Creative Team

Composer

PAOLA PRESTINI

Librettist

ROYCE VAVREK

Director/Creator/Costume Designer

KARMINA ŠILEC

Music Director

MILA HENRY

Associate Director/Scenic Designer/Video Designer

DORIAN ŠILEC

Cello

JEFFREY ZEIGLER

Percussion

SHAYNA DUNKELMAN

Co-Producer

VISIONINTOART

Artistic Collaborator

SARAH CHIESA

Artistic Collaborator

SIDRA BELL

PAOLA PRESTINI

ROYCE VAVREK

KARMINA ŠILEC

MILA HENRY

About

Starring: Nathan Gunn (u/s Armando Contreras), Measha Brueggergosman, Rodolfo Girón, Yvette Keong

Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea is an opera by Paola Prestini, Royce Vavrek and Karmina Šilec that presents a dual track of storytelling by combining the Hemingway text with original portraits of quotidian life to create a look at aging, legacy, and our relationship to oceans. The work includes longtime collaborators/muses of Prestini’s including Jeffrey Zeigler as the featured cellist. The cast includes a choir, and brings to life the seminal characters: Santiago, Manolin, and the wife, recast as La Virgen del Cobre, a goddess in Santería, the Afro-Caribbean faith, who was found floating on a wooden board off the coast of eastern Cuba in 1628. Themes of baseball, ecology, religion, and economy paint a conflict between progress and tradition, craft passion and exploitation, ultimately shedding contemporary perspectives on this timeless tale.

Support

Produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with ASU Gammage and VisionIntoArt. Developed by Beth Morrison Projects and VisionIntoArt. Developmental residencies for The Old Man and the Sea provided by ASU Gammage and MASS MoCA. Lead commissioning support for The Old Man and the Sea was provided by ASU Gammage in association with Joan Cremin. Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, VisionIntoArt, and Jill & Bill Steinberg.

The commissioning of Paola Prestini for The Old Man and the Sea received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers program supported by Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional support provided by New York State Council on the Arts with the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Katie Adams Schaeffer, and Helen Little.

 

 

Press

"An unstoppable force" (Praise for Paola Prestini)

The Washington Post

"An exemplary creator of operatic prose" (Praise for Royce Vavrek)

The New York Times

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