Music by
Andrew Gerle

Libretto by
Royce Vavrek

visit the Sheet Music page to purchase PDFs
of the sheet music from The Beach

History

The Beach is a new opera I’m currently working on with librettist Royce Vavrek. It’s based loosely on a news item from this past summer, in which a younger woman locked her elderly husband in the laundry room for a year while she and her lover stole $500,000 of his money. In time, her lies become his reality, and kindness and cruelty become impossible to separate. The Beach was included in New York City Opera’s 2011 VOX reading series, featuring NYCO singers and the full NYCO orchestra.

Press

“On May 14, I attended the spring presentation of New York City Opera’s VOX: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN OPERA LAB. All sorts of dark rumors had been circulating about NYCO’s future, and that afternoon, as I sat in the back row of NYU’s Skirball Center, marveling at all the impressive young talent onstage, I couldn’t help but wonder; what kind of future will these pieces have in NYCO goes under? I loved David T. Little’s witty Vinkensport, and I hope that someone does a fully staged production of Andrew Gerle’s The Beach. It seems like a winner, musically and dramatically.”