After humanity: Innovative opera at the Peabody ponders an Earth without us

10.31.24
Mike Cummings for Yale News

Photo: Maria Baranova

An inscription near the entrance of the Yale Peabody Museum’s first-floor galleries declares the overarching themes of the exhibits that follow: “Life changes the environment and the environment changes life. Extinctions change everything.”

The narrative that unfolds from there spans hundreds of millions of years — from the first organisms to inhabit the oceans, through the age of dinosaurs, to the rise of humans. It’s a story of how life has endured and evolved through mass extinctions that wiped out much of the planet’s biodiversity.

READ more about this performance set to take place November 4 at the Yale Peabody Museum. Presented in partnership with Yale Schwarzman Center.