‘Dinner 4 3’ Opera by Professor Deborah Brevoort

Adjunct Associate Professor Deborah Brevoort penned the libretto to Dinner 4 3, an opera inspired by Boccaccio’s The Decameron (Day 5, Story 10). Brevoort wrote the 10-minute opera with composer Michale Ching. In Dinner 4 3, a wealthy businessman and his trophy wife are unfulfilled in their marriage. They both search internet dating sites for extra-marital partners and, upon finding suitable matches, make dates to meet. But their romantic liaisons don’t go as planned. This piece studies the intricacies of love, loneliness, and the dichotomy of loyalty and freedom.

Brevoort’s piece was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of an opera web series titled Tales from a Safe Distance, by Fargo Moorhead Opera and the Decameron Opera Coalition.

In one of the most ambitious operatic commissions to emerge from the global pandemic, the newly formed Decameron Opera Coalition will premiere Tales from a Safe Distance with a multi-week virtual release, in October. Brevoort joins ten teams of contemporary opera’s most vital and diverse creative voices, with a dedication to new sounds, unparalleled storytelling, and underrepresented voices. Tales From a Safe Distance reimagines the story told in The Decameron, a tale of ten people who are quarantined together outside of Florence during the Black Plague in the 14th Century, to reflect the way people are connecting with each other through technology during this extraordinary time in history.

Brevoort is an award winning playwright and librettist from Alaska. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, one of the original company members of Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska and a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, a group of individual artists dedicated to international theatre exchange. She is best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, which won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award and the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition. It was produced in London, Off Broadway at the New Group and WP Theatre, and in Los Angeles at the Actor’s Gang.