© 2025 KRWG
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'The Righteous,' an opera set among American Southwest church communities, to premiere in 2024

KRWG | By Associated Press
Published June 7, 2023 at 10:10 PM MDT
FILE - U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith stands in a rotunda of the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, N.M., on Jan. 12, 2018. The Santa Fe Opera will present the world premiere of “The Righteous” by composer Gregory Spears with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith on July 13 next year, a work set among church communities in the American Southwest. (AP Photo/Mary Hudetz, File)
Mary Hudetz/AP
/
AP
FILE - U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith stands in a rotunda of the Santa Fe Indian School in Santa Fe, N.M., on Jan. 12, 2018. The Santa Fe Opera will present the world premiere of “The Righteous” by composer Gregory Spears with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith on July 13 next year, a work set among church communities in the American Southwest. (AP Photo/Mary Hudetz, File)

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The Santa Fe Opera will present the world premiere of “The Righteous” by composer Gregory Spears with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith on July 13 next year. The work is set among church communities in the American Southwest. The opera stars baritone Michael Mayes as a preacher who becomes governor during a period stretching from the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 to the Gulf War in the 1990s. The cast includes countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, bass-baritones Greer Grimsley and Nicholas Newton, sopranos Amber Wagner and Elena Villalón and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano.
Regional News
Associated Press
See stories by Associated Press