Mason Bates / Libretto by Gene Scheer / Based on the Book by Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
Overview
Due to popular demand, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, recorded live earlier this season, will be presented in select cinemas. In this exhilarating new adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, two Jewish cousins invent an anti-fascist superhero and launch their own comic-book series, hoping to recruit America into the fight against Nazism. Incorporating scintillating electronic elements and a variety of musical styles, composer Mason Bates’s eclectic score moves seamlessly among the three worlds of Gene Scheer’s libretto: Nazi-occupied Prague, the bustling streets of New York City, and the technicolor realm of comic-book fantasy. Bartlett Sher’s production provides spectacular visuals to match, with towering sets and proscenium-filling projections designed by 59 Studio. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met premiere-production, with baritone Andrzej Filończyk as the artist Joe Kavalier, who flees Czechoslovakia and arrives at the Brooklyn doorstep of writer Sam Clay, sung by tenor Miles Mykkanen.
Production a gift of Lynne and Richard Pasculano and the Rosalie J. Coe Weir Endowment Fund
Production sponsored by Rolex
Additional support from the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Endowment Fund, the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation, Gordon P. Getty, and The Halff Windham Foundation
The Met gratefully acknowledges the support of the Laidlaw Opera Trust
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is part of the Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative
Composed by Mason Bates
Libretto by Gene Scheer
Based on the Book by Michael Chabon
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera
A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
World premiere: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, 2024
Commissioned by the Met and based on Michael Chabon’s award-winning novel, Mason Bates’s new opera follows Czech refugee Joe Kavalier and his Brooklyn-born cousin Sam Clay as they create a comic-book series in an effort to recruit America into the fight against Nazism. As their superhero creation liberates victims of tyranny in issue after issue of The Escapist, Joe and Sam suffer at the hands of the real-world forces of fascism and intolerance
Creators
Mason Bates (b. 1977) has earned acclaim for his distinctive musical approach, which incorporates cutting-edge electronic instruments into contemporary classical compositions. In addition to large-scale orchestral works, he also composed the opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in 2017. Librettist, lyricist, and songwriter Gene Scheer (b. 1958) penned the opera’s libretto, adapting the novel by Michael Chabon (b. 1963), who earned the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
Production
Bartlett Sher
Set, Lighting, and Video Design
59 Studio
Costume Designer
Jennifer Moeller
Sound Designer
Rick Jacobsohn
Choreographer
Mandy Moore
Dramaturg
Paul Cremo
C. Graham Berwind, III Chorus Director
Tilman Michael
Composer
Mason Bates
Librettist
Gene Scheer
Setting
The opera is set during the Second World War, with the action moving between Europe—both Nazi-occupied Prague and the frontlines of battle—and various locations throughout New York City. It also features episodes in the fantastical world of The Escapist, Joe and Sam’s comic-book creation.
Videos
Articles
Videos
Music
Bates draws upon an eclectic musical palette to depict the opera’s sweeping story and diverse settings. The New York scenes feature inflections of jazz and big band, while the music for Prague is noticeably darker and more somber. His trademark use of electronica reaches its full fruition in the scenes set in the comic-book realm, but synthesizers and other electronic instruments provide further sonic color in subtler ways throughout the score. And for all his mastery of the orchestra, Bates never loses sight of the human beings at the heart of this epic, stopping time in soaring arias and poignant ensembles for all of the principal characters.
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