New Opera LILI EBE To Preview at Works & Process at the Guggenheim
The October 27 program offers a first look at the groundbreaking new opera ahead of its 2026 U.S. premiere at Santa Fe Opera.
By: A.A. Cristi Sep. 29, 2025
Works & Process at the Guggenheim will present a first look at Lili Elbe, the groundbreaking new opera by composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman, on Monday, October 27, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. in the Peter B. Lewis Theater.
Presented in collaboration with Santa Fe Opera, the evening will feature discussion and live excerpts from the opera, the first full-scale operatic work about a transgender person written for a transgender singer in the title role.
The Works & Process event will include a moderated conversation with Picker, Stollman, director James Robinson, and American Heldenbariton Lucia Lucas, who stars as Lili Elbe. Excerpts will be performed by Lucas and soprano Sylvia D’Eramo, who sings the role of Gerda Wegener.
Lili Elbe will receive its U.S. premiere at Santa Fe Opera in a co-production with Seattle Opera, running August 1–27, 2026. The work had its world premiere at Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland in October 2023, where it was named “Best World Premiere” at the 2024 Oper! Magazine Awards and praised as “an emotionally charged masterpiece” (Voralberger Zeitung).
About the Opera
The opera tells the true story of painter Lili Elbe (1882–1931), one of the first recipients of gender-affirming surgery. At once a love story and a testament to resilience, the opera follows Lili’s transition, her deep but ultimately annulled marriage to fellow painter Gerda Wegener, and her pursuit of motherhood through a final experimental surgery. Unlike the 2015 film The Danish Girl, the opera draws from historical sources, including Elbe’s own writings.
Lili Elbe is Picker’s seventh opera and his second collaboration with Stollman, following Awakenings (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, 2022).
About the Artists
Tobias Picker – GRAMMY Award-winning composer, hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “our finest composer for the Lyric Stage.” His operas have been commissioned and produced by leading houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and LA Opera.
Aryeh Lev Stollman – Novelist and librettist, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for The Far Euphrates. His fiction has been published internationally and his work has appeared in The Yale Review and American Short Fiction.
Lucia Lucas – American Heldenbariton and trailblazing transgender opera singer who made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Tosca. Lucas has appeared on leading stages worldwide.
Sylvia D’Eramo – Acclaimed soprano, performing the role of Gerda Wegener in Lili Elbe.
About Works & Process
For over 35 years, Works & Process at the Guggenheim has championed performing artists and their creative process, offering audiences rare access to works-in-progress through performances, discussions, and residencies. Programs bring together acclaimed and emerging artists from across disciplines and are frequently developed into fully realized productions at major venues worldwide.
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