Little Women (1998) is the first opera written by American composerMark Adamo to his ownlibretto afterLouisa May Alcott's 1868–69 tale of growing up inNew England after theAmerican Civil War,Little Women. The opera also includes text byJohn Bunyan (Beth's setting ofThe Pilgrim's Progress),Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Dr. Bhaer sings "Kennst du das Land" fromWilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), and Alcott herself (an excerpt of one of her thrillers at the beginning of act 2, which is spoken and mostly omitted on the audio recording).

Commissioned by the Opera Studio ofHouston Grand Opera (HGO), then under the guidance of General DirectorDavid Gockley,Little Women was first performed on March 13, 1998, in a smaller scale production.^[1] The success of this first production prompted Gockley to pronounce it "destined to be an American classic" and scheduled the opera for a mainstage premiere of ten performances in March 2000 — making it the first of HGO's twenty-some commissions to be so revived.

G. Schirmer published the opera in May 1998;National Public Radio broadcast the recording of the premiere the following September, and there have been more than 35 distinct productions, professional and academic, domestic and international, since the world premiere, ranging from established American stages (Minnesota Opera,New York City Opera,Opera Pacific), to newer, more progressive companies (Fort Worth Opera,Opera Columbus) from American summer festivals (Glimmerglass Festival,Central City Opera,Chautauqua Opera,Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point), to international venues (Teatro de la Ciudad in Mexico City, World Expo in Tokyo andNagoya, Japan^{[clarification needed]}), and to conservatories (Jacobs School of Music,Anderson University (Indiana),Westminster Choir College,New England Conservatory of Music,Oberlin Conservatory of Music,Rice University,San Francisco Conservatory of Music,University of the Philippines College of Music,DePauw University.)

The American television premiere took place on August 29, 2001, onPBS'sGreat Performances (a co-production between Houston Grand Opera andThirteen/WNET New York), and the world premiere recording of the HGO production was released onOndine on August 28, 2001.

Little Women had its Australian premiere in May 2007 at theAdelaide Festival. The opera premiered in Israel in July 2008 in Tel Aviv.Little Women had its European Premiere in Bruges, Belgium, on August 1, 2009. The Canadian premiere took place on January 30, 2010, performed by theCalgary Opera.^[2]

In 2017, Adamo'sLittle Women saw the big stage again in Houston for the first time since the televised production by the HGO in 2001. This time it was performed byOpera in the Heights and directed by Dashiell Waterbury, his professional debut.^[3]

In 2022, the UK premiere ofLittle Women was staged byOpera Holland Park, directed byElla Marchment and conducted bySian Edwards.^[4][5]

While some critics have argued that the score's reach exceeds its grasp –Opera News suggests that "the nontonal pages never quite mesh with the arias' flights of aching,Bernsteinian lyricism" – critical consensus has largely followed that ofJohn Rockwell ofThe New York Times, who, on the occasion of the March 2003 New York City Opera premiere, calledLittle Women a "masterpiece".

• English-language operas
• Operas by Mark Adamo
• Operas set in the United States
• Operas
• 1998 operas
• Opera world premieres at Houston Grand Opera
• Operas based on novels
• Operas based on works by American writers
• Works based on Little Women

• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2022