Northwestern University Opera Theater and the Contemporary Music Ensemble present two compelling and thought-provoking works: Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann's In a Grove, together with François Sarhan's Hands.

The Wall Street Journal praised the Pittsburgh Opera’s February premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s In a Grove as “alluring and dramatically hypnotic.” With a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, based on the short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, the opera is set in 1921 in a ghost forest in the Oregon mountains. Seven witnesses—some of them suspects—provide testimony about events that transpired in a mountain grove, where an aspiring botanist goes missing and her new husband, a schoolteacher, appears to have been murdered. But all is not as it seems, and each new revelation in this suspenseful tale draws the audience deeper into an examination of the subjective nature of truth and the human experience.

Lifan Deng, Policeman (singing role) & Agent 3 (non-singing role)