CNN opera

CNN opera is a somewhat deprecatory description of contemporary operas taking as themes news events; or of classical opera transposed to a contemporary setting. The name alludes to Cable News Network, CNN.

The phrase has been applied to such operas as:

• Nixon in China by John Adams
• The Death of Klinghoffer, also by John Adams
• X - based on events in the life of Malcolm X, composed by Anthony Davis and Thulani Davis
• Harvey Milk composed by Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie

Perhaps because of his association with Adams and a record of modern transpositions, the phrase is also directed at some of the output of director Peter Sellars.

External links

• A Great American Opera, a review of Nixon in China, makes reference to CNN operas
• Mind-altering Mozart: Peter Sellars' famous stagings of three operas now out on DVD, a review dismissing Sellar's setting of Figaro in the Trump Tower, as "the "CNN Opera" Sellars' detractors dismissed them all as".