John Adams: Girls of the Golden West

Girls of the Golden West is John Adams’ eighth music theatre work released by Nonesuch Records. Adams’ stage works are among the most performed contemporary operas of our time and include Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, and Doctor Atomic. Girls of the Golden West is a California opera, telling the story of the Gold Rush not through familiar time-worn myth, but in the words and deeds of real people: in the words of Mark Twain, “the strangest population, the finest population … who ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.” Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars drew from original sources from the Gold Rush era - letters, journals, newspaper articles, and familiar song lyrics - to create the libretto. The composer leads the LA Phil in this recording made in Disney Hall.