THE SUITCASE OPERA PROJECT In Workshop

Chicago Opera Vanguard and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural
Affairs and Special Events  present a workshop presentation of

A new opera
THE SUITCASE OPERA PROJECT
Music by Eric Reda
Libretto by David Kodeski

Thursday, November 8 at 7:30PM
Friday, November 9 at 7:30PM
Saturday, November 10 at 7:30PM

On stage of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park
201 East Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60601

“People tell me in 10 years I will be in the gutter. I’m almost looking forward to the prospect,” Jimmy writes to his friend Howard in 1948. Jimmy is eighteen, gay, dishonorably discharged from the Marines, and living in New York. Documenting his artist’s life, Jimmy cruises  the bars and streets, parties with his friends Gore Vidal, Anaïs Nin, and Truman Capote, while rhapsodizing on art, love, and sexuality. Sixty years later, monologist David Kodeski wins a “curious box of letters” in an online auction and discovers Jimmy’s lost world.

THE SUITCASE OPERA PROJECT, a new non-fiction opera by David Kodeski and composer Eric Reda, excavates Jimmy’s 49 letters, revealing a history of post-Kinsey / pre-Stonewall queer America and creating a moving portrait of a hungry, young soul.

For more information, visit www.chicagovanguard.org.