''Esther'' is a 1956 English-language

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libre ...

Jan Meyerowitz Jan Meyerowitz (23 April 1913 – 15 December 1998) was a German–American composer, conductor, pianist and writer. Life Meyerowitz was born Hans-Hermann Meyerowitz in Breslau (today Wrocław), the son of a manufacturer. From 1927, he studied ...

to a libretto by

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, H ...

based on the biblical story in the

Book of Esther The Book of Esther ( he, מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" ("the Megillah"), is a book in the third section (, "Writings") of the Jewish ''Tanakh'' (the Hebrew Bible). It is one of the fi ...

. The opera was premiered at the Festival of Contemporary Arts at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

.''The Collected Works of Langston Hughes'' 0826214770 Langston Hughes,

Arnold Rampersad Arnold Rampersad (born 13 November 1941) is a biographer, literary critic, and academic, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to the US in 1965. The first volume (1986) of his ''Life of Langston Hughes'' was a finalist for the Pulitzer ...

, Dolan Hubbard (2004). "1956 Libretto by Langston Hughes. Music by Jan Meyerowitz. Regarding the triumphant premiere of ''Esther'' at the Festival of Contemporary Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, Hughes wrote his old friend Carl Van Vechten,"

References

{{English-opera-stub 1956 operas Operas Operas based on the Bible English-language operas Works by Langston Hughes