This is a second opera informed by gay identity that OTSL had on offer during Pride Month, the other being Wallace and Korie’s Harvey Milk. Rodriguez, is drawn to the doctor, and although it is mutual, Sacks cannot yet “wake up” to such a relationship. The doctor must reckon with not only his own limitations, and his vanity in having been enamored with his own publicity but also must confront his closeted homosexuality. The dynamic of “awakening” also applies to Sacks himself, as his publicly heralded momentary breakthrough reverses course, and the patients revert to their pitiable prior conditions. Podsnap, Sacks experiences success at “awaking” first one, then several patients to “normal” behavior and awareness. Over the initial objections of his superior, Dr. Oliver Sacks proposes treating them with the new drug, L-DOPA. Composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman have created an emotional rollercoaster of an operatic experience with Awakenings, yet another world premiere by the enterprising Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.īased on the compelling true story, in a Bronx hospital, patients with a decades-long sleeping sickness, Encephalitis Lethargica, exist on the fringe of consciousness.
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