The Voyage

The Voyage is an opera in three acts (plus a prologue and an epilogue) by the American composer Philip Glass. The English/Latin/Spanish libretto was written by David Henry Hwang. The work was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, and first performed there on October 12, 1992 (that date being the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas). The British premiere was in Leeds, England, performed by Leeds Youth Opera, with Johnathon Clift and Mike Williamson as the directors, with Richard Pascoe playing Columbus. Roles Synopsis Glass did not want to create a biographical opera about Columbus, especially in a year when there were countless films, documentaries and other events doing the same job. Instead he opted to make his opera a more general study of exploration – of the oceans, of space and time and of the mind. Columbus remains a central character though, appearing in the second act and the epilogue.