The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Princeton Atelier will present an early developmental workshop of a section of Custom of the Coast, a new small-scale opera written by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and award-winning experimental music/contemporary opera composer Kamala Sankaram. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, December 2, at the Berlind Rehearsal Room at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place. The program will also include an excerpt of a small-scale opera by Princeton Ph.D. candidate Hope Littwin. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. The Berlind Rehearsal Room is an accessible venue. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
This new work, the subject of a fall Princeton Atelier course, intercuts the life stories of an 18th-century Irish pirate, Anne Bonny, sentenced to death, and an Indian-born, Ireland-based dentist who died in 2012 having been denied an abortion. The music for the opera draws from both traditional Irish and medieval music and Indian classical music to connect these two stories separated by time.
The opera will have a showing at the Guggenheim Works & Process series in New York City in February and will premiere at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland in August.
Muldoon, who wrote the libretto, is the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, director of the Princeton Atelier, and professor of creative writing, as well as the founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. As an internationally renowned Irish poet, Muldoon has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” Muldoon won the Pulitzer Prize for his ninth collection of poems, Moy Sand and Gravel (2002). His 15th volume of poems, Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, was published this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sankaram, the project’s composer who is co-teaching the course with Muldoon, moves freely between the worlds of experimental music and contemporary opera. Praised as “one of the most exciting opera composers in the country” by The Washington Post, she is known for pushing the boundaries of form and style. As a 2023 artist-in-residence, she created work for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; other recent creations include an opera for the trees of Prospect Park, a techno-noir featuring live datamining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers, and the world’s first virtual reality opera. Sankaram has been commissioned by Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Prototype Festival, Creative Time, and by the Glimmerglass Festival as a 2022 artist-in-residence. She is currently a composer-in-residence at Minnesota Opera as part of their new works cohort. As a biracial Indian American and trained sitarist, Kamala has drawn on Indian classical music in many of her works, including Thumbprint, A Rose, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers, and a newly expanded version of the Jungle Book which will premiere in December 2024 at Washington National Opera.
Littwin’s work is titled My Edna.
Littwin is a composer and music producer with a background in dance and theater, as a singer-songwriter, and as a classical singer. She has collaborated with a number of artists on projects that fuse chamber music, vocal music, electronics, choreography, and storytelling. She has been commissioned by choirs, chamber ensembles, theater and dance companies to lead the creation of original works.
The Princeton Atelier, celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, was founded by Princeton Professor Emerita Toni Morrison and is directed by Muldoon. This unique academic program brings together professional artists, often from different disciplines, to create new work in the context of a semester-long course. A painter might team with a composer, a choreographer might join with an electrical engineer, a company of theater artists might engage with environmental scientists, or a poet might connect with a videographer. Princeton students have an unrivaled opportunity to be directly involved in these collaborations.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the Princeton Atelier, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
