Missy Mazzoli's Opioid Opera Premieres in Edinburgh
"The Galloping Cure," written after the composer lost two cousins to overdoses, uses a carnival carousel as an allegory for addiction.
EDINBURGH — Missy Mazzoli's new opera about the opioids epidemic, "The Galloping Cure," opened Sunday at the Edinburgh International Festival, telling the story of addiction through the allegory of a carnival merry-go-round.
Mazzoli said the work grew out of the deaths of two cousins. "One was in 2002 and the other passed away in 2009 and they were both 25," she said. "One overdosed on OxyContin and the other one overdosed heroin after becoming addicted to heroin via OxyContin."
Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek built the opera around Lucky Man (baritone Justin Austin), a charlatan who arrives in the faded town of Yourtown in a white double-breasted suit and matching cowboy hat, offering free rides on six fiberglass horses to ease residents' chronic pain. He later begins charging — "dynamic pricing," he calls it — rents out hobbyhorses until people go broke, and demands noses, hair, kneecaps and tongues as payment, body parts he will use to build more carousel horses.
"When he offers you the cure, he never tells you the price," sings Dr. Theresa Hart (mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack), whose endorsement of Lucky Man leads to the death of her daughter Noy (soprano Gabrielle Turgeon).
The 2-hour, 15-minute work, conducted by Stuart Stratford and directed by Tom Morris, features a chorus of 14, singing sheep and a pair of dogs. Set designer Rebecca Ringst and lighting designer Lucy Carter used 120 vertical LEDs about 7 yards (6.5 meters) long that resembled needles. The score turns to electronica by DJ Blume and Lorna Dune for teenagers' raves, mixed into the Scottish Opera Orchestra.
The premiere is the first of two for Mazzoli in a 71-day span. On Oct. 19 she becomes the first woman composer with a premiere at New York's Metropolitan Opera, with "Lincoln in the Bardo."
The project advanced only after the pair commissioned a treatment from author Karen Russell in 2022, drawing on Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor" and the Brothers Grimm. "It wasn't until we collaborated with Karen that we found a way in that wasn't preachy or predictable," Mazzoli said.
"Galloping" runs through Wednesday in Scotland, then plays Sweden's Norrlands Opera Sept. 12-23 and the San Francisco Opera in the fall of 2027.
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