10:00 am - Healthy Aging | Opera Guild: Antony and Cleopatra

Exploration of an Opera by musician scholars that brings out the story of the opera and aspects of its creation.

You may have read Shakespeare’s play, Julius Ceasar, in high school. It did not end well for the major characters.

 There is a follow-on play, Antony and Cleopatra, that has a similar ending, but this time with a fiery romance between two of history’s greatest lovers driving the action.

For the 100th Anniversary Season of the San Francisco Opera, local Bay Area composer, John Adam, was commissioned to turn the story into an opera. Adams adapted the libretto from Shakespeare with supplementary passages from Virgil, Ovid, the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The director sets the story in the world of 1930’s Hollywood, blending the mythic imagery of antiquity with the starry glamour of that time: two worlds in which larger-than-life characters fill the public spotlight.