THE POST OFFICE
Composed by Laura Kaminsky
libretto by Elaine Sexton
Set in a contemporary one-room U.S. Post Office, this 70-minute chamber opera is as relevant today as it is faithful to 1776 America. Postal Workers challenge each other over freedom of expression in the workplace with the ghost of Benjamin Franklin (Postmaster General 1775-78) looking on and fearing the worst for democracy surviving new concepts of truth, freedom of expression, gender equality, and economic disparity.
GIVE NOW TO “THE POST OFFICE”
CREATORS
With “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times), Laura Kaminsky frequently addresses social and political issues in her work with a distinct musical language that is "full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection." (American Record Guide). Her first opera, As One (co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed) is the most produced contemporary opera since its 2014 premiere, with 60+ productions internationally. Other operas: Some Light Emerges and Today It Rains (Campbell & Reed); Hometown to the World (Kimberly Reed); Finding Wright (Andrea Fellows Fineberg); February (co-written with Lisa Moore); Lucidity (David Cote); Upcoming: The Post Office: a chamber opera in poems (Elaine Sexton; Queen City Opera); Time To Act (Crystal Manich; dramaturgy: Amy Hutchison; Pittsburgh, Montana, Santa Barbara Operas and Boston Conservatory); Force of Nature (Fellows Fineberg; Utah Opera); Arboreal (Fry Street Quartet); Vanishing Point (Carpe Diem String Quartet); Threnody...October 2024 (pianist Mackenzie Melemed). Awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit (Zloty Krzyż Zasługi RP) by the President of Poland for exemplary public service/humanitarian work, Kaminsky has been recognized by the NEA, Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress, Opera America, Chamber Music America, and USArtists International, among others. On the faculty at SUNY Purchase and Boston Conservatory/Berklee, Kaminsky is a mentor for Seattle Opera's Creation Lab.
Laura Kaminsky
Composer
Elaine Sexton’s latest collection of poems is Site Specific: New & Selected Poems (Grid Books, 2025). Her four previous books of poetry are: Sleuth (New Issues, 2003), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), and Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015), and Drive (Grid Books, 2022). Her poems, art reviews, book reviews, and works in visual art have appeared in journals and anthologies, textbooks and websites including American Poetry Review, Art in America, Poetry, Ploughshares, O! the Oprah Magazine, and Poetry Daily.
She has written the libretto for THE POST OFFICE, a chamber opera in poems, in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky, commissioned by Queen City Opera and developed by Opera Fusion: New Works/Cincinnati Opera. Her recent iPhone pics have been included in the Carriage Trade gallery’s annual Social Photography exhibition, NYC. An avid book maker and micro-publisher, she is the author of several chapbooks, and has curated site-specific events with accompanying limited-edition chapbooks, and periodicals, among them Hair and 2 Horatio.
She teaches text and image and poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has been guest faculty at New York University and in the graduate writing program at City College (CUNY). She is regularly invited to teach poetry, bookmaking, and art writing at arts and writing programs and centers in the U.S. and abroad, among them Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Arts Workshop International (Assisi). She teaches private workshops in her studio and online. Formerly a senior editor at ARTnews and visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, she is the editor and publisher of the micro press, Em Dash Books.
Elaine Sexton
Librettist
Link to THE POST OFFICE Booklet
DESIGNER
Charles Renfro joined design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 1997 and became a Partner in 2004.
Charles strives to bring his design experience to interdisciplinary performing arts experiences. Charles designed INDECENT SPACES (2023) at the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, a multi–channel performance art and media piece that explores the connections between a location’s meaning, citizenship and identity in the evolving 21st–century American landscape. Charles designed LATE NIGHTS ON AIR (2018) for Jonah Bokaer Choreography, The Joyce Theater, New York, NY, a dance performance that takes on the problem of binaries through depictions of commonplace divisions. Charles designed BE YOUR SELF (2010) for choreographer Garry Stewart, the Australian Dance Theatre, Adelaide, Australia, a production that reframes the relationship between the singular “I” and the body using a woven surface with which dancers interact.
Charles’ role at Diller Scofidio + Renfro is to be involved in performing arts institution projects. He is currently leading the design of multiple interdisciplinary arts centers, including the new home for the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance in Harlem, New York; the Juilliard School, both in Tianjin, China and in New York City; Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA; the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University, Providence, RI; the David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago; and Sarofim Hall, at Rice University’s Visual Arts department in Houston, TX.
Charles’s work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been recognized with multiple awards, including WSJ Magazine’s Innovator Award, AIA New York’s Medal of Honor, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award. Charles is a National Academy of Design Academician and received the 2015 Texas Medal of the Arts Award. In recognition of his design advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, Charles has appeared twice on the Out100 list. He is involved with BOFFO, an organization that supports the work of queer LGBTQ+ BIPOC artists. He has taught at Rice University, Parsons The New School for Design, and Columbia University. He is a faculty member of the School of Visual Arts and is also a trained clarinetist.
Charles Renfro
Scenic & Projection Designer
Ken Shaw, Bass-baritone and Professor at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, as one of the point people behind the origins of the opera, and the Benjamin Franklin in the Cincinnati workshop, writes:
"....the further away from the Opera Fusion workshop we are, the more I recognize the sheer mastery of how so many vital social issues have been afforded their clear, poignant voice in this piece. And how a simple, perhaps even mundane commonality can be a door to the reconciliation of seemingly diametrically opposing points of view."
Libretto excerpt
Audio Excerpt from THE POST OFFICE workshop with Cincinatti Opera, March 22, 2025:
THE POST OFFICE, Scene 3 excerpt, Sarah sings directly to Benjamin Franklin (ghost):
"Words mattered to you.
Decency mattered.
Honesty and humor mattered.
You believed in the common good.
You changed one word,
“sacred,”
to be “self evident,”
as in: We hold these truths,
these truths…. to be
self-evident.
To hold anything “sacred” is
the language of gods, and kings,
of despots (you said),
Not the law.
Here is your legacy
your post office––
your mess."
Information
Duration 70' / no intermission
Commission
Premiere
Roles 5 singers (1 soprano, 1 mezzo-soprano, 1 tenor, 1 baritone, 1 bass-baritone)
Instrumentation Piano