IU Jacobs School lands world premiere of opera based on Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

Something spectacular is coming to Bloomington this fall — the world premiere of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” Thanks to a collaboration with New York's Metropolitan Opera, Bloomington audiences will be the first to see the elaborate production based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Mason Bates’ music and Gene Scheer's libretto combine in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” — co-produced by the Met and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. It comes to IU for four performances Nov. 15-22.

Originally, the Los Angeles Opera was to perform the world premiere, but officials there realized they couldn't afford the expensive production.

While searching for a new place to perform the opera, Evans Mirageas recommended Jacobs School to the Metropolitan Opera, according to Ronald Blum, a New York-based writer for the Associated Press. Mirageas is the artistic director at Cincinnati Opera and has a history of successful partnerships with many world-class singers and conductors as a recording executive.

Now Indiana University will produce the world premiere.

Dimensions of IU's Musical Arts Center helped seal the deal

The stage proportions in IU's Musical Arts Center resemble the Met's. The MAC is able to seat over 1,400 people. It is not just the biggest stage on IU's campus, but one of the largest stages in the United States — only slightly smaller than the Metropolitan Opera's stage in New York City.

So when a new home was sought for “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," Mirageas thought of IU.

Abra K. Bush, dean of IU's Jacobs School, received an email asking about changing the opera's venue to the Bloomington campus.

About 20 IU Jacobs students will perform the work, which has roughly 10 leading and 10 secondary roles. Dean Bush, accompanied by two additional school officials, previewed a workshop of the opera in a rehearsal room at Lincoln Center Theater.

In 2018, the Met began talking about doing the opera, which tells how comic books became a business. Thanks to the venue switch, the opera will now open a year before it opens at the Met during the 2025-26 season. Blum reported "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” is elaborate and calls for many scene changes.

With the world premiere happening at the Musical Arts Center, staff at the Met will have a chance to watch the opera at IU, with plenty of time to make changes. Since the Met would rather new pieces open at other venues, providing room to edit, the agreement seems a win for both.

For the world premiere in Bloomington, Blum reported, Bartlett Sher will direct, and Michael Christie is expected to conduct. Met music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin is scheduled to assume leadership after "Kavalier & Clay" moves to New York.

Arthur Fagen applauds "stealing a bit of the limelight"

"This is a tremendous opportunity for Jacobs School of Music," said Arthur Fagen, music professor in orchestral conducting and co-chair of the Jacobs School's department of orchestral conducting. Fagen is also music director of the Atlanta Opera (since 2010).

"We will have important international exposure, actually stealing a bit of the limelight from a world premiere at the Met because we will be the first company to do it. Also, the connection to the Met will be important in attracting top vocal talent, confirming our status as the best opera school in the world."

Caio Guimarães F. Lopes, associate instructor at Jacobs and a doctoral student in choral conducting agreed.

"This is very, very exciting for the whole Jacobs School," said Lopes. "Many people choose to come to IU because of our strong voice/opera program, so having partnerships like this and being involved with projects with one of the main opera houses in the world is definitely exciting for all of us, students and faculty, for sure!"

Desperately "trying to connect with younger generation"

Music and technology often meet in Bates’ works, which are changing classical music. He is a composer, curator and DJ, according to masonbates.com. When he was the first composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he brought in a range of artists with his immersive "KC Jukebox," which packed the house with patrons encouraged to trade places as new performances sprouted in different spaces, Cecilia Mencia reported for DC Theater Arts.

Bates is orchestrating the "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which includes electronic music.

Beloved conductors including Riccardo Muti and Marin Alsop have applauded Bates, and his symphonic music is the first to gain broad acceptance for mixing types of sounds. Recently, Bates was named his generation's second most-performed composer.

In 2019 Bates earned a Grammy Award for “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.” That work premiered at the Santa Fe Opera two years prior, and IU Jacobs co-produced it.

Bates won the 2018 Composer of the Year by Musical America. Anne Midgette, writing for Musical America Worldwide, said, "At a time when classical music is eagerly, anxiously, even desperately trying to connect with a younger generation, he is one of the rare composers who is at once popular, hip, and active at the large classical-music institutions that are having the hardest time winning young audiences."

Chabon's novel: Jewish immigrants, comic books and pop culture

Bates composed the opera, which reflects the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon.

The story describes Jewish immigrants altering pop culture in the United States. Bates, reports Ronald Blum, likes the "flexibility to experiment and try things that might not be available to us in a professional house."

Chabon's historical fiction novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" won not only the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001, but the New York Society Book Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. It's about a couple of brilliant boys and their imaginative heroes, during an era that grew to praise and prize comic books.

The novel's action starts in New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier is a boy artist who also knows how to execute intricate escapes, Houdini-style. In fact, Kavalier has just escaped Prague Nazis and he needs money to free his family. His Brooklyn, New York, cousin has a different need — a partner to design plots, images and characters for America's brand-new reading concept, comic books. The boys' champion? The escapist.

As Hitler darkens Europe, comic books' day in the sun glimmers.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana University to perform opera world premiere instead of LA Opera