Glory Denied Program - Annapolis Opera

There are so many compelling stories of the
human condition just waiting to be told, and
one of them has made its way from life to
book to stage. Glory Denied takes us back
to a dark time in our history as it recalls the
collective national and familial upheavals
of that tumultuous era. It is a story about
war, yes, but also about time and loss. It
is a story about family and the devastation
wrought on the home front, as well as in
faraway places of mortal combat.
As Allan Kozinn of the New York Times described it, “How is this for
a story with operatic potential? A prisoner of war held for nearly
a decade returns home to find that his wife has moved on, his
nation has changed beyond recognition, and he is unable to find
his bearings in the society he fought to defend. It is Monteverdi’s
“Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria” in reverse: the story of the returning
warrior, but in this thoroughly modern version, everything has gone
wrong, and redemption is out of reach.”
Is redemption out of reach in this tale? Although set in the 1970s,
the questions engendered by this story are timeless and important.
Wars have not ceased and, as Tolkien wrote long ago, “We all long
for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at
its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still
soaked with the sense of exile.”
Rev. Dr. Carletta Allen
President
A Message from
the President
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