So ecstatic to be returning to Charleston this summer to have my second season in the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. This season will have many amazing concerts and a very exciting world premiere of a new opera!

Omar (world premiere)
Music and Libretto by Rhiannon Giddens
Music Co-composed by Michael Abels
Conducted by John Kennedy
Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite
Choreographed by Ni’Ja Whitson

“In 1807, a 37-year-old scholar living in West Africa was captured and forced to board a ship bound for Charleston, South Carolina―the site of his enslavement and sale. Omar Ibn Said’s life and Muslim faith, recorded in his autobiography from 1831, are remembered and retold in this compelling new American opera.”