Opera Company in virgin territory with new work on Mormon sect

Usually the home of the tried, true and traditional, the Opera Company of Philadelphia will announce Thursday that it is commissioning a new work from a composer who is as up-to-the-minute as classical music gets - Nico Muhly.

The 29-year-old former assistant to Philip Glass will write a new work titled Dark Sisters, to be presented in June 2012 as part of the Opera Company's series at the smaller-scale Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center.

Dark Sisters' subject is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical Mormon splinter group that practices polygamy and is based in remote parts of the American West. The libretto by Stephen Karam (author of the Off-Broadway hit Speech & Debate) is partly inspired by detailed diaries kept by women living in such places, as well as the periodic law-enforcement raids, most recently in Eldorado, Texas, in 2008.

"It's an incredibly American story to me. It looks so extreme - people, mainly women, living in a very unforgiving landscape. It has always fascinated me . . . in the way it's related to basic questions of civil rights," says Muhly, who grew up in rural Vermont near the birthplace of Mormonism's cofounder, Joseph Smith. "There's a long history of government action and inaction. There's a complicated morality. You can't sum it up."

The adventurous nature of the commission - in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theatre Group, which will premiere the opera in New York City in November 2011 - is no fluke.

"It's emblematic of everything we've been working on at Opera Company of Philadelphia," said executive director David Devan. "We're tried to expand people's thinking about what opera can be."

The announcement also comes at a time of dramatically increased new-opera activity in Philadelphia: the Academy of Vocal Arts premieres The Scarlet Letter, by Philadelphia composer Margaret Garwood, on Nov. 19, while Center City Opera holds a series of events (including a Nov. 5 panel at Philadelphia's Knapp Gallery) leading up to the April 2011 premiere of Danse Russe by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec.