Oscar (opera)

Oscar
Opera by Theodore Morrison
Santa Fe Opera, venue of the opera's premiere
Librettist	Theodore Morrison John Cox
Premiere	27 July 2013 Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Oscar is an American opera in two acts, with music by composer Theodore Morrison and a libretto by Morrison and English opera director John Cox. The opera, Morrison's first, is based on the life of Oscar Wilde, focused on his trial and imprisonment in Reading Gaol. It was a co-commission and co-production between Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia (formerly the Opera Company of Philadelphia). This work received its world premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on 27 July 2013. Opera Philadelphia first presented the revised version of the opera on 6 February 2015.

The genesis of the opera resulted from a 2004 meeting in London between Morrison and Cox, after the premiere of Morrison's James Joyce song cycle, Chamber Music, which he wrote for countertenor David Daniels, a former student of his. Upon learning that Morrison had never composed an opera, but wished to write one for Daniels, Cox encouraged that idea. This led to correspondence between Cox and Morrison, and an agreement to collaborate on an opera based on the subject of Oscar Wilde. Cox and Morrison had each read the biography of Wilde by Richard Ellmann, and settled on a plan for co-authorship of an opera libretto based on the writings of Oscar Wilde and his contemporaries, with Walt Whitman serving as a chorus speaking from the realm of immortality. The opera used Wilde's poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, documents, letters, conversations and remarks by Wilde's contemporaries as source material for the libretto.^[1] Cox also consulted Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde and a scholar on Oscar Wilde.