Adoration

Composer: Mary Kouyoumdjian
Librettist: Royce Vavrek
Company: Los Angeles Opera

Synopsis

An adaptation of Atom Egoyan's film of the same name, ADORATION follows Simon, an orphaned high school student. As part of a dramatic writing exercise, Simon's teacher encourages him to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an event perpetrated by his parents. When his story goes viral, Simon uses the hysteria within his community and on the internet to highlight the challenges of intolerance and racism in our society. The fictional and actual circumstances of the loss of Simon's family are revealed in fragments, only fitting together with the final revelation that the prejudices of Simon's maternal grandfather led to his parents' deaths.? Hate is too often portrayed as binary. We either hate or we don't. We hate someone for something they did or some perceived slight, or we hate “the other.” Yet we are not born with hate—it is learned, nurtured, and developed over the course of a lifetime. ADORATION tells two simultaneous stories—a fictional story of terrorism and betrayal juxtaposed with a real story of family strife and rejection of something foreign.
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Adoration is supported, in part, by an OPERA America Opera Grants for Female Composers Award, funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and an OPERA America Project Repertoire Development Grant. ?