The Fort Worth Opera will open its 2024-2025 season with a crowd pleaser: Mark Adamo’s operatic adaptation of the beloved literary classic, Little Women.
Performances will be held the week before Thanksgiving, on November 22 and 24, at the W. E. Scott Theatre in the Fort Worth Cultural District.
“Louisa May Alcott’s timeless story of the March sisters has been a fixture in American literature for over 150 years,” says Fort Worth Opera General & Artistic Director Angela Turner Wilson in a release. “Mark Adamo’s exquisite contemporary opera adaptation provides a rich new version of that story, breathing exciting life into the resonant themes of family, sisterhood, growing up, and coming home.”
Last performed by Fort Worth Opera in 2005, Little Women makes its 2024 Fort Worth homecoming as a fully staged mainstage production, with direction by Claire Choquette and chamber orchestra accompaniment by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Tyson Deaton.
Mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra — who arrives in Fort Worth following her Metropolitan Opera debut in Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s Ainadamar — stars in the role of Jo March. She's joined by Bridget Cappel (mezzo-soprano) as Meg, Mary Feminear (soprano) as Beth, and Megan Koch (lyric coloratura soprano) as Amy.
Several members of the cast mark homecomings of their own with this production as they previously performed as Fort Worth Opera Resident Artists (RAs) and Studio Artists. Two are also celebrating a love story: Cappel and baritone Erik Earl Larson met, fell in love, and married as Fort Worth Opera RAs. They will be falling in love and getting married all over again onstage as the opera’s Meg March and John Brooke.
This production also represents a homecoming for star-on-the-rise stage director Claire Choquette, who was born in New Orleans, grew up in Oklahoma City, and now lives in Dallas.
“When people think of Little Women, it feels very nostalgic,” Choquette says in a statement. “It's a book that many of us read when we were younger and just starting to dive into the classics. But it's also an important piece of literature with a relatable story about the value of family connections and growing up together. In modern American society, individuality is often more heavily valued than family ties. We're encouraged to leave our family homes and pursue our dreams alone, while rarely being reminded that it's okay to prioritize family, whether chosen or biological, and keep them close to your heart.”
To suggest those varieties of families onstage, Choquette has changed an offstage chorus of voices from previous productions into a fully staged chorus of modern young women: four undergraduate performers from TCU's Opera Studio program, to underscore the relevance of the opera’s themes of sisterhood, family, and emerging maturity.
The W. E. Scott Theatre provides a final, bittersweet element, as the arts complex is slated for imminent closure and potential redevelopment. Little Women may be the last production to occupy the Scott Theatre in its current state.
To purchase tickets or season ticket packages for the 2024-25 season — which includes The Elixir of Love with the Hattie Mae Leslie Resident Artists in January 2025, the biennial McCammon Voice Competition in March 2025, and the mainstage production of La Cenerentola (Cinderella) at Bass Hall in April, 2025 — visit the Fort Worth Opera website at fwopera.org.
The Fort Worth Opera production of Little Women takes the stage on Friday, November 22 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 24 at 2:00 pm at the W. E. Scott Theatre, 1300 Gendy St. The production is in English with English supertitles. The performance will run for two hours, with one 20-minute intermission.
