Gilead in the Rocky Mountains: Banff Centre Presents World Premiere of Chamber Arrangement of The Handmaid’s Tale Opera
By
Banff Centre Communications
Posted on
July 15, 2025
Illustration by Shannon Fidler, Banff Centre
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian classic continues to resonate, with a new iteration of the story appearing at Alberta’s Banff Centre on July 26, 2025 in a chamber arrangement by Brooklyn, N.Y.-based composer Dan Schlosberg commissioned by Banff Centre.
BANFF, AB, July 16, 2025 – Four decades after its first publication, Margaret Atwood’s chillingly relevant The Handmaid’s Tale continues to evolve into new form: from a novel to an acclaimed TV show, to an opera by composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley. Now, a new chamber music arrangement by Dan Schlosberg of that opera will receive its world premiere at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity on Saturday, July 26, 2025, at 8 p.m. in the Jenny Belzberg Theatre at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Set in the year 2195, the opera begins with the sudden discovery of a box of audio cassettes dating back to the early 21st century. The tapes reveal the secret diary of an anonymous woman who appears to have escaped from her role as an involuntary, so-called Handmaid, in the theocratic dictatorship of the republic Gilead—formerly The United States—around the year 2006. We never learn the Handmaid’s real name, only her assigned name of service: Offred.
Commissioned by Banff Centre, the new arrangement by Dan Schlosberg reimagines Ruders and Bentley’s opera for an intimate yet powerful chamber orchestra. Schlosberg, based in Brooklyn, New York, has been praised for his adaptations of operas like Carmen and Madama Butterfly as “fresh, urgent and immediate… with an avant-garde spirit and an eye toward the issues of our time” by The New York Times. Under Schlosberg’s musical invention, this production presents Atwood’s story at a time of unprecedented significance.
After an acclaimed workshop at Banff Centre in 2024, this full production is a marquee event of the 2025 Banff Centre Summer Arts Festival, featuring an all-female creative team including conductor Kamna Gupta, director Brenna Corner, and assistant director Amanda Testini. It also features set design by Gillian Gallow, lighting by Sophie Tang, costumes by Jessica Oostergo, projections by S. Katy Tucker, and fight and intimacy coordination by Anastasia St. Amand.
This is a dream team to bring striking new life to this story, which only feels more visceral and urgent with each passing year. Kamna, Brenna, Gillian, Sophie, Jessica, Katy, and Anastasia are all exceptional in their craft, and the result is eerie, moving, and undeniably powerful. In this new chamber production, my hope is that this opera will reach even more audiences across Canada and beyond.
Amiel Gladstone, Director, Theatre Arts at Banff Centre
Fulfilling Banff Centre’s mission as a post-secondary institution dedicated to training and education opportunities in arts, leadership, and mountain culture, this production is the culmination of a month-long residency program Interplay, celebrating the convergence of opera and chamber music. A collaboration between Banff Centre’s Theatre Arts and Music departments, Interplay offers early-career opera, music, and theatre professionals the unique opportunity to work on a fully produced opera alongside a world-class creative team.
After 11 years as Artistic Director, Opera at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, this production will be Joel Ivany’s final project in this role. For Ivany—founder and first artistic director of Toronto’s Against the Grain Theatre and current Artistic Director of Edmonton Opera—The Handmaid’s Tale represents not only a story for the current moment, but his legacy in bringing opera training at Banff Centre into the 21st century.
As I reflect on my tenure at Banff Centre, I think about helping foster a collaborative and innovative space for emerging artists in opera and music. I’m proud to have reimagined traditional practices and to have supported building a community where curiosity and creativity could thrive.
Joel Ivany, Artistic Director, Opera at Banff Centre
The Handmaid’s Tale
Jenny Belzberg Theatre at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Banff
July 26, 2025
7:30 p.m. $45 -$75
Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes
Tickets are available at banffcentre.ca or 403.762.6301.
For photos, information, or interview requests, please contact:
Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca
About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus - artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences - to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca
About Dan Schlosberg
Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, and conductor Daniel Schlosberg’s music has been performed by the Dover Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Nashville and Albany Symphonies, at Carnegie Hall, (le) poisson rouge, Royal Albert Hall, Beijing Modern Music Festival, and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and has also been featured in the New York Times and WNYC’s Soundcheck. Dan has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards. He has composed for and music directed at the Soho Repertory Theater, Public Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Playwrights Horizons. Daniel is the Music Director of Heartbeat Opera, for which his radical re-orchestrations of classic operas have been praised by the Wall Street Journal as “ingenious.” In addition to collaborations with Angel Blue, Ariana DeBose, Ben Stiller, Tony Kushner, Anthony McGill, and the Imani Winds, Schlosberg was a pianist on the Grammy-winning soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and a featured soloist in Only an Octave Apart with the New York Philharmonic. danschlosberg.com