Visitations: Theotokia & The War Reporter

Playwright Dan O’Brien and composer Jonathan Berger worked in collaboration to create Visitations, a chamber opera diptych comprising two distinct libretti that each explore aspects of madness and the unearthly.

Part 1, Theotokia, invokes a conversation-in-visions between Leon, a man driven mad by messianic delusions, and the shadow of his church-going mother, imagined both as Maria Theotokia (Mary in her role as God’s harbinger) and the Yeti (the primordial Himalayan matriarch and monster). Like Theotokia, Part 2, The War Reporter, examines a journey of self-reflection and presents an attempt at understanding trauma.

Visitations was commissioned jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, and Stanford University, where it premiered at the Bing Concert Hall, with musical arrangement by Jonathan Berger, direction by Rinde Eckert, music direction by Christopher Rountree, and performed by Heather Buck, New York Polyphony, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Visitations subsequently received its New York City premiere at the Prototype Festival.

Full libretti published by Blackbird

Video recording of Theotokia

Video recording of The War Reporter