Prestini and Vavrek's Opera SILENT LIGHT to Open National Sawdust's 10th Anniversary Season

National Sawdust will open its momentous 10th anniversary season with the world premiere production of Paola Prestini and Royce Vavrek's sensual and poetic new opera Silent Light (September 26-29). Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger and conducted by Christopher Rountree, the chamber opera is adapted from Carlos Reygadas' beloved film of the same name. The opera marks the first performance of a full-length work by Prestini at the organization she co-founded and directs. It kicks off a season that celebrates a decade of groundbreaking work while paving the way for a bold and impactful future—and features many accomplished artists who shaped the cutting-edge institution.

Silent Light inventively bridges the operatic and cinematic with Foley sound effects performed live on stage, alongside a choral octet with four primary leads, violin, cello, trumpet, trombone and looper, percussion, and electronics. Engaging sound (with the immediacy and multidimensionality of National Sawdust's Meyer Constellation sound system), sight, and smell, the opera integrates National Sawdust's intimate and distinct design into an immersive, theater-in-the-round environment that takes audiences into the world of a Mennonite community in Northern Mexico. This bold work signals a new chapter of full opera productions for the institution deemed “the city's most vital new-music hall” (The New York Times), which will enter its second decade with the momentum and freedom gained from its recent acquisition of its iconic building.

In the world of Silent Light, a kiss can both destroy and regenerate. The opera follows a pious husband and father whose strongly held spiritual obligation to his wife, their family, and community is put to the test when he falls in love with another woman from his faith. Silent Light is both about what happens when love challenges the very nature of our social reality—and about the weighty, complex relationship an affair engenders between the two women it affects. An immersion into an isolated community, Silent Light challenges “otherness” both within the gendered social fabric of this sequestered society, as well as between the audience and the opera's subjects.

Silent Light's all-star cast includes Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch, who has been with the piece in the role of Johann since its origins, as Johan; two-time Grammy Award-winning soprano and Metropolitan Opera star Brittany Renée as Esther; acclaimed singer and director Julia Mintzer (who played the title role in Strassberger's production of Salome at Tulsa Opera, where she made her debut as a soprano) as Marianne; Anthony Dean Griffey—the tenor celebrated for his “both full-bodied and sweet-toned” voice (The New York Times)—as Zacarias; Grammy-nominated mezzo soprano Maggie Lattimore as Esther's mom; and celebrated bass-baritone James Demler as Father. The production also features live Foley created by Sxip Shirey, who collaborated with Prestini on developing the sounds and performed by Nathan Repasz. Other performers include Novus, and Trinity Choir, cellist and Music Director for the National Sawdust Ensemble Jeffrey Ziegler, and NYC-based instrumental duo Nelson Patton (Dave Nelson and Marlon Patton).

Paloa Prestini's compositions have been praised by The New York Times as “otherworldly…outright gorgeous" and "music of candid vulnerability," while NPR stated that her work "bursts open in beauty." Here, she draws on both the profound and charged silences between words and the textured everyday sounds in the lives it depicts for her compositional approach to this adaptation. She says, “Royce and I decided on Silent Light because of the vast emotional canvas the film's characters offer. The film has no score, location sounds seem hard-edged, and when a hymn is sung, it is not a tune but a dirge. It was the perfect skeleton for an opera. I fell in love with the subject because I am fascinated by rite and ritual, and ordinary and magical lives, and this piece has these qualities—it forces one to look at every day decisions and the consequences in a deeply human way.”

She adds, “I was eager to dive into the examination of ‘otherness' that this work explores. Giving a glimpse into secluded lives and cultures helps break down myths, helping lead to a more inclusive society. Set among the 100,000 or so Mennonites living in Mexico, the choir embodies them—people who deeply hold their values and try to act upon them, and yet who do not seem to be zealots.”

The New York Times wrote in a review of Reygadas' film that its “immersion” into its world “feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith.” Prestini, Vavrek, and Strassberger's vision considers immersion as a gateway to empathy, harnessing the evocative sensory potential of live performance to bring audiences into an unfamiliar environment and its customs. As it turns towards a society that is often misunderstood and simplified by people outside of the faith and lifestyle, Silent Light reveals the commonalities of human experience, across the differences in our social structures and mores. When the opera was performed at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where it was developed, the Calgary Herald praised the “at-once pellucid and oftentimes deeply emotional score by Paola Prestini, set to Vavrek's bang-on minimalist libretto,” calling Silent Light “consummately directed” and a “tremendous accomplishment.”

Vavrek, described by The New York Times as “an exemplary creator of operatic prose,” says, “I saw the movie when it came out in cinemas, and it blew my mind. There was something arresting about the beauty and simplicity through which these characters chose to live their lives. It ripped my heart out and ultimately felt like a fairy tale with a huge operatic scope while being extremely quiet. It seemed like a really exciting way to explore a different type of virtuosity than what we normally get in opera. What we sought to make was a small chamber opera with really big ideas. I think the theater of it communicates in a massive way, thanks to Thaddeus' direction. Through our adaptation process, it was all about trusting Carlos's vision and the structure of his film, and then asking Thaddeus to make our black and white pages something alive and beautiful on the stage.”

The opera's set design by Strassberger highlights National Sawdust's unique architecture to create a liminal space where the Williamsburg, Brooklyn venue dissolves into a very different environment. The set embraces the theater as a site of imagination that allows us entry into, and understandings of, other experiences. Describes Strassberger, “In this intimate space for an audience of less than 100, you can only put so much scenery in before there isn't room for music and poetry and people — all the most fundamental elements of this work. Since this piece is marking the beginning of an evolution for National Sawdust into presenting full opera productions, we realized the idea wasn't to mask the space and its strong visual identity but rather use its design. Silent Light will have an in-the-round seating arrangement, with elements of Sawdust's architecture—for instance, the black lines that cut across the ceiling—reflected in a Cornelia Parker-inspired sculpture that looks like the space is falling down into the world of the play.”

Sounds created by Foley artist Sxip Shirey likewise nods to the production as an act of imagination, as they're enacted by musician and theater artist Nathan Repasz manufacturing this sonic atmosphere onstage. With its playful means of recreating everyday noise, Foley further engulfs audiences in the sensual soundscape of this world, while the performer evokes the sounds of nature and agrarian life with materials as wide-ranging and surprising as marbles, styrofoam, and squirt guns.

Silent Light was developed at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and co-commissioned by Trinity Choir, VisionIntoArt, and National Sawdust. The opera kicks off the women-led, Williamsburg, Brooklyn-based non-profit's 10th anniversary season. In a dynamic season of programming, the organization celebrates a decade of incubating boundary-pushing sound-based artistic work in one of the best-sounding halls in New York City. Presented in a pivotal moment for both National Sawdust and the performing arts field writ large, Season 10 articulates the institution's vision for the next decade—and beyond.

About Paola Prestini

Composer Paola Prestini has cultivated a uniquely expansive artistic voice, through works that transcend genre and discipline and projects whose global impact reverberates far beyond the walls of the concert hall. Her large-scale multimedia compositions have fundamentally changed the landscape of her art form. Prestini was named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. As Co-Founder of National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, London's Barbican Center, Mexico's Bellas Artes, and many more.

Prestini's 2024-25 season features a staggering five world premieres of major opera and music-theater works across the United States. Beyond Silent Light, in January, 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and VisionIntoArt will co-present the world premiere of Primero Sueño, a site-specific processional opera taking place at The Met Cloisters that explores the life of proto-feminist Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, co-composed with Magos Herrera. Prestini's expansive, multi-modal opera Sensorium Ex, ith a libretto by poet Brenda Shaughnessy, will have its world premiere May 22-25, presented by the Common Senses Festival in Omaha, Nebraska, in a co-presentation by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. Sensorium Ex is pioneering a new set of Artificial Intelligence tools as a way of expanding the possibilities for voice and expression, developed in collaboration with the The NYU Ability Project that allows people with disordered, impaired, or limited speech to communicate, with an emphasis on expressivity and personalization. The spring and summer of 2025 will see two more world premieres: an immersive choral theater work entitled Port(al) in collaboration with Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad, director Jessica Grindstaff and The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which will take place at the Brooklyn Navy Yard's Agger Fish Building, and the outdoor chamber opera Time Like a Rolling Stream, which features Julian Crouch and Sandbox Percussion and will be presented by Pike Opera in Milford, PA.

A tireless advocate for equity across her industry, Prestini has repeatedly shattered the glass ceiling by conceiving and creating programs such as the Hildegard Commission for emerging women and marginalized composers, and the Blueprint Fellowship for emerging composers and women mentors at the Juilliard School. She was also the first woman in the Minnesota Opera's New Works Initiative with her grand opera Edward Tulane, and was among the 19 leading women composers to participate in the New York Philharmonic's Project 19 — the largest women-only commissioning initiative in history that commemorated American women gaining the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Prestini has been named as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and a Sundance Institute Film Music Program Fellow, and has been composer-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory, MASS MoCA, and the American Academy of Rome. Prestini is also the co-founder of VisionIntoArt, a non-profit new music and interdisciplinary arts production company in New York City that incubates deep process interdisciplinary and impact works. She attended the Peabody School of Music and is a graduate of the Juilliard School, and she resides in Brooklyn with her husband, the acclaimed cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and her son, the yo-yo/rubix master, Tommaso.

About Royce Vavrek

Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his opera Angel's Bone, written with composer Du Yun. His acclaimed operas, in collaboration with renowned composers including David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Paola Prestini, have earned him a reputation as “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker), a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), and “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times). His work has been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Washington National Opera, Norwegian National Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Kitchen, Alarm Will Sound, Opera America, American Lyric Theater, among others.

Vavrek's previous collaborations with Paola Prestini include The Hubble Cantata, a virtual reality oratorio produced by VisionIntoArt/National Sawdust in association with Beth Morrison Projects. With composer Missy Mazzoli, he adapted Karen Russell's short story Proving Up (2018 world premiere, Washington National Opera); an adaptation of Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (premiered by Opera Philadelphia, winner of 2017 Music Critics Association of North America's award for Best New Opera, subsequently presented in a new production at the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival); and Song from the Uproar (2012 world premiere Beth Morrison Projects, and subsequently nationwide). Among many other acclaimed operas, he has written an adaptation of Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2023 Royal Swedish Opera) with Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson; JFK (Fort Worth Opera, 2016) and Dog Days (2012 world premier, Peak Performances @ Montclair), both with composer David T. Little; and 27 (2014, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis) with composer Ricky Ian Gordon. Vavrek is currently developing an adaptation of George Saunders' Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo for The Metropolitan Opera with Mazzoli; an adaptation of Fanny and Alexander with Karlsson, alongside creative partner Ingmar Bergman, Jr. in a production to be directed by Ivo van Hove for La Monnaie de Mun; and a project for mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti titled Film Stills that dramatizes four of Cindy Sherman's iconic photographs through musical monologues composed by Prestini, Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Ellen Reid.

Royce is co-Artistic Director of The Coterie, an opera-theater company founded with Tony-nominee Lauren Worsham. He holds a BFA in Filmmaking and Creative Writing from Concordia University's Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University.

About Thaddeus Strassberger

Thaddeus Strassberger won the European Opera Prize in 2005. Since then he has created over 75 productions in 15 countries including Aida, Turandot (Oper im Steinbruch), I due Foscari (Theater an der Wien, LA Opera, Palau de las Arts), Nabucco (LA Opera, Palau de las Art), Boris Godunov, Werther, Un Ballo In Maschera, Les Contes De Hoffmann, La Fanciulla Del West, Pique Dame (Tiroler Landestheater), Carmen (Danish National Opera), La Clemenza Di Tito (La Opera), La Fanciulla del West (Ncpa Beijing), Satyahgraha, Passenger, A Greek Passion (Ural Opera, Russia), Le Nozze Di Figaro, The Rape Of Lucretia, and Don Giovanni (Den Norske Opera), Hamlet (Washington National Opera), Demon, Les Huguenots, Der Ferne Klang, Le Roi Malgré Lui, Oresteia, and The Wreckers (Bard Summerscape). World premieres include JFK (l'Opera de Montreal/Fort Worth), Silent Light (Banff), and Glare (Covent Garden). Born in Oklahoma, Strassberger is a citizen of the USA, Italy, United Kingdom, and the Cherokee Nation. More info at: www.tstrassberger.com

About National Sawdust

National Sawdust is a dynamic non-profit cultural institution that commissions, produces, and presents programming rooted in sound and supports multidisciplinary artists and arts organizations in the creation of innovative new work. Founded in 2015, National Sawdust operates out of an intimate space, equipped with a state-of-the-art Meyer spatial sound system, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where it is one of the few remaining cultural venues. The New York Times has described National Sawdust as “a triumphantly successful performance space that stands for a hip, sophisticated brand of new music.” Composer Paola Prestini, who co-founded National Sawdust, serves as its artistic director, alongside managing director Ana De Archuleta, making National Sawdust one of the few New York cultural institutions led by women.

National Sawdust provides artists across musical genres and artistic disciplines with comprehensive support including commissions, workshops, residencies, public performances, recording, mentorship, and professional development. It aims to be not only a home for its community of artists, but also a place for audiences to discover wide-ranging music at accessible ticket prices. The institution's mentorship initiatives counteract industry barriers and the historic marginalization of diverse communities in the arts, providing artists and arts workers with guidance, resources, and relationships with established visionaries to accelerate their careers.

Founded by Kevin Dolan and designed by Brooklyn's Bureau V, National Sawdust is constructed within the existing shell of a century-old sawdust factory, preserving the authenticity of Williamsburg's industrial past while providing a refined and intimate setting for the exploration of new music. At the venue's core is a flexible chamber hall, acoustically designed by renowned engineering firm Arup to provide the highest-quality experience of both unamplified and amplified music.

Photo by Jill Steinberg

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