conducted by James Levine, directed by Doug Fitch
cast: Kiera Duffy (Rose), Jamie Van Eyck (Mama), Christin-Marie Hill (Stella), Lawrence Jones (Zen), Chad Sloan (Harry or Larry), Rebecca Danning (Kid)

‘The work has everything: wordplay in the libretto that is reflected in the score, and an increasingly eerie intensity that crests in the final scene, when the characters appear to have worked out their circumstances.’ (Allan Kozinn, New York Times)

‘In What Next?—which has a mysteriously floating text by the Welsh music critic Paul Griffiths—six stunned characters search for an author after a traffic accident but don't find one. Are they dead? Probably. A couple who were on the way to a wedding can't quite remember who they are. The groom is either Harry or Larry. His bride is a performer who cannot stop her coloratura. His mother's a nuisance. His father, Zen, is an aging hippy/spiritualist. There is an astronomer, Stella, whom Zen fancies, and a boy of 12. They want to go on. But where to? How? Just as they find themselves, they slip away.
     ‘Carter's music makes no concessions to immediate graspability—each character exists (or almost exists) in his or her own sound world of timbres, melodic shapes, harmonic intervals and rhythms, none of them easy. But everything miraculously fits together. Movement is quicksilver, the brain must work very fast to seize the ineffable.’ (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times)

Munich première: Prinzregententheater, 20 Nov 2007
conducted by Ulf Schirmer, directed by Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer, dramaturgy by Patricius Mayer
cast: Anna Borchers (Rose), Vera Semieniuk (Mama), Sonja Leutwyler (Stella), Lucas Vanzelli (Zen), Andreas Burkhart (Harry or Larry), Bastian Sistemich (Kid)

Susan Narucki, Amanda Squitieri and Matthew Garrett


Amanda Squitieri and Jonathan Makepeace

conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, directed by Christopher Alden
cast: Amanda Squitieri (Rose), Susan Narucki (Mama), Katherine Rohrer (Stella), Matthew Garrett (Zen), Morgan Smith (Harry or Larry), Jonathan Makepeace (Kid)

‘What Next? must be seen to be appreciated fully. On Friday night the opera had its New York stage premiere at the Miller Theater, a production directed by Christopher Alden, with Jeffrey Milarsky conducting a terrific cast and the excellent 38-piece Axiom ensemble. In this imaginative staging and gripping performance What Next? emerges as a theatrically dynamic and, finally, quite poignant music drama.’ (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times)

‘Not only is What Next?—by the evidence of Christopher Alden’s light-footed production, and the performance of the assembled cast and of the Juilliard School’s superb Axiom ensemble—actually funny, but it offers some of Mr. Carter’s loveliest and most gracious music. Comparisons to the opera buffas of Mozart would not be inappropriate.’ (Russell Platt, New York Observer)


Austrian première: Vienna (Neue Oper at the Kammeroper), 3 December 2008        

                                                                                                                                                                              
 
Christa Ratzenböck, Anna Clare-Hauf, Marco Di Sapia and Jennifer Davison   Camillo dell’Antonio, Davison, Ratzenböck, Michael Zabsky and Clare-Hauf
   

conducted by Walter Kobéra, directed by Johannes Erath 
cast: Jennifer Davison (Rose), Christa Ratzenböck (Mama), Anna Clare-Hauf (Stella), Camillo dell’Antonio (Zen), Marco Di Sapia (Harry or Larry), Michael Zabsky (Kid)