Leonard Bernstein famously called this opera-oratorio based on Sophocles’ tragedy the “most awesome” work of composer Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical period. The drama tells of an entire family’s attempts to evade their inescapable, tragic fate. Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus, with soloists William Burden, Rehanna Thelwell, and Mark S. Doss.
The performance of Oedipus Rex is preceded by Lilacs, a setting of Walt Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. Composed by George Walker, a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music (for Lilacs), the piece features rising soprano Tiffany Townsend as the soloist.