‘The Galloping Cure,’ Missy Mazzoli’s opera on opioids epidemic, premieres at Edinburgh Festival

EDINBURGH, Scotland — Composer Missy Mazzoli's opera about the opioids epidemic, "The Galloping Cure," premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival. The inspiration for the work came from the deaths of two of Mazzoli's cousins at the age of 25; one overdosed on OxyContin, the other on heroin after becoming addicted to OxyContin.

The opera, set in a fictitious town called Yourtown, uses a carnival merry-go-round as a metaphor for the destructive nature of drug addiction. The charlatan protagonist, Lucky Mack, played by baritone Justin Austin, arrives in the town offering free rides on fiberglass horses to hook residents on drugs. As the town descends further into addiction, Lucky Mack begins charging money for the rides and rents out the hobbyhorses until people go broke.

He demands body parts as payments, which he uses to create more carousel horses. By the end of the performance, the wasted bodies resemble a skid row.

The opera, written by Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, was the first of two launches in a 71-day span for Mazzoli. She became the first woman composer to have a premiere at New York's Metropolitan Opera with "Lincoln in the Bardo" on October 19. Mazzoli and Vavrek consider themselves the Rodgers and Hammerstein of 21st-century American opera, with previous works including "Song from the Uproar" (2012), "Breaking the Waves" (2016), "Proving Up" (2018), and "The Listeners" (2022).

The project received a breakthrough when the creative team's earlier work, "Breaking the Waves," was performed at the Opéra Comique in Paris. A key meeting in Paris led to the green light for "Galloping." The opera was written in collaboration with author Karen Russell, who suggested using Franz Kafka's "A Country Doctor" as a starting point for the story. The final work, a 2-hour, 15-minute composition, features four primary characters and includes haunting visuals using 120 vertical LEDs.