U.S. Premiere of Montsalvatge's BABEL 46

Pre-show talk with YAP Artistic Director and Yale School of Music Opera Faculty Alejandro Roca at 6:30pm
Composed in the 1960s and premiered in 1994, Babel 46 unfolds in a refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. As displaced inmates await repatriation, each clings to an elaborate story designed to conceal a painful or dangerous truth. They sing in their own languages - Italian, French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Hebrew - forming a modern Tower of Babel where fractured identities collide. Raw, immediate, and deeply human, this gripping “neo-verismo” drama reflects the composer’s admiration for Giacomo Puccini, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Benjamin Britten, blending lyrical intensity with stark theatrical realism.