Cincinnati Opera and CCM Partner Residency for New Opera CASTOR AND PATIENCE

Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) announce that their groundbreaking joint program, Opera Fusion: New Works, will host a residency for the new opera Castor and Patience from August 26 through September 4, 2019, in Cincinnati.

Castor and Patience, with music by composer Gregory Spears and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, has been commissioned by Cincinnati Opera in honor of its 100th anniversary season and will receive its world premiere as part of the company's 2020 Summer Festival. It will be Spears's second work for the company, following the extraordinary critical and popular success of Fellow Travelers, with librettist Greg Pierce, in 2016.

During the Opera Fusion: New Works residency, the work's creative team will collaborate with singers and musicians for a 10-day workshop, culminating in a public performance of excerpts on September 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Music Hall's Wilks Studio.

Tickets: Admission to the Opera Fusion: New Works public performance on September 4 is free, but seating is limited and reservations are required. Tickets will become available from the Cincinnati Opera box office on Tuesday, August 20 at 10 a.m. Call (513) 241-2742 to reserve.

Castor and Patience, with music by composer Gregory Spears and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, tells the story of African American cousins who find themselves at odds over the fate of a historic parcel of land they have inherited in the American South. According to Smith, "It's 2008, and Patience is fighting to stave off overzealous developers. Castor has a ballooning mortgage to contend with and is hoping to sell his share of the land. But if they're going to get anywhere as a family, they must first learn to see past their differing allegiances and trust one another. Castor and Patience is the story not just of a single family or even a particular geography, but of America's warring tensions between reckoning with the hard facts of history and racing blindly forward toward the dream of progress."

Castor and Patience will receive its world premiere at Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts as part of Cincinnati Opera's 2020 Summer Festival. For tickets and details, visit cincinnatiopera.org.

Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

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