Licensing: Grand Rights and Materials Rentals for Abraham in Flames are available through ASCAP. If you are interested in performing the opera, or wish to review a perusal score, please fill out the contact form.

Would You Rather Be Dim and Happy or Knowing and Suffer?

When Abraham in Flames premiered in 2019, its themes of awareness, conscience, responsibility, and creative courage resonated with the ensuing global awakenings around racial justice, gender equity, climate urgency, and the many movements challenging entrenched systems of power. 

In the intervening years, however, another layer of Knowing has emerged. We have been confronted with darker recognitions. The vulnerability of the young and defenseless has become impossible to ignore—from the trafficking and exploitation of children to the bombing of girls’ schools, the destruction of places meant to nurture their growth. 

These realities echo the opera’s deeper warning: that corrupt systems often preserve their collapsing power and moral bankruptcy by sacrificing the future. In such a moment, the metaphor at the heart of the opera—Abraham refusing false idols and surviving the fire—speaks again as a reminder that conscience and courage must be learned early and defended fiercely, and that a single act of conscience can refuse the idols of power and open another path forward.

Abraham in Flames, an opera for girls chorus is a new opera by creator/producer Niloufar Talebi, composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, and director/dramaturg Roy Rallo. The opera is inspired by Talebi's coming of age in Tehran around the iconic poet Ahmad Shamlou who attended her parents' literary salons, the imagery in Shamlou's life and poetry, trials by fire, and the Tree of Life. 

The one-hour program was conceived less as a traditional performance and more as the opportunity for a group of young women to interact with a series of ideas about the creative spirit, the forces that seek to squash it, and the kind of resilience required to deal with adversity. 

Aleksandra Vrebalov (Composer)
Niloufar Talebi (Creator/Librettist)
Roy Rallo (Director/Dramaturg)
Stefano Flavoni (Musical Director)
Heather Carson (Production and Lighting Design)
Christine Crook (Costume Design)
Featuring the Young Women’s Chorus of SF and 
The Living Earth Show
Commissioned, Executive Produced, and Presented by 
Niloufar Talebi Projects
in partnership with the Merola Opera Program
and produced by Cath Brittan

World Premiere: May 9-12, 2019
San Francisco, CA 94110