
A Prayer for Owen Meany
THE OPERA
An opera based on the novel by John Irving
Music and Libretto by Luna Pearl Woolf
Currently in workshop - Act I of the libretto has been commissioned by Musique 3 Femmes
​
A rollicking trip through Irving’s most beloved and operatic novel. By turns profound, absurd, irreverent and mesmerizing, the story of Owen Meany is an enigma of fate, faith, friendship, and identity. Translated into more than thirty-five languages, A Prayer for Owen Meany is Canadian-American Author John Irving’s all-time best-selling novel, in every language.
Following John Wheelwright, his friend “THE VOICE” Owen, and fiery cousin Hester, the opera interweaves the novel’s themes and events, escalating to the climatic episode that reveals the miracle of Owen’s faith and power. John is left “doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice,” and to endlessly feel the impact of Owen’s overwhelming belief.
​
Two eleven-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying.
​
“Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic…. Quite stunning.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
“John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller.” New York Times Book Review -Bookshelf.com
​
Cast of 12, teen choir, small orchestra
Two acts - Act 1 libretto text available for potential collaborators. Please contact us.



Act 1 Libretto - full version
Luna Pearl Woolf

Photo by szetoshoots
Award-winning composer Luna Pearl Woolf has long used her evocative voice to advocate for social and political change. Her work has been praised as “brilliant … profoundly moving” (Opera Going Toronto) for its “psychological nuances and emotional depth” (NY Times). Her dramatic works are championed by major opera houses and international performing artists.
​
Woolf’s oratorio Number Our Days, with concept and libretto by David Van Taylor, was commissioned and premiered by PAC NYC in its inaugural 2023-2024 season, receiving a thunderous response: “extraordinary, completely original…new and electrifying,” “death-affirming, life-inciting,” “elegiac, funny, haunting…poetic, and utterly unique.”
Canada’s CBC Music named the JUNO award-nominated recording Vagues et Ombres including Woolf’s 2022 work, Contact, as their #1 Classical Album of the year; and her 2021 composer-portrait album, LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood (Pentatone Oxingale Series) was nominated for a GRAMMY Award.
Woolf’s opera Jacqueline, about legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, commissioned and premiered by Tapestry Opera, was hailed as an “extraordinary piece, one that deserves an unquestioned place in the 21st-century canon” (The Globe and Mail). Its 2020 premiere garnered five nominations and a win in Toronto’s prestigious Dora Awards.
Woolf mentors new opera creators in her work with Montreal’s Musique 3 Femmes, and teaches about the intersection of text and music at institutions such as the National Theater School of Canada and McGill University. She is co-founder of Oxingale Productions, a ground-breaking record label and music publisher supporting new music by lyrical and innovative contemporary composers.
A dual Canadian-American citizen, Woolf was born Western Massachusetts and lives in Montréal, Quebec.
John Irving

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942.
His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times, winning in 1980 for The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for In One Person.
Internationally renowned, his books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. A Prayer for Owen Meany is his best-selling novel, in every language.
John Irving is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. He lives in Toronto.
Photo by Derek O'Donnell