The Tender Land

An opera in three acts by Aaron Copland

The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell
Libretto by Erik Johns
Directed by Erica Schmidt
Antje Ellerman, set designer
Michelle Phillips, costume designer
David Weiner, lighting designer

Aaron Copland drew inspiration for his lone full-length opera from Walker Evans’s powerful Depression-era photographs. Set at spring harvest time on the Midwest prairie in the 1930s, the opera tells of a farmer’s younger daughter who decides to leave the family farm for the wide world after encountering two drifters at a barn dance. Copland uses folk materials and country dances to evoke rural life and a young girl’s rite of passage in this touching tale.

Premiered by the New York City Opera in 1954, The Tender Land sings of the simplicity and the hopes of the land’s inhabitants and, in Copland’s words, “the continuation of the family cycle that is the whole reason for their existence.”

LUMA Theater provides an ideal intimate setting to experience this rarely performed work of Copland Americana in its 1987 chamber version by Murry Sidlin.

Six performances:
Thursday, August 4, 8:00 pm
Saturday, August 6, 3:00 pm
Sunday, August 7, 3:00 pm
Wednesday, August 10, 8:00 pm
Thursday, August 11, 8:00 pm
Friday, August 12, 5:00 pm

Tickets: $35