former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith,
and visual artist and director Joshua Frankel
Chris Wahlmark
"Thoughtful depiction of the conflict and unusually imaginative, multimedia form... Mr. Frankel’s stunning animations, moving in rhythm with the music, are an equal storytelling element."
—Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
"Audiences... will be dazzled by Tracy K. Smith's springloaded words zipping through the opera's sound world, redolent of Monk, Saariaho, and Glass.
—Lev Bratishenko, Opera Canada
Creative Team
Composer Judd Greenstein, poet Tracy K. Smith and visual artist Joshua Frankel.
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In Brief
A Marvelous Order is a new opera about the battle between Robert Moses, the Master Builder, and Jane Jacobs, the self-taught oracle of unparalleled urban insight, over the fate of New York City. When Moses plans to demolish Jacobs' home and neighborhood, Jacobs leads a revolt, igniting a conflict that continues to shape built environments around the world—from small towns to global cities—and the lives of all who call them home.
A Marvelous Order humanizes the struggle between power and protest as only music, poetry and art can do.
Joshua Frankel
A Story Of Our Time
This work is about how we live together, who controls our built environment and how we assert control over it, and how we respond to oppressive leaders who abuse their authority. Today, more and more people are coming to understand—as Jacobs did—questions of urban planning as urgent matters of life or death.
Roman Iwasiwka
Scenography and Animation
In addition to being through-composed, beautifully wrought multi-channel animation runs throughout, conceived in tandem with the music and poetry. Screens are built into the opera's set—a series of "blocks" the ensemble manipulates throughout the performance, creating and destroying their environments.
Redefining opera for the 21st century
A Marvelous Order has been conceived from its earliest stages through an unusually deep interdisciplinary collaboration between the three lead artists. The addition of a visual artist to the traditional composer-librettist diad allows the opera's visuals to integrate with its music and poetry at a foundational level.
The work forgoes other common constraints of opera: it employs amplification and embeds pre-recorded vocalists in its animation. And it inverts the female-heroine-victim trope—too common in opera—with the formidable Jane Jacobs.
Robert Bloom
Jeremy Daniel
Jeremy Daniel
Jeremy Daniel
Joshua Frankel
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Jeremy Daniel
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom
Jeremy Daniel
Joshua Frankel
Robert Bloom
Joshua Frankel
Roman Iwasiwka
Below: selected film stills and GIFs from A Marvelous Order (more coming soon).
