Atlanta Opera Presents Its Third Annual 96-Hour Opera Festival

The Atlanta Opera has announced its third annual 96-Hour Opera Festival, running June 15–17, this season including its first world premiere. A composition competition that pairs composers and librettists to write ten-minute operas in five teams, the 96-Hour Opera Project is designed specifically for emerging creative talents from historically underrecognized communities.

The weekend festival begins on Saturday night with the world premiere of Forsyth County is Flooding (with the Joy of Lake Lanier) by composer Marcus Norris and librettist Adamma Ebo, which won the competition in 2022. Directing the production is Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, director of Atlanta's Alliance Theatre. The next day features a workshop reading of the 2023 winner, Steele Roots by Selda Sahin and Dave Ragland. The festival culminates on Monday with this year's ten-minute opera competition, for which the pool of applicants was the largest since the project began. The five works will be presented in a public performance at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at Morehouse College.

The Atlanta Opera awards the winning team, selected by a distinguished panel of judges, a $10,000 Antinori Foundation Grand Prize and an Atlanta Opera commission for a new chamber opera to be produced and performed in an upcoming season; all other participants are guaranteed a $1,000 honorarium. This season, the ten-minute works will be focused on the technology-driven topic “AI influence on creativity.” Selected composer/librettist teams for 2024 are: Timothy Amukele & Jarrod Lee; George Tsz-Kwan Lam & David Davila; Evan Williams & Ashlee Haze; Kitty Brazelton & Vaibu Mohan; and Lauren McCall & Mo Holmes.

Reflecting on the 96-Hour Opera Project, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun says: “The 96-Hour Opera competition has blossomed into a full-blown festival this season. In addition to hosting the prestigious competition to identify a winning talented team that will be commissioned for a brand-new opera, we are presenting the world premiere of Forsyth County is Flooding (winner of the 2022 competition) and the workshop of Steele Roots (winner of last year's competition). This vital program is one of the highlights of our season and we are excited that it has grown into a festival in such a short time.” Judges for the 96-Hour Opera competition include luminaries from every corner of the industry. Paul Cremo has overseen projects developed through the Met / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program and full commissions for the Met stage, including Grounded by Jeanine Tesori and George Brant; The Hours by Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce; Eurydice by Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl, and many more. Andrea Davis Pinkney, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of numerous books, is also the acclaimed librettist for the Houston Grand Opera's The Snowy Day, with composer Joel Thompson, a work based on the beloved classic by Ezra Jack Keats. Her work has garnered multiple Coretta Scott King Book Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, and the Parenting Publications gold medal. Doug Hooker is CEO of the Midtown Connector Park Foundation, an initiative to build a public park over a portion of the connector highway in Atlanta, and before “retiring” in 2022 he led the Atlanta Regional Commission for many years. Also a musician and composer, he has had recent public performances of his Second Symphony, First String Quartet, and two choral works. Grammy-nominated composer Carlos Simon currently serves as composer-in-residence for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has written numerous pieces for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. Simon also holds the position of inaugural Composer Chair of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first in the institution's 143-year history. Tazewell Thompson is an internationally acclaimed award-winning director of opera and theater and is also a playwright, librettist, lecturer, teacher, and actor. The opera Blue, which Thompson created with composer Jeanine Tesori, won the Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera in 2020. After productions at Glimmerglass, Washington National Opera, Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, and others, it will be produced at Chicago Lyric in November 2024. His new opera, Jubilee, about the Fisk Jubilee Singers, will have its world premiere in October 2024 at Seattle Opera.

For more information about the composers and librettists competing in the 2024 96-Hour Opera Project, click here, and a three-part series presented in July 2022 on Georgia Public Television about the 96-Hour Opera Project can be viewed here.

About The Atlanta Opera

The Atlanta Opera's mission is to break the boundaries of opera to create exceptional experiences for audiences everywhere. Founded in 1979, the company works with world-renowned singers, conductors, directors and designers who seek to enhance the art form. Under the leadership of internationally recognized stage director and Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun, The Atlanta Opera expanded from three to four mainstage productions at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre and launched the acclaimed “Discoveries” event series, as well as the innovative 96-Hour Opera Project. In recent years, the company has been named among the “Best of 2015” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and was nominated in 2016 and 2023 for International Opera Awards. It also received ArtsATL's 2019 Luminary Award for Community Engagement in recognition of its successful Veterans Program in partnership with the Home Depot Foundation, while the 2023 Governor's Award for the Arts and Humanities recognized the excellence of the 96-Hour Opera Project. In addition, The Atlanta Opera was featured in a 2018 Harvard Business School case study about successful organizational growth, and Zvulun presented a TEDx Talk at Emory University titled “The Ambidextrous Opera Company, or Opera in the Age of iPhones.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, The Atlanta Opera was one of the only companies in the world to create a full, alternative season, consisting of no less than 40 live performances in two different outdoor venues, including a revolutionary custom-designed circus tent. The critically acclaimed productions and concerts were streamed in HD on the newly created “Atlanta Opera Film Studio” streaming platform, which continues to allow The Atlanta Opera to reach a global audience.

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