Development
In an attempt to bring younger audiences into the realm of opera, Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb and André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, held meetings with several contemporary artists to discuss possible contributions to their innovative commissioning project. According to Bishop, each team would be offered a $50,000 commission and the entire project was estimated to cost around $2 million, split by the Met and Lincoln Center Theater. Each team or composer was expected to submit a piano-vocal score without a timetable, which would then undergo workshops overseen by LCT. By June 2007, Wainwright was the furthest along of all the contributing artists, having already started the writing process and revealing 30 minutes of excerpts to officials associated with the project. By December 2007, Wainwright stated he'd "written the first act and most of the second act in sketch form and has almost finished the libretto", and that he'd have more time to dedicate to the project once his tour schedule completed. Wainwright had completed piano and voice parts by February 2008, and began tackling orchestrations.
With a workshop scheduled for January 2009, Wainwright revealed in a Brazilian TV show interview that his opera would premiere in Manchester, United Kingdom in July 2009. He stated the world premiere would be "somewhere small so that if it's a complete failure, nobody about it".
Read more about this topic: Prima Donna (opera)
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