Adam Rapp and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O Collaborate on Opera for St. Ann's Warehouse; Search for Future Home Continues

By Adam Hetrick
18 Jul 2011

Adam Rapp
Adam Rapp
Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Yeah Yeah Yeahs' vocalist Karen O will team with playwright and director Adam Rapp on a new opera, which will open the season at St. Ann's Warehouse in October.

In a letter to friends of St. Ann's Warehouse, artistic director Susan Feldman revealed plans to present the untitled work, described as a "psycho-opera, an assault on the tragic joys of youth."

Karen O also created the soundtrack for the 2009 film of "Where the Wild Things Are." Rapp's Hallway Trilogy played a critically-praised run Off-Broadway last winter. His works also include Red Light Winter, Blackbird and The Metal Children.

The St. Ann's run will be a collaboration with The Creators Project, a global network that aims to promote and distribute new work by innovative artists across the world. The production will be part of The Creators Project's four-day New York festival, which will take place in DUMBO Oct. 13-16.

As previously reported, the 2011-2012 season will mark St. Ann's final year of programming at its current Water Street home. Feldman also confirmed in her letter that St. Ann's bid to relocate to the Civil War-era Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park was officially ruled out by a federal court justice July 12.

Feldman said St. Ann's is "actively looking at alternative spaces and have identified options we are eagerly pursuing."