NOVA: Opera After the End of the World

Ready for a choose-your-own cosmic adventure?

On this episode of Key Change, co-hosts Anna Garcia and Olga Perez Flora make way for old friends and new. Andrea Fellows Feinberg returns as guest host to introduce the creative team behind the intergalactic opera NOVA, a subversive meditation on responsibility and personal choice set against the end of the world––featuring Composer Brent Michael Davids, Librettist Marcie Rendon, and Music Director Sara Jobin.

"We're gonna mess with the traditional opera genre of tragedies and comedies, do something interesting with it, and make two different endings," confides Brent. He also messes with ideas around conventional sci-fi protagonists and cultural stereotypes.

NOVA, for instance, is a brilliant Native American astrophysicist and head of NASA, the Native American Space Agency. Accompanying NOVA are her chief medical officer, Doc, and KID, a bionically modified mischief-maker. Brent hopes these narrative elements will inspire and empower Native youth.

If the premise for NOVA sounds vaguely familiar, we teased its development in 2023. Back then, this Opera For All Voices commission was known as Interplanetary Opera. A lot has changed since then, notably the addition of Marcie and Sara, plus Andrea as the production's dramaturg.

What hasn't changed is the show's existential ruminations or its humor. "I think that's something I love about this piece and that people might not expect," notes Sara. "There's a lot of humor in it."

"It's Native humor," Marcie clarifies. "I wasn't sure that anybody would get it." A recent run-through alleviated her fears. "People did," she says, "and that was great!"

KEY CHANGE RECOMMENDED EPISODE

Connections Across Time and Space: Opera in the Cosmos

FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Brent Michael Davids - Composer

Marcie Rendon - Librettist

Sara Jobin - Music Director

Andrea Fellows Fineberg - Dramaturg and Key Change Guest Host 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Hidden Figures

Minnesota Children's Museum

Red Eye Theater

Clue 

Christopher Hitchens

Key Change is a production of The Santa Fe Opera, Department of Community Engagement & Education.

Share your favorite opera moments and questions with Community Engagement: agarcia@santafeopera.org

Produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios

Hosted by Anna Garcia & Olga Perez Flora

Audio Engineering: Collin Ungerleider & Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz

Production Support from Alex Riegler

Show Notes by Lisa Widder

Theme music by Rene Orth with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello

Cover art by Dylan Crouch

This podcast is made possible due to the generous support of the Hankins Foundation, Principal Education Sponsor of the Santa Fe Opera.

To learn more, visit SantaFeOpera.org/KeyChange.