IN Series Opera presents the American Premiere of The Alcestiad by composer Louise Talma

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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IN Series Opera Presents the American Premiere of
The Alcestiad
by composer Louise Talma
July 20, 2025 | MLK Library | Washington, D.C.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) June 25, 2025 — IN Series, D.C.’s home for innovative and inclusive opera, is proud to announce a singular, historic performance: the American debut of The Alcestiad, an opera by American composer Louise Talma, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Thornton Wilder, and music direction by Joy Schreier. This one day only event will take place on July 20, 2025, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, marking the climactic addition to IN Series’ 2024–2025 season. In this concert performance of the third act of the opera with stunning piano accompaniment, IN Series favorite vocalists Brian Arreola, Joseph Haughton, Rob McGinness, and Elizabeth Mondragon join forces to perform Talma’s music for the first time ever in America. The program will open with a reading of the fascinating, amusing, and illuminating letters written between Talma and Wilder throughout the many years of their collaboration, offering audiences a broader insight into the nature of their friendship and the story of their joint creation. Tickets are now on sale at www.inseries.org

Reportedly originally planned for the grand opening of the new Metropolitan opera in the 1960s, the American premiere date of The Alcestiad was cancelled due to Metropolitan Opera Administration’s worries of having a woman’s composition featured, considering the societal pressures of the day. Talma’s opera instead made its world premiere at Opera Frankfurt in 1962 and has not been performed anywhere, and never in its original English version, since. Now, over 60 years later, IN Series will present the American premiere of the work’s third act, featuring a stellar lineup of talent.

“We are thrilled to finally present, for the first time in her native country, a portion of the masterpiece by Louise Talma and legendary and visionary American playwright Thornton Wilder,” said Artistic Director Timothy Nelson. “Much of IN Series’ work is about giving voice—to local living artists, to unrecognized historic voices, and to works whose dynamic brilliance is still largely unknown. The Alcestiad is one of the most important works by an American composer, a landmark creation at the heart of the 20th Century, the American Century. Its story of rebirth through personal sacrifice is at the core of the human experience.” Nelson continued saying, “with the hope that other companies might one day take up the challenge to present the entirety of this epic opera, we are proud to finally be bringing it home and to give to a voice with which to speak and sing.”

Based on the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Thornton Wilder’s play The Alcestiad premiered in 1955 as a bold reinterpretation of a timeless myth. The story follows Alcestis, queen and devoted wife of King Admetus, who offers her own life to the gods in exchange for her husband’s. When Heracles, a guest in their home, learns of her sacrifice, he journeys to the underworld to bring her back. In this story of selfless love, friendship, and devotion, Wilder’s play is reimagined as libretto and beautifully blended with Louise Talma’s masterful composition.

What: The Alcestiad – Concert Performance of Act III (American Premiere)
When: Sunday, July 20, 2025 | 4:00PM
Where: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.
Tickets: www.inseries.org

ABOUT IN SERIES
IN Series is the standard-bearer for innovative opera theater in Washington DC. We make theater from music: transforming artists, audiences, and community by disrupting expectations, nourishing empathy, stimulating insight, and deepening the conversation. IN Series envisions a thriving global community in which opera is a fully integrated and essential part of collective conversation. In picturing the journey to this end, IN Series is a change-maker – a force that, with each groundbreaking production and outreach event, radically transforms perceptions of the “who”, “what”, “where”, and “why” of opera: who gets to make opera and for whom is it made; what is defined as an operatic experience; where operas take place; why we make opera; and why opera matters.

Founded by Carla Hübner in 1982 as a concert series of the former Mount Vernon College, “The In Series” became an independent non-profit arts organization in 2000 and has been a resident company at Source Theater since 2008. Timothy Nelson assumed the artistic directorship in 2018, quickly establishing the newly rebranded “IN Series” as DC’s home for “Thought, debate, history, and innovation” (DC Metro Theatre Arts) in opera.

IN Series is supported in part by major funding from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz, Dallas Morse Coors, Billy Rose, Paul M. Angell Family, and Revada Foundation of the Logan Family Foundations; Bloomberg Philanthropies; The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts; HumanitiesDC; Opera America.  We gratefully recognize the generous support of Share Fund, The William G Baker Jr Memorial Fund, Dimick, Eugene M. Lang, The Theodore H. Barth, John J. Leidy, Robert N. Alfandre, Sami & Totah, Deus ex Machina Family and M&T Foundations.