THE LEOPARD Will Receive Its World Premiere by The Frost School Of Music Opera Theater and Frost Symphony Orchestra

The Leopard, by Michael Dellaira and J.D. McClatchy, an opera based on the acclaimed 1958 novel Il Gattopardo by Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa, will be presented in its world premiere on Saturday, March 5, 2022 at 3pm by the Frost Opera Theater and The Frost Symphony Orchestra. Gerard Schwarz conducts with Jeffrey Buchman, stage director; Alan Johnson, music director;and Cameron Anderson, set designer. Singers include Kim Josephson, Robynne Redmon, Frank Ragsdale and Kevin Short joined by Frost School of Music Opera students.

Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, known as "The Leopard" for his commanding personality, is a member of an impoverished Sicilian aristocracy, soon to be obsolete. He reluctantly adjusts to the modern world to guarantee his family's future. In doing so, he sacrifices the happiness of his daughter.

The Leopard was also seen as an award-winning epic film from 1963 starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale, directed by Luchino Visconti, based on the Lampedusa novel. E.M. Forster said of The Leopard, "This is one of the great lonely books." The novel's world-weary sentiments are perhaps best understood by those of us who have lived through several periods of change, and who have come to understand that the fundamental questions in life are no different today than they were a thousand years ago. The Prince slowly, and reluctantly, comes to believe one of the novel's main themes: "if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

The Leopard is the third and last collaboration between Michael Dellaira and J. D. McClatchy. Dellaira completed the score in February 2018, just two months before McClatchy's death. He is also the first composer granted operatic rights to The Leopard in over 50 years by Lampedusa's estate executed by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi. The opera was commissioned by American Opera Projects, with funds provided by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and the Paul Underwood Charitable Trust. In March 2016, Manhattan School of Music in collaboration with American Opera Projects, presented four scenes of The Leopard.