EarRelevant Staff | 24 JUN 2025
ATLANTA, Georgia— Over the span of just four days, five new opera scenes sprang to life in Atlanta — and by week’s end, one rose above the rest.
Composer Dina Pruzhansky and librettist Hai-Ting Chinn were named winners of The Atlanta Opera’s 96-Hour Opera Festival on June 23 for their 10-minute scene, Rose, Tree (Rosenbaum and Li). The poignant work, set in 1967, explores cultural healing through the story of two mothers — one a Jewish Holocaust survivor, the other an American-born Chinese woman — who unite in support of their children’s interracial relationship.
The duo will split the $10,000 Antinori Foundation Grand Prize and have been commissioned to develop the piece into a full-length chamber opera. Their winning scene premiered Saturday, June 21, before a live audience at Morehouse College’s Ray Charles Performing Arts Center.
Now in its fourth year, the festival challenges five teams of composers and librettists to bring newly written short operas to the stage in just 96 hours. Hosted in partnership with Morehouse College’s School of Music, the competition has become a proving ground for emerging voices in the opera world.
The 2025 festival theme, “Love Overcoming Barriers,” inspired diverse interpretations across the five entries. In addition to Rose, Tree, the festival featured:
- TransBliss™, a comic sci-fi opera by Rebecca Gray and Rachel Gray, in which alien lovers grapple with interstellar miscommunication through an AI matchmaker. It was named Runner-Up by the judges.
- Desert Bloom by Gillian Rae Perry and Mo Holmes, which won Audience Favorite by popular vote.
- sub rosa by Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei and Ashlee Haze, and
- Mi sangre, mi corazón by Iván Enrique Rodríguez and Laura Barati.
Each team arrived in Atlanta with their scores complete and were paired with professional singers, pianists, and music directors. Over the next four days, they rehearsed their works intensively before presenting them at the judged matinee showcase.
The judging panel combined artistic range and industry insight, including composer Ricky Ian Gordon, Minnesota Opera’s general director Priti Gandhi, playwright Tazewell Thompson, author Andrea Davis Pinkney, Alliance Theatre’s Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, and The Atlanta Opera’s own general and artistic director Tomer Zvulun.
This year’s festival also included the world premiere of Steele Roots by Dave Ragland and Selda Sahin, a chamber opera about Atlanta humanitarian Carrie Steele, who founded one of the nation’s first Black orphanages. The duo won the 2023 competition and spent the past two years developing the opera with support from The Atlanta Opera, culminating in its debut on June 20 and encore on June 22.
Also featured during the weekend was a workshop performance of a scene from Water Memory (Jala Smirti) by Kitty Brazelton and Vaibu Mohan, winners of the 2024 competition. That work will receive its world premiere in 2026.
Supported by local and national funders, including the Coca-Cola Foundation, Rich’s Foundation, and the City of Atlanta, the 96-Hour Opera Festival has grown into one of the region’s most adventurous showcases for contemporary opera. The Antinori Foundation underwrites the Grand Prize.
With past festival themes exploring artificial intelligence and regional history, The Atlanta Opera’s compact but high-stakes challenge continues to position the company at the forefront of operatic innovation — and offer a rare spotlight to stories, characters, and creators often left off the traditional opera stage.
For more on this year’s festival, including photos and profiles of the artists, visit atlantaopera.org/festival. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
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