The Manchurian Candidate

The 2024–2025 Season opens at the Long Center in November with The Manchurian Candidate, the compelling operatic adaptation of Richard Condon’s 1959 political thriller by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell – the same Pulitzer-Prize-winning team that created Silent Night. Winner of four Austin Critics Table Awards, this complex and gripping story of patriotism, corruption, political ambition, and eleventh-hour self-sacrifice will make its highly anticipated return to the Long Center stage after its 2016 Austin debut.

Mark Diamond, who was last seen in Austin as the love-struck Anthony in Sweeney Todd, stars as the U.S. soldier and war hero caught in a web of political intrigue, Sgt. Raymond Shaw. Unbeknownst to him, at the center of the web is his own mother Eleanor, performed by Metropolitan Opera leading lady Mary Dunlevy in her Austin Opera debut. Also caught in the intrigue is Shaw’s former girlfriend Jocelyn, sung by 2024 GRAMMY nominee soprano Rachel Blaustein in her Austin Opera debut, and her father Senator Johnny Iselin, sung by commanding bass-baritone Kyle Albertson. GRAMMY award-winning tenor Frederick Ballentine makes his company debut as Captain Ben Marco, Shaw’s war buddy who realizes Shaw has been brainwashed into being an unwitting ‘sleeper assassin’. Marco leads the thrilling chase to the opera’s conclusion to prevent the assassination of Shaw’s most high-profile target, a presidential candidate.

Alison Moritz’s award-winning staging brings Sarah and Ernest Butler Music Director Timothy Myers and the Austin Opera Orchestra onto the stage to build the intensity of this dramatic thriller set against the powerfully cinematic backdrop of Greg Emetaz’s visual projections, Vince Herod’s scenic design, and Kathryn Eader’s dramatic lighting.