For much of Kao Kalia Yang’s life, the world of opera felt very far away.
“I grew up poor on the East Side of St. Paul,” Yang said. “I came here as a refugee kid. So, the world of opera is not a very accessible world to me. I’d gone to a few operas when I was in graduate school in New York City, but then it was to all the glitz and the glam. I didn’t see space for myself.”
To Yang, those New York City operas, performed in Italian, felt like “another world.” Now, almost two decades later, Yang will have the opportunity to see an opera that is very much her world—an adaptation of her award-winning memoir, The Song Poet, premieres Thursday at the Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis.
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