When the Music Critics Association of North America began presenting an award for Best New Opera in 2017, it might have seemed like Opera Philadelphia was the only company in that game, with their commissions winning the first two awards: Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves (their new opera The Listeners opens OP’s upcoming season), and then David Hertzberg’s The Wake World in 2018. Thankfully, other companies weren’t just leaving the whole new music scene to us and have won subsequent awards, but this year’s, their seventh, will return to Opera Philadelphia for their co-commission with Tapestry Opera, Philadelphian composer Rene Orth and Haligonian librettist Hannah Moscovitch’s 10 Days in a Madhouse.
Premiering last fall to sellout crowds at the Wilma Theater, the opera (which I named my favorite performance of 2023) is a piece that holds up many mirrors, addressing how we view, among other things, women, immigrants, and the disabled, on and off the opera stage. It also challenges how we listen to and what sounds we expect of classical music, and right away, at that — the opera opens with a blast of EDM. Orth and Moscovitch adapted the book of the same name by the opera’s main character, Nellie Bly, documenting her experiences from over a century ago, which she then used to help secure the first legislated mental health protections in the United States.
In a statement, the Awards Committee, made up of critics from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among others, praised it as "taut, original, and affecting. 10 Days in a Madhouse works on multiple levels -- theatrical, thematic, and human." Orth said in response, “Hannah and I set out to write something surprisingly rare in the operatic tradition—a work that didn't focus on women suffering trauma and death, but rather strength and perseverance against the continued societal biases working against us. I'm thrilled that the piece has resonated with so many people.” This award is the latest addition to a litany of deserved acclaim, including being named the best classical performance of 2023 by The Washington Post. Her newest work, Love, Loss, and the Century Upon Us, with librettist Jerre Dye, just finished its world premiere run at Chautauqua Opera. She stopped by WRTI last year to talk with me about the 10 Days in a Madhouse — revisit that conversation below.
