A Woman in Morocco

Following a table read directed by Alan Hicks by actors at Center City Opera in Philadelphia,[2] the opera was given a staged workshop on October 25, 27 and November 1,3, 2013 by the Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center, Austin, Texas. The performances were conducted by Kelly Kuo with stage direction by Robert DeSimone. The world premiere production was performed on May 15, 16, and 17, 2015, by the Kentucky Opera[3][4] at the Jory Theater of the Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky as a centerpiece of the 20th Annual Festival of Faiths.[5] Roger Zahab conducted the 10-piece ensemble from the Kentucky Opera Orchestra; the production was directed by Daron Hagen who also designed the sets.

Daron Hagen's seven-episode video blog chronicling the development of the opera from first sketches through the final professional premiere over a four year period offers an intimate and extraordinary glimpse into the composer-librettist-director's process.[6]

While in its college workshop production at the University of Texas, the characters were felt by one graduate student to "come across as flat and largely unsympathetic and so frustratingly spineless that it's hard to care about them,"[7] when the work was given its professional premiere by Kentucky Opera, professional critics noted that "[its] complex score works to underline issues with leitmotifs, musical cues assigned to different characters, and music that never settles or rests. When singers get soaring arias, they emerge naturally from this intricate texture. Hagen has a gift for writing sensually rich tunes and uses this skill to release the music at important moments."[3] Most of the universally positive reviews touched approvingly on the opera's subject matter:

Will [a new opera] find a connection with tradition while creating something fresh and timely? I believe that composer Daron Hagen and his co-librettist Barbara Grecki have [done this] with their new two-act opera. ... Hagen's score feelingly captures the deep contradictions of its story and its characters in music that evokes the beauty and mystery of an exotic landscape, the dangerous and deceptive sensuality of its inhabitants, and the intense violence that is always just beneath the surface of a culture that threatens and terrorizes women.[8]

The action takes place in Tangier, Morocco, at the pension Cypress during October 1958. "The story follows the path of a naive young American reporter, Lizzy Holmes, who goes to Morocco to write about the status of women. Becoming involved with the shady inhabitants of her hotel, she discovers the insidious world of those who deal in buying and selling young girls for profit. Hampered by her own seduction into relationships she doesn't fully understand and sinking into drug addiction, Lizzy becomes a victim herself."[9]

• A Woman in Morocco on the official website of Daron Hagen
• A Woman in Morocco Videoblog Seven-episode video blog chronicling the complete development of the opera.
• That High G Hagen writes about directing the opera for the Huffington Post.
• Against Two-tap Opera Hagen writes about directing the opera for his own blog.