I’m pleased to announce that my new opera, Outcast at the Gate, has been selected for the Center for Contemporary Opera’s Development Series. An hour-long excerpt will be performed in a workshop setting at New York’s Symphony Space on June 14. Tickets and information are available at symphonyspace.org/events/vp-cco-presents-outcast-at-the-gate-in-workshop.

Outcast at the Gate is a drama about refugees: a blind old man, supported by his daughter, seeking food and shelter. It is also a drama of redemption: the old man is “stained to the core of his existence,” and at the same time somehow innocent: he is Oedipus, former king of Thebes, who has unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. The end will reveal him as a prophet, blind, but leading his daughters and the King of his new homeland to a miraculous appointment with the waiting Gods.

I am grateful to conductor and CCO artistic director Sara Jobin for her work to make this happen, and to creative team, lead by stage director Sara Erde, pianist and coach Brent Funderburk, and stage manager Tracey Woolley. The cast includes singers Aaron Theno, Kristina Bachrach, Anna Laurenzo, David Gordon, and Eric McKeever.