A New Opera Mashes Up Monteverdi and W.E.B. Du Bois

6.13.24
Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times

Nardus Williams, left, and Anthony Roth Costanzo rehearsing The Comet/Poppea, which premieres in Los Angeles this week, Photo: Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

In The Comet / Poppea director Yuval Sharon radically pares down the 350 year old  L’Incoronazione di Poppea Claudio Monteverdi’s final opera, and marries it to W.E.B. Du Bois's short story The Comet.

Both the opera and the story will be brought together, united by their common denominator of jaundiced cynicism, in The Comet / Poppea, which is premiering at Geffen Contemporary, a warehouse-style space at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. (There are already plans for it to travel to Philadelphia this fall, to New York next year and to the Schwarzman Center at Yale University in 2026.)

READ this insider's look behind the scenes into the rehearsal process, learn more about the team of collaborators bringing this vision to life, and hear about their inspirations  in The New York Times.