The Wake World

World Premiere
Music and libretto by David Hertzberg
Based on the story The Wake World by Aleister Crowley
American Repertoire Program
Performed in English with English supertitles

Winner of the 2018 award for Best New Opera from the Music Critics Association of North America.

Part of 

Composer in Residence David Hertzberg and director R.B. Schlather take visitors on a fantastic journey through the treasured galleries of The Barnes Foundation. In this world premiere, two of the early 20th century’s most prolific and polarizing artistic visionaries collide: physician, collector, and writer Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), the British poet, magician, and occultist once dubbed the “wickedest man in the world.” In a one-act opera inspired by Crowley’s ecstatic fairy tale The Wake World, visitors will experience Dr. Barnes’s collection like never before as they follow a wide-eyed seeker and her guardian angel on a dreamlike voyage. Works of art jump off the gallery walls and into the action as the museum is transformed, with the voices of the Opera Philadelphia Chorus drawing the audience through a mystical world of hallucinatory vividness. As a fully immersive performance, The Wake World challenges understandings of art, opera, and the self—in a way audiences are unlikely to forget.

Choose Your Own Adventure

You are invited to begin your performance experience at 7:00 p.m. with exclusive access to the Barnes collection. Interact with the performers amidst the artwork before moving into the Annenberg Court, where the performance continues. In the Annenberg Court, benches lining the walls will be available should you require seating, but you are encouraged to move through the space along with our heroine, Lola, and the other inhabitants of The Wake World. The performance is what you make of it.

Seeing The Wake World? Enjoy a prix fixe dinner at The Barnes before your performance. Discover more>>