When composer Mason Bates approached Michael Chabon about turning his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay" into an opera, he said the writer told him frankly that "opera was not his thing."
"He was very supportive of the endeavor and he gave it his blessing, but he said he couldn't be involved," Bates recalled. "He was really more giving it a thumbs-up on a rights level."
So Bates and librettist Gene Scheer proceeded on their own to wrangle into operatic form Chabon's sprawling, Pulitzer Prize-winning tale about two young Jewish cousins set over more than a decade before and after World War II.
Now, six years after Bates first read the novel and became inspired by it, the opera is bound for the Metropolitan Opera, due to open the company's next season in September 2025.
But first it's having its world premiere on Friday in what might seem an unlikely spot, at the Jacobs School of Music on the University of Indiana campus in Bloomington. The premiere was originally planned for the Los Angeles Opera, but the company begged off, citing the costs involved.
