The tenth video in our Staying Alive series features soprano Sarah Shafer singing Emily’s Aria from the 2006 opera Our Town. She is accompanied by her father Timothy Shafer on the piano.
Ned Rorem’s Our Town is an adaptation of the Thornton Wilder play of the same name. In this final aria, the newly deceased Emily reflects on the beauty and transience of life. She struggles but then accepts her fate and bids farewell to life on Earth, lamenting “Oh, Earth, you are too magical for anyone to know your miracle.”
Sarah Shafer made her Tulsa Opera debut in 2016, singing the role of Léïla in The Pearl Fishers. Opera News called her “a singer to watch,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praised her “crystalline sound, perfectly true intonation, glowing warmth, and total presence.”
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