattle, WA (July 2, 2009) - Tickets are now available for the 2010 Seattle Opera world premiere of Amelia, a newly commissioned opera that is a collaborative project of two Yaddo artists – composer Daron Hagen and poet and writer Gardner McFall.

Featuring music by Mr. Hagen, an intensely personal libretto by Ms. McFall, and a story by Stephen Wadsworth, who also will direct the production, Amelia is Seattle Opera's first commissioned work in more than 25 years. Amelia's title character is a woman in her late 30s who is expecting her first child. Amelia is still traumatized by the death of her father, a Navy pilot lost in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. The opera spans a 30-year period, interweaving one woman's emotional journey, the American experience in Vietnam, and elements of the Daedalus and Icarus myth. Ms. McFall's poetry collection The Pilot's Daughter is a memoir about her own father's loss in Vietnam. Maestro Gerard Schwarz will conduct Amelia, which was partially written at Yaddo.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has pledged a $500,000 grant in a first-of-its-kind initiative designed to provide crucial support for the production of new contemporary opera, enabling Amelia to be produced by two other American opera companies following the opera's world premiere in Seattle in May of 2010. In addition, The Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences has announced it will be the production sponsor for Amelia with a gift of $300,000 intended to draw new audiences to opera.

For ticket information and to learn more about Amelia and preview some of the opera's music, click here.