John Musta.(On the Beat)(Brief Article)(Interview)

When I look at the opera commissions that are awarded these days--A Streetcar Named Desire, Dead Man Walking, An American Tragedy, etc.--I sometimes wonder whether the American composer has forgotten that there's a genre known as comedy. The talented JOHN MUSTO apparently was thinking along the same lines. When Wolf Trap Opera invited him to compose an opera, he insisted that it be a comedy. The result, Volpone, an "unfaithful adaptation" of the Ben Jonson work, with a libretto by MARK CAMPBELL, opens March 10 for a three-performance run at The Barns at Wolf Trap.

Why Volpone? Why not something more contemporary? "Well," says Musto, "this piece is about greed and lust and deceit and a farcical public trial. You've got loads of that going on now." There was another, more practical reason: ...