[1] An adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, the libretto was written by John Adams with consultation by Elkhanah Pulitzer and Lucia Scheckner with text from Shakespeare's play, as well as supplementary passages from Plutarch, Virgil, and other classical texts.
[2] The September 2022 premiere of the work had staging by Elkhanah Pulitzer set around the 1930s, described by critic Zachary Woolfe as "Art Deco elements and slinky gowns ... winking at the glamorous Hollywood adaptations of the Cleopatra story" and a set that "opens and closes like an aperture, with some large structures looming in the back that recall the pyramids.
Bill Morrison has contributed lyrically grainy black-and-white film projections of scenes including a sail on the Nile and a crowd ready to be whipped into frenzy by a dictator.
"[3] Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times wrote that the opera's libretto "on first hearing can sound like an endless flow of parlando singing, more ongoing narration than operatic musing", but praised the "ever churning, ever changing, ever exploring nuance" of the orchestration, which he wrote "reveals much about the characters in the opera ... their inner essence and, to great extent, their outer aspects.
Alex Ross praised "Adams's practiced naturalism" in setting source text to music, and stated that "the orchestra seethes underneath, delivering brief, explosive outbursts that variously suggest Cleopatra's tantrums, Antony's bouts of self-pity, and the nervous reactions of their underlings.