Announcing the Boston Premiere of
Gian Carlo Menotti’s Satirical Opera 
The Last Savage, March 13, 2026

BOSTON, MA — Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the nation’s most intriguing opera companies,” Odyssey Opera, in partnership with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), presents the revival of the engaging comic opera The Last Savage at the Huntington Theatre, Friday, March 13, 2026, at 8:00 p.m.With music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, this three-act 20th-century “grand opera buffa” comprises an eclectic score and unexpected libretto delightfully subverting convention through Mozartian musical tropes. Acclaimed conductor Gil Rose leads an internationally accomplished cast including sopranos Anya Matanovic, Sharleen Joynt, and Michelle Trainor, baritones Phillip Lopez, Gabriel Preisser, and Matthew Burns, and tenor Omar Najmi, all supported by the multiple GRAMMY®? Award-winning BMOP. 

 
Premiered by the Metropolitan Opera in 1964, Menotti’s The Last Savage is given a second chance with modern audiences delighting in its dry wit and topicality. Known for “overlooked gems, an area woefully neglected by other American companies (Opera Magazine),” Odyssey Opera’s production highlights the work’s enduring relevance, inviting audiences to laugh at its outrageous characters while reflecting on the timeless human desire to define—and defy—what is “savage” and what is “civilized.”
 
“America was not ready for this opera when it premiered in 1964. With America’s involvement in Vietnam accelerating and the recent assassination of President Kennedy, audiences were not in the mood for a comedy poking fun at religion and American materialism. 62 years later, it will be interesting to see if today’s audiences will take The Last Savage on its own terms.”  - GIL ROSE, artistic director/conductor of Odyssey Opera and BMOP

Set in a satirical vision of mid-20th-century society, the opera follows Kitty, the spirited daughter of a wealthy American anthropologist, who insists on finding and taming a “savage” to prove her independence. She discovers Abdul, a young man living in the wilderness of India, and drags him back to the modern world as her prize specimen. Yet Abdul’s transformation into a polished socialite exposes the absurdities of both primitive stereotypes and the shallow sophistication of high society. Menotti’s witty libretto skewers cultural pretensions, consumerism, and the clash between tradition and progress, while his score blends lyrical arias, jazzy rhythms, and a pastiche of operatic conventions. The result is a playful yet biting comedy that asks whether civilization itself is the true masquerade.

About Gil Rose              
Gil Rose is one of today’s most trailblazing conductors, praised as “amazingly versatile” (The Boston Globe) with “a sense of style and sophistication” (Opera News). Equally at home performing core repertoire, new music, and lesser-known historic symphonic and operatic works, “Gil Rose is not just a fine conductor, but a peerless curator, sniffing out—and commissioning—off-trend, unheralded, and otherwise underplayed repertoire, that nevertheless holds to unfailingly high standards of quality. In doing so, he’s built an indefinable, but unmistakable, personal aesthetic” (WQXR). A global leader in American contemporary music, Grammy Award-winner Rose is the founder of the performing and recording ensemble the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), who “bring an endlessly curious and almost archaeological mind to programming…with each concert, each recording, an essential step in a better direction” (The New York Times), as well as the founder of Odyssey Opera, praised by The New York Times as “bold and intriguing.” GilRoseConductor.com
 
About Odyssey Opera             
Founded in 2013 by artistic director/conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as a powerful expression of the human experience. Its world-class artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings through lesser-known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in varied formats and venues.  Odyssey Opera takes its audience on a journey to places they’ve never been before. odysseyopera.org

About BMOP  
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today’s musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed the repertoires of composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP’s award-winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory’s historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unrivaled eclecticism. Musical America’s 2016 Ensemble of the Year, BMOP was awarded the 2021 Special Achievement Award from Gramophone Magazine as “an organization that has championed American music of the 20^th and 21^st century with passion and panache.” The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and precision with which they infuse the music of the present era. BMOP.org.