A CNN opera is a contemporary opera taking news events as a theme or a classical opera transposed to a contemporary setting. The somewhat deprecatory term CNN opera alludes to Cable News Network, CNN.
Operas that have been referred to as a CNN opera include:
Nixon in China by John Adams"Writers Enchanted by the Freedom of Opera" by Dinitia Smith, The New York Times (28 September 1995)"Opera review: Nixon in China at the Metropolitan Opera" by Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times (13 February 2011) The Death of Klinghoffer, also by John Adams X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis Harvey Milk, composed by Stewart Wallace, libretto by Michael Korie
Perhaps because of his association with Adams and a record of modern transpositions, some of the output of director Peter Sellars has also been referred to as CNN opera."Mind-altering Mozart: Peter Sellars' famous stagings of three operas now out on DVD" by Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter (23 March 2006), a review dismissing Sellar's setting of The Marriage of Figaro in the Trump Tower, as "the "CNN Opera" Sellars' detractors dismissed them all as".
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