Suddenly Last Summer Featured in the New York Times

Suddenly Last Summer, the Fisher Center LAB opera opening as part of Bard SummerScape 2026, was featured in the New York Times. The hybrid music-theater performance, coproduced by Opera Philadelphia and based on the play by Tennessee Williams, is MacArthur Fellow Courtney Bryan’s first work for the stage, and the score she delivers is inspired by the play’s two settings of the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. “Musically, I was really interested in trying to find a way to match Tennessee Williams, the energy in the play,” Bryan told the Times. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths to which a family will go to protect its legacy. “There’s something that’s happening where Courtney’s music and the emotional and psychological world of the play are somehow conversant with each other,” said Fish. “The music really does feel intuitively, kind of wonderfully, in dialogue with the play.” Suddenly Last Summer runs from June 25–July 19. 

Post Date: 06-23-2026