Name: An Evening with The Metropolitan Opera & Librettist Gene Scheer
Start: 2026-02-10T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-02-10T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Congregation Beth Elohim

An Evening with The Metropolitan Opera & Librettist Gene Scheer

Community Bookstore, The Met Opera, & CBE present a conversation with Gene Scheer, librettist of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
About this Event

This event is co-presented by Community Bookstore, , and . It will take place in Congregation Beth Elohim's ballroom, at 274 Garfield Pl.

Due to overwhelming demand, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay returns to the Metropolitan Opera this February for four performances. Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Chabon, join us for this unique event to hear directly from the opera's librettist, Gene Scheer, who grappled with the 600-page book and transformed it into 40 pages of lyrics. Gene will share the process of adapting fiction for the operatic voice, how characters in the novel were reimagined for the stage, and the creative process behind mounting this epic story at the Metropolitan Opera, and will be joined in conversation by Anna Solomon. Books will be available for purchase.

Gene Scheer is the celebrated librettist behind some of the most powerful new operas of our time. He’s best known for collaborations with Jake Heggie (Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, It’s a Wonderful Life, Intelligence), as well as works with Mason Bates, Jennifer Higdon, Joby Talbot, and Tobias Picker. In 2025, his libretti take center stage at the Metropolitan Opera – with the Met premiere of Moby-Dick in the spring, followed by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which opens the Met’s 2025/26 season in a new Bartlett Sher production conducted by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Anna Solomon is the author of three acclaimed novels—The Book of V., Leaving Lucy Pear, and The Little Bride—and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, One Story, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Coeditor with Eleanor Henderson of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers, Anna has been editing and coaching writers for two decades and teaches in the MFA programs at Warren Wilson and Brooklyn College. She is a longtime fan of Kavalier & Clay.