The Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative commissions work from adolescent writers. This is a good thing. I am not totally prepared to grasp its start that the most ideal approach to begin is by charging 20-moment musical shows, in light of the fact that I’m not certain precisely what composition a short-structure piece demonstrates around a writer’s capacity to compose a nighttime length work — any more than short-story journalists are all fundamentally incredible authors. Anyhow because of this program, the organization is giving out four commissions consistently — three 20-moment musical dramas and an one-hour musical drama — and that alone is foundation for festival.
So I went to Friday night’s revealing of the third round of 20-moment commissions, at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, with the considerately steady disposition of a guardian going to a school show, there more for the guideline of the thing than for the substance of the execution. Furthermore I was joyfully astonished.
I very delighted in the first piece, “The Investment” by John Liberatore and Niloufar Talebi, a vignette of an Iranian couple (Wei Wu was viable as the spouse) who purchase a painting by an Iranian-conceived craftsman (played by the silver-voiced Raquel González), then discover that it looks to express political estimations they don’t
