Kelley Rourke
Librettist
Kelley Rourke is a librettist, translator and dramaturg. Libretti include Eat the Document, Right Now, Lucy, and Stay (John Glover); The Beekeeper (Wang Lu); The Emissary (Kenji Oh); Jungle Book (Kamala Sankaram); Wilde Tales and And Still We Dream (Laura Karpman); and Odyssey and Robin Hood (Ben Moore). Kelley is the recipient of Opera America’s 2024 Campbell Opera Librettist Prize. Her English adaptations of canonic operas have been hailed as “crackingly witty” (The Independent, London) and “remarkably well wedded to the music” (New York Times). Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera Australia, Welsh National Opera, Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Chicago Opera Theater, Seattle Opera, American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, Carnegie Hall, Met LiveArts, Opera Parallèle, On Site Opera, American Opera Projects, Detroit Opera, and Calgary Opera, among others. Kelley is resident dramaturg for The Glimmerglass Festival and Artistic Advisor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative.
Upcoming premieres include A River Runs Through It (Opera Montana) and O’Keeffe: Kiss the Sky (Washington National Opera), as well as new adaptations of Idomeneo and Così fan tutte.