Seattle‘A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by composer Sheila Silver and librettist Stephen Kitsakos , which had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera recently, turned out to be more timely than its creators anticipated. Set in modern Afghanistan and based on the 2007 novel by Khaled Hosseini , the opera unfolds against the backdrop of several tumultuous decades of Afghan history, beginning in 1974, five years before the Soviet invasion, and ending in July 2001 with the country firmly in the grip of the Taliban. The story is about two women brutally subjected to Afghanistan’s patriarchal religious tradition, but both the book and the opera were written during the two decades of U.S. military presence in the country, when women were allowed to be educated and hold jobs. As the opera’s first production meetings were under way in 2021, however, the Taliban reasserted control, making the work’s themes immediate rather than historical.

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