New Opera by Purchase Instructor & US Poet Laureate
This new work will premiere in July 2020. Tracy K Smith writes, “Castor and Patience tells the story of African American cousins who find themselves at odds over the fate of a historic parcel of land they have inherited in the American South…[it’s] the story not just of a single family or even a particular geography, but of America’s warring tensions between reckoning with the hard facts of history and racing blindly forward toward the dream of progress.”
Greg Spears, Visiting Affiliate Artist in Classical Composition, continues, “I am thrilled to be collaborating with Tracy K. Smith - one of my favorite authors and an old friend - on Castor and Patience, an opera that explores the ways in which the history of the South continues to shape the lives of modern Americans…I am particularly excited that Tracy is writing an original libretto, rather than adapting a pre-existing work. Composing music in response to her words and story has been uniquely inspiring.”