''The Secret Garden'' is an

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

Nolan Gasser Nolan Ira Gasser (born November 10, 1964) is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist. He was the chief musicologist for Pandora Media, Inc. and the architect of the Music Genome Project, the proprietary musical analysis system that un ...

with a libretto (based on the 1911 novel by

Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (published in 1885–1886), '' A Little ...

) written by

Carey Harrison Carey Harrison (born 19 February 1944) is an English novelist and dramatist. Early years and education Harrison was born in London to actor Rex Harrison and actress Lilli Palmer, and raised in Los Angeles and New York, where he attended the ...

. Commissioned by the

San Francisco Opera San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when h ...

and presented in partnership with Cal Performances, it premiered on March 1, 2013, at Zellerbach Hall at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Roles

Critical reception

The opera received positive reviews from Joshua Kosman in the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...

'', Janos Gereben in ''

The San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...

'' and ''San Francisco Classical Voice'', Stacy Trevenon at ''StageandCinema.com'' and others, with mixed reviews from the ''

San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...

'' and elsewhere.Trevenon, Stacy (7 March 2013
"Bay Area Opera Review: The Secret Garden"
''Stage and Cinema''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Secret Garden, The Operas English-language operas 2013 operas Operas based on novels Operas set in England