Boston, MA (1/26/2024) — Guerilla Opera is pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) approved a Grants for Arts Projects award of $15,000. This grant will support the development of The Captivity of Hannah Duston with music by Lansing McLoskey and libretto by Glen Nelson. The NEA will award 958 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $27.1 million that were announced as part of its first round of fiscal year 2024 grants.

“The NEA is delighted to announce this grant to Guerilla Opera, which is helping contribute to the strength and well-being of the arts sector and local community,” said National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “We are pleased to be able to support this community and help create an environment where all people have the opportunity to live artful lives.”

“As a small company, this shows a lot of faith in our important work. We are so thankful to have the support of the NEA as we develop this opera that takes on a hard-hitting topic that affects all our lives every day, whether we realize it or not,” remarks Guerilla Executive Director Aliana de la Guardia.

Amidst a social backdrop of the nation wrestling with its monuments and troubled histories, The Captivity of Hannah Duston investigates the legacy of the first American woman to have a public statue in her honor, Hannah Duston of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Controversial even in her lifetime (1657-c.1737), Duston’s story of her abduction by Native Americans during King William’s War and her escape and slaying of her captors raises many ethical questions. Notable authors, Cotton Mather, John Greenleaf Whittier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah Josepha Hale retold the story over 150 years—contradicting and attacking each other’s version of the story, employing Duston as a narrative pawn, much like current broadcast media anchors spin stories to their demographic's political leanings.

With Metropolitan Opera director Sarah Meyers at the helm, Lansing McLoskey, a Grammy Award-winning composer, and librettist Glen Nelson use historic texts by notable authors, set into a contemporary frame, to call into question absolute notions of history and truth, and employ the Duston accounts to provoke a reassessment of national heroes and their stories.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. For more information on Guerilla Opera’s production of The Captivity of Hannah Duston visit guerillaopera.org/repertoire/hannah-duston.

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WHO WE ARE

Guerilla Opera is a BIPOC and feminist organization, Boston's only experimental chamber opera ensemble, and one of only a few in the world with a mission to exclusively present new works of opera theater. Founded in 2007, the ensemble has accumulated a repertoire of over 40 new works by 30 composers. One of Boston’s most exciting companies, they have garnered a national reputation for innovative contemporary opera and daring performances with Opera News raving that “Guerilla Opera redefines the opera experience.”

The works commissioned by this artist-led ensemble are custom-tailored to their artists, who confront, examine, and question traditional conceptions of what is “operatic” by championing cutting-edge music and immersing audiences in profound experiences. Their vision is to bring new music to new audiences through a unique body of work that ferociously confronts the status quo, eschews antiquated and stereotypical traditions of the art form of opera, and examines stories by and for the people of today through contemporary lenses. They model creative authenticity and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (IDEA) to inspire and influence emerging generations of artists and creators. (guerillaopera.org)