The Tender Land: Modern Opera with UW-Whitewater

It’s an intimate opera about personal things. No grand, sweeping themes. No sense of the grand or grandiose. Just one person coming-of-age. It was original designed to be presented in those, little boxes in living rooms all over the country in the 1950s. Nothing grand here. Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land might have been the first populist living room opera.

Set in the Midwest in the 1930s, Copland’s opera tells the story of Laurie. She’s about to graduate from high school. She meets a couple of travelers who have come to stay at her home. UW-Whitewater will stage a production of the opera this month. The production endeavors to maintain a very accessible connection between actor, audience and community. Director Jim Butchart looks to bring that synthesis an intimacy with the production. From the press release:

“The music is GORGEOUS [Copland] uses American folk music, [and it is] melodic and familiar in a way. The story is universal, it¹s a coming of age story, a love story about being on your own, making up your own mind, growing up and falling in love . . . our students are going through these things so they can relate with the story.

UW-Whitewater’s staging of The Tender Land runs Feb. 22 - 28 at the Barnett Theatre in the Greenhill Center of the Arts. For tickets, call 262-472-2222 or visit uww.edu.