The second half of the season explores America’s tremendous output of high-drama opera alongside the richness of American literature. It begins with The Gershwins®’Porgy and Bess. Set in a fictional neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, Porgy and Bess is a powerful portrait of a community united in the face of tragedy and triumph, featuring some of the most iconic music in the American canon.
Later in the spring, Lyric Opera brings John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men to life in Carlisle Floyd’s masterful operatic adaptation. Floyd—often considered the father of American opera—was one of the most influential contributors to the art form in twentieth-century America.
Between these two full opera productions at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Lyric Opera will also present the brand-new musical and literary experience Langston Hughes: A Lyrical Life. This work celebrates the life and legacy of one of America’s most influential literary voices. Born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was an early innovator of jazz poetry and a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Touring Kansas City community spaces in March, the work honors Hughes’s extraordinary legacy and amplifies his singular voice, illuminating universal human experiences of joy, struggle, and aspiration.
