Opera Montana announces a world premiere of a new opera - and it’s very close to home.
In a January press release, the company announced the world premiere of A River Runs Through It in September 2026, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Norman Maclean’s beloved elegy to family and fly fishing in Montana.
The creative team for the adaptation includes Music by Zach Redler, Libretto by Matt Foss and Kelley Rourke.
Co-Librettist and Director Matt Foss starts off with the initial concept of A River Runs Through It as an opera. Composer Zach Redler and Co-Librettist Kelley Rourke add their stories as the ride began.
Foss will also stage direct the premiere. Foss knows the Big Sky well, as a veteran with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks over the last three decades. He is excited to share Opera Montana’s vision of one of the definitive American stories of the twentieth century and a classic depiction of the American West.
“That idea of space is something we’re preserving so there won’t be a lot of ticky-tack of curtains. It will flow and eddy and curve, following Zack’s music, but it will be seamless and highly theatrical. Professor Maclean, Norman was a Shakespeare scholar, so there’s a little bit of that Elizabethan staging. They declared ’Now we’re in the Forest of Arden’ in the same way that ‘Now we’re in the summer of 1937, or the Big Blackfoot, or Wolf Creek.’”
The premiere of Opera Montan’s production of A River Runs Through It takes place September 18-20 and 25-27, 2026 at The Ellen Theatre in Bozeman.
Performances will follow October 3 & 4, 2026, in collaboration with Missoula Symphony Orchestra at the University of Montana’s Dennison Theatre in Missoula.
For more information about Opera Montana’s production of A River Runs Through It, visit operamontana.org.
Creative Team Bios
Zach Redler is a composer, musicologist, music director, pianist, and educator whose work has been performed in concert halls, opera houses, and theaters around the world. They are the recipient of the American Theatre Wing’s Jonathan Larson Award, ASCAP’s Max Dreyfus Award, and the American Prize for Opera Composition. As a musicologist, Zach’s research on and publications of Marcel Tyberg’s music has culminated in multiple premieres and recordings. Zach spent fifteen years working on the music teams of musicals on Broadway, regionally, and globally. Zach has received commissions from Opera Memphis, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, Opera Montana, Arizona Opera, San Diego Opera, Opera on the James, American Opera Projects, and the United States Army Field Band and Soldiers Chorus. Zach has served on the music faculties of New York University, Manhattan School of Music, and Molloy College. Currently, Zach mentors opera writers as a part of Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab and is the music program director at the Dublin School in New Hampshire.
Matt Foss is a professional playwright and screenwriter whose credits include The Meyerhold Center (Moscow, Russia), Red Tape Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Oracle Theatre, American Blues Theatre, The Jewish Ensemble Theatre and Tipping Point Theatre. He has worked as an actor, director and writer with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks for the past twenty years. In 2016, his touring production of The Glass Menagerie performed at Russia’s Moscow Art Theatre. He is a recipient of the Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and his adaptations and productions have won multiple Joseph Jefferson Awards-Chicago’s top theatre prize. Foss was the co-writer and producer of the award-winning short film, Sons of Toledo (2021) and feature film Lone Wolves (2024) and was named one of the Austin Film Festival and Movie Maker Magazine’s Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch. He is a member of the WGA-East.
Kelley Rourke is a librettist, translator and dramaturg. Libretti include Eat the Document, Right Now, Lucy, and Stay (John Glover); The Beekeeper (Wang Lu); The Emissary (Kenji Oh); Jungle Book (Kamala Sankaram); Wilde Tales and And Still We Dream (Laura Karpman); and Odyssey and Robin Hood (Ben Moore). She is the recipient of Opera America’s 2024 Campbell Opera Librettist Prize. Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera Australia, Welsh National Opera, Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Chicago Opera Theater, Seattle Opera, American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, Carnegie Hall, Met LiveArts, Opera Parallèle, On Site Opera, American Opera Projects, Detroit Opera, and Calgary Opera, among others. Kelley is resident dramaturg for The Glimmerglass Festival and Artistic Advisor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative.
