|
Commissioned by the Konzert und Theater St. Gallen, the opera tells the story of the painter Lili Elbe, who had the first gender affirmation surgery in the 1930s. In the tradition of great operatic works, Lili Elbe is the story of a love overcoming all obstacles. The opera allows a glimpse into the life of Lili Elbe and her wife Gerda Wegener, both famous painters. The opera explores Lili’s coming out and transition at a time when gender affirmation surgery was still completely uncharted territory. During her lifetime, Lili Elbe (1882–1931) was an internationally known personality. Picker and Stollman’s opera Lili Elbe is based on historical sources, including Lili Elbe's own writings.
Called “a masterpiece full of emotions” by Voralberger Zeitung, Lili Elbe was further praised by Die Welt’s Manuel Brug as “a timely and relevant opera that deserves to be widely performed.” Opernglas praised the “exciting, multifaceted, multi-layered score.” The Süddeutsche Zeitung called the production an “evening full of nightmares and hopes, with a fearless, always fascinating Lucia Lucas at the center, an iridescent experience, gripping in its truthfulness,” while Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote: “the librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman has condensed the extraordinary story of its protagonist into an opulent picture arc . . . With Lili Elbe opera has definitely arrived in the 21st century.”
Lili Elbe is composer Tobias Picker’s seventh opera. His most recent opera Awakenings premiered at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2022 and was praised by The Wall Street Journal as a “a sensitive adaptation… [whose] elegiac, autumnal score, with its eloquent writing for solo string players, treads delicately in these stories of unrealized possibility.” Picker’s operas have been produced all over the world by the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Opéra de Montréal, San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Covent Garden, Opera Holland Park, English Touring Opera, and Theater an der Wien, among many others. Tobias Picker’s music is published exclusively worldwide by Schott Helicon Music Corporation.
###
| 
