A feature by G.C. Waldrep

I met Christopher Cerrone in 2015 at the MacDowell Colony. Cerrone’s innovative opera Invisible Cities had premiered only a short time before, in 2013, with the happy result, for him, of being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music the following year. I was fascinated with Cerrone’s work: the way it partook of the legacies of both Romanticism and serialism and, above all, Cerrone’s facility in setting English texts. As a trained singer who later became a poet, I know all too well how hard it is to set English text effectively. That Cerrone can do it, effectively—he can even make it seem effortless—made him and his work stand out to me, even among the other musical visitors at MacDowell. . .