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How a Tony-Winning Musical Theater Composer Makes Opera


On the new Stagecraft podcast, Jeanine Tesori takes listeners behind the scenes of her Metropolitan Opera debut, "Grounded."

For that kind of scale, Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of “Kimberly Akimbo” and “Fun Home,” turns to opera: Her latest, “ Grounded,” has an orchestra of 80 and a cast of 60. Based on the 2014 play that starred Anne Hathaway in a 2015 Off Broadway run, “Grounded” marks Tesori’s Metropolitan Opera debut in a production directed by another theater-world crossover, Michael Mayer (“A Beautiful Noise,” the upcoming “Swept Away”). “Grounded,” written by Tesori and playwright-librettist George Brandt, follows a hotshot female pilot who gets reassigned to operate combat drones used in wartime maneuvers half a world away.

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