A Harvey Weinstein opera is officially in the works

28 June 2021, 10:48

There’s soon to be an opera about the New York City trial of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.

An opera about the Manhattan trial of shamed Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is in production in Northern Ireland and may soon be arriving in New York City.

“There are conversations about taking it somewhere off the beaten track in New York, but it is very early days still,” director Conor Mitchell, who also wrote the music, told The New York Post. “I think New York City would be its natural home.”

The Trial of Harvey Weinstein: An Opera is being staged by Belfast Ensemble, with rehearsals slated to begin in September.

Mitchell’s libretto will include verbatim testimonies from the six women who spoke against Weinstein during his 2020 trial in New York City.

“Picture six sopranos on stage with a huge amount of multi-media,” the director said. “This is about taking the words – fragments of the statements, without creating named characters, or representing a person on stage. It’s about the text becoming music.”

Last year, the producer was convicted of rape and sexual assault, and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Mitchell says the opera is no typical courtroom drama, and there will be no male actor playing Weinstein.

“In a way, I don’t care about him. I care about the effect of his actions on other people,” Mitchell said of Weinstein. “The ability of music to express that. One of the main arguments of the piece is ‘Where can music express what is not said here?’

“It’s not a representation of court case, but a piece of art that responds to [the women’s] statements. It’s not a physical recreation of events,” he added. “I think one of the big theatrical experiments is what happens when Harvey Weinstein’s self-impact statement is sung by the women who are impacted by his behaviour.”

The opera director has been attempting to gain consent of the victims. Hayley Gripp, who accused Weinstein of attempted rape, told The Post she “100 percent would see this”.

“As a survivor of Harvey Weinstein, I would want to both prepare myself for more potential trauma and make a formal opinion on the production based on facts.”

Lawyer Gloria Allred, who represented three of the women during the trial, is also on board with the opera as long as “they do obtain the consent of the victims whom they plan to portray”.

Weinstein’s lawyer told The Post, however, that the production may have to include “a second act based on my client’s appeal as to whether his trial was a fair one”.

The opera world hasn’t been short of productions based on current events. A opera about the life of American model Anna Nicole Smith had its premiere at the Royal Opera House in 2011. In 2019, the English National Opera staged composer Iain Bell’s new opera Jack the Ripper, which told the female victims’ real-life stories. There’s also Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, based on the political work and life of Mahatma Gandhi, and John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon in China, which has been performed throughout the US and Europe.

Director Conor Mitchell hopes to take his own politicised opera to Belfast International Arts Festival in October 2021.