Swimming in the Dark

Opera in Two Acts with Music by Martin Hennessy. Adapted from the novel by Tomasz Jedrowski.

5 principal singers, 4 others doubling, chamber ensemble of Flute, Oboe, Bb Clarinet doubling Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn in F, Trumpet in Bb, Percussion (1 player), Piano & Synthesizer (1 player), String Quintet. Publisher: Maisie Light Music.

The opera is being developed in collaboration with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington, IN. Act One Orchestral Reading, January, 2024, Auer Hall, Indiana University; Act One Workshop, The Studios of Key West, Key West, FL., Act Two Orchestral Reading, scheduled May, 2026 at Jacobs School of Music.

Adapted from the international bestselling novel by Tomasz Jedrowski, and named a top 20 LGBTQ book for 2020 by NPR, The Guardian, O Magazine, Publishers Weekly & the New York Review of Books, Swimming in the Dark is an opera about choice and political freedom set in Poland in 1980. At its center is a story of two young men, Ludwik and Janusz, who meet one summer after graduating from college and bond over their discovery of the American novelist James Baldwin’s seminal work of gay & bisexual literature, Giovanni’s Room. With soaring melodies and a moving libretto, this tale of subversion, entrapment and identity set against the beauty and rapture of the Polish countryside at the rise of the Solidarity movement, is sure to resonate with American audiences.