West Edge Opera has announced that composer Alyssa Weinberg is teaming up with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann to create “Claude & Marcel,” a new opera about surrealist photographers and activists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.

The opera is written for eight singers and 13 instruments and will premiere in August 2027 following three years of workshops and preview performances. West Edge Opera Music Director and Conductor Jonathan Khuner will lead the world premiere.

The opera was originally announced as a commission in 2023 under the title “L’Autre Moi.” At that point, it was set to be composed by Matthew Recio from a libretto by Fleischmann. It was set to premiere in August 2025. However, due to health issues, Recio withdrew from the project in 2024. 

From there the organization considered numerous composers to take over, eventually choosing Weinberg as the top choice.

“When I first heard Alyssa’s music some years ago, my ears, indeed my whole being, took notice,” Fleischmann said in an official press release. “Here was someone who conjured worlds for me to enter, to inhabit. Worlds that altered how I perceived, and subsequently experienced, my own world. I am thrilled to be embarking on this exploration with her into Claude and Marcel’s constantly metamorphosing worlds and acts of courage and love they manifested via their openness and their vision, which is deeply embedded within Alyssa’s music.”

“To me, the creation of music is a surrealist act, and surrealist priorities of altered perception and subconscious exploration have long been the primary driving force in my work,” Weinberg added. “I was immediately drawn to the story of Claude and Marcel, their ways of viewing the world, their artistic exploration of their own identities, and particularly their description of their own relationship as ‘Singular Plural.’  I’m excited to experiment with the structural interplay of surreal soundscapes and direct narrative, weaving in and out of lenses of perception and coherency – anchored, of course, by the deeply expressive and emotional story of their remarkable relationship so vividly conjured by Stephanie Fleischmann’s brilliant libretto.”

There will be a libretto workshop this September at The Chan National Queer Arts Center in San Francisco featuring Nikola Printz and Laura Bohn, who will star as Cahun and Moore.