MPR reports that something called Skylark Opera will open the regional premiere of an Our Town opera this Friday at Concordia University.

Please feel free to take some time if you need to read that last paragraph again. Click here if you’d like some time to just meditate on the topic.

Good? Okay.

Ya know, I can’t really think of a time when I’ve watched a production of Our Town and didn’t think to myself “god, I wish this was an opera”. So kudos to Thornton Wilder’s nephew and literary executor, Tappan Wilder, for granting permission. Kudos to Ned Rorem for writing the music. Kudos to Skylark Opera for giving the Twin Cities what it’s been clamoring for for decades. But most of all, kudos to Our Town librettist/Yale professor/poet/winner of the 2008 Douchiest Headshot Grand National Championship, J.D. McClatchy. Why does McClatchy get the most kudos from FringeFamous? Because this is what he said about condensing the play to get the opera running time under two hours:

“My job as a librettist in making that adaptation is to first of all take all of these beautiful little kittens, put them in a burlap bag and drop it over the bridge.”

FringeFamous will always side with the killing of kittens. Always…even if it means having to approve of an Our Town opera written by a Yale asshat who gets his headshots taken in front of the set from Mary Poppins.