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On-demand interviews with local and national classical music artists.

NOW Festival to Create, Develop, and Perform New Opera

Cleveland Opera Theater and the Cleveland Composers' Guild have teamed up to present the NOW (New Opera Works) Festival to create, develop and perform new opera. COT Artistic Director Scott Skiba, composer Margi Griebling-Haigh, and singer/director Kathryn Frady visited WCLV and spoke with Mark Satola.

{New OperaWorks} Festival

Annual Festival to Create, Develop, and Perform New Opera

January 20 - 29, 2017

{NOW} Festival 2017 projects will include repertoire created specifically for the {NOW} Festival as well as repertoire incorporated from other opera incubators, freelance composers and institutional collaborators.

This season's launch of the annual {NOW} Festival will feature productions of new and recently composed operas at various stages of development, loosely organized this year to show five progressive stages of the developmental process of opera:


  • ​A first public reading of a new translation of Lorca's play, that we will later adapt into a libretto, workshop and develop and finally present on the {NOW} Main stage in a future season - The House of Bernarda Alba
  • Staged workshop of excerpts of New Scenes composed by members of the Cleveland Composers' Guild.
  • A preview of scene three from the new opera We've Got Our Eye on You.  Presented as the opener of the New Opera Forum, this will be a teaser of the complete opera We’ve Got Our Eye on You, which will be presented on the 2018 {NOW} Festival mainstage.  The performance of this scene will open the New Opera Forum featuring We’ve Got Our Eye on You Composer, Nkeiru Okoye and Librettist, David Cote, Bernarda Alba Composer, Griffin Candey and others.  
  • A remounting of a world premiere fully-staged production of Amelia Lost, a one-woman opera about a homeless woman who believes she is Amelia Earhart by composer Larry Dilinger and directed by acclaimed director, James Marvel.
  • A fully-staged new production of Phillip Glass' Songs From Liquid Days Opening on the Campus of Oberlin Conservatory of music, then closing with a special Opera UpClose installation at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.