WASHINGTON (AFP) - US composer Philip Glass is to write a show for the New York City Opera based on a fictional story about the final months of the life of late American film producer Walt Disney, the opera announced.
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The production will open the 2012-2013 season and will honor the 75th birthday of Glass, one of the US's best-known contemporary classical composers.
"The story of the last days of Walt Disney, American icon and creator of perhaps the most pervasive fantasy world on our planet, is surprisingly gripping and at times disturbing," Glass was quoted in the statement as saying.
The music will be based on the novel The Perfect American, which imagines the last months of Disney, who died in 1966. The novel relies on testimony from an Austrian cartoonist Wilhelm Dantine who worked with Disney in the 1940s and 50s.
The reins of New York's opera are to be taken by Gerard Mortimer, current head of the Paris opera, in 2009-2010.
"I am looking forward to beginning these collaborations with Gerard Mortier at the New York City Opera," added Glass.
