Since meeting in 2009, American composer Missy Mazzoli and Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek have remained fast friends and close collaborators. Their fruitful artistic partnership has given rise to six operas, two of which are still in the works. Hear from the duo on their most successful creation to date, Breaking the Waves, and follow their output from the past 13 years—and into the future.

The Operas of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek

Mazzoli and Vavrek’s first collaboration explores the life of Swiss adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904).

The pair’s most-performed opera adapts the 1996 film by Lars von Trier.

This chamber opera is a ghost story about homesteaders in 1870s Nebraska.

A sci-fi opera that follows a cult whose members can hear a mysterious hum that the rest of the world is deaf to.

Set to premiere at the Met, this opera is based on George Saunders’s 2017 novel. Abraham Lincoln mourns his departed son Willie, whose spirit is trapped in limbo.

This reinterpretation of Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” transports the story to Appalachia during the present-day opioid crisis. The U.K. premiere will be staged by Breaking the Waves director Tom Morris.