Follow the creation of the San Francisco Opera’s celebrated production of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, composed by Stewart Wallace with a libretto by best-selling novelist Amy Tan. Based on Tan’s book of the same name, the opera is an ambitious, cross-cultural tour de force that brings together artists from China and the U.S. to tell the deeply moving story inspired by Tan’s own family history. As in her earlier novels The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, author Tan uses elements of her own life in The Bonesetter’s Daughter to explore the immigrant experience, the difficult but unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters, and the ways in which both love and history can be lost in translation. The film captures the creative and technical challenges of mounting a new work, one with high emotional and artistic stakes. For Tan, the opera gives the ghosts of her past a voice and redeems her family’s painful sacrifices.
- KAKM: Monday, 5/7 at 8:00pm
