Oedipus Rex + Lilacs

Concert Performances
Oedipus Rex Music by Igor Stravinsky
Oedipus Rex Libretto by Jean Cocteau
Lilacs Music by George Walker
Lilacs Text by Walt Whitman
Performed in Latin and English with English Supertitles

In order to serve the widest possible audience, we are now offering a free livestream of Friday's concert on the Opera Philadelphia Channel, starting at 8 p.m. Watch>>

Enter Thebes…a city in crisis whose denizens are looking to one man for salvation: Oedipus Rex. But how can this man save anything when he’s unknowingly cursed by the gods? Can he escape his dark fate?

The ancient Greek tragedy of the man who killed his father and married his mother is brought into the 20^th century with a searing score by Igor Stravinsky in the opera-oratorio, Oedipus Rex. Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris leads the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus, with soloists William Burden, Rehanna Thelwell, and Mark S. Doss.

Before watching Oedipus fall, reflect on the loss of other guiding stars with Lilacs, George Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meditation on grief and remembrance. This rarely-performed piece is a setting of Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” written after Lincoln’s assassination. In Lilacs, Walker commemorates famed Black tenor Roland Hayes. Rising soprano Tiffany Townsend performs as the soloist.