A Woman in Morocco is an English language opera in two acts composed by Daron Hagen and based on an unperformed play by Barbara Grecki.

The story, set in Tangier in October 1958, concerns the disappearance of an American investigative journalist named Lizzy Holmes working on an exposé of sex trafficking.

[5] Roger Zahab conducted the 10-piece ensemble from the Kentucky Opera Orchestra; the production was directed by Daron Hagen who also designed the sets.

Daron Hagen's seven-episode video blog chronicling the development of the opera from first sketches through the final professional premiere over a four year period offers an intimate and extraordinary glimpse into the composer-librettist-director's process.

[6] While in its college workshop production at the University of Texas, the characters were felt by one graduate student to "come across as flat and largely unsympathetic and so frustratingly spineless that it's hard to care about them,"[7] when the work was given its professional premiere by Kentucky Opera, professional critics noted that "[its] complex score works to underline issues with leitmotifs, musical cues assigned to different characters, and music that never settles or rests.

... Hagen's score feelingly captures the deep contradictions of its story and its characters in music that evokes the beauty and mystery of an exotic landscape, the dangerous and deceptive sensuality of its inhabitants, and the intense violence that is always just beneath the surface of a culture that threatens and terrorizes women.

Becoming involved with the shady inhabitants of her hotel, she discovers the insidious world of those who deal in buying and selling young girls for profit.

"[9] In the Cypress' courtyard, the maître d'hôtel, a charismatic and morally pliable Moroccan in his late 20s named Ahmed sips tea while musing about his life and listening to the radio.

Teddy Forsythe, a British expatriate in his late 40s, owner of the Cypress, ushers in Lizzy Holmes, an American investigative journalist in her early 20s.

A few days later, in the Courtyard, Lizzy accidentally witnesses an abduction (and possible murder) of Asilah's sister Habiba by Teddy and an American businessman named Harry Hopkins.