The Des Moines Metro Opera has announced they will be hosting the world premiere of the new opera A Thousand Acres next July, and in addition to the new opera the company has received a $1.5 million leadership gift from Linda and Tom Koehn in anticipation of the Company’s upcoming 50th anniversary campaign.
A Thousand Acres features a reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear on an Iowa farm in the 1970’s, and is based off of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and will be a centerpiece of DMMO’s 50th Anniversary Season in 2022.
Linda Koehn was a past president of the Des Moines Metro Opera Board, and was a 2020 recipient of Opera America’s National Opera Trustee Recognition Award. The donation also creates the Linda Koehn General and Artistic Director, currently held by Michael Egel.
To learn more about the opera and the donation, click below.