United States Zach Redler, A River Runs Through It: Soloists, Neill Campbell (piano) / Michael Sakir (conductor). Opera Montana, National Sawdust, Brooklyn, 20.5.2026. (RP)
A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean’s 1976 best-selling novel, sold over a million copies. It was then adapted into an Academy Award-winning film directed by Robert Redford. Opera Montana is now giving it an operatic treatment that was previewed at National Sawdust before its world premiere this September in Bozeman, Montana.
Maclean’s book is a semi-autobiographical account of two brothers, Norman and Paul, sons of a Presbyterian minister who grow up in rural Montana in the 1920s. Fly fishing was tantamount to a religion for the father and his sons, as it was for many Montanans. In the book, it serves as a metaphor for life’s beauty and unpredictability, the latter heightened by the two very different paths in life the brothers trod.
The narrator, Norman, grows into a grounded, disciplined young man who leaves Montana for college. His charismatic younger brother, Paul, a journalist in his hometown, is a rowdier, more fun-loving fellow. The brothers regularly reconnect as adults to fish when Norman returns to Montana to spend the summer with his family. Paul’s life is one long, downward spiral, ending with his murder in Chicago, and Norman grows to understand that while we cannot fully control or save the people we love, we can still love them unconditionally.
The score is by Zach Redler, a musical theater composer whose work has been performed in concert halls, opera houses and theaters around the world. In 2014, the American Theatre Wing awarded him the Jonathan Larson Award. The librettists were Matt Foss, an award-winning playwright, and Kelley Rourke, an equally accomplished librettist, translator and dramaturg. Foss also directs the opera’s premiere production.
A River Runs Through It straddles the divide between opera and musical theater, to the extent that one still exists in the vocal theater sphere. It is a tuneful, lyrical and ear-pleasing score, whose musical and harmonic interest were apparent from the piano reduction performed by Neill Campbell. Equally evident is Redler’s ability to probe the emotional depths of the story through the union of words and music.
Redler says that, at its core, A River Runs Through It is about family, faith and the beauty we all share. He describes the music – a blend of bluegrass, country, jazz, honky-tonk, Copeland and David Maslanka, an American composer known for his deeply expressive and spiritually intense music – as ‘being incredibly accessible for a variety of audiences’. Redler’s goal was to create the breadth and romantic nature of Montana’s natural beauty, as well as the intimacy of a marital feud and the boisterousness of a tin-roofed backwoods bar. From a first hearing, he hit the mark.
In the movie, a young Brad Pitt played Paul, the role Patrick Bessenbacher is performing in the opera. From the excerpts heard at the preview, it doesn’t call upon the tenor’s bravura singing. (For a taste of that, check out him singing ‘Ah, mes amis’ from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment on his website, click here.) Nonetheless, Bessenbacher’s deluxe tenor and demeanor amply captured Paul’s brash charm.
Trevor Martin’s Norman was wise, sympathetic and warm-voiced, extolling the mysteries and science of fly fishing with Bessenbacher’s Paul. As Jessie, his wife, Cristina María Castro voiced her worries over her brother Neal’s errant behavior with sensitivity and compassion, as did Martin’s Norman for Paul. Brian Wallin brought out the humor in Neal who, apart from his drinking, has no time for fly fishing. As Heidi, the woman he met at a bar, Kate Morton’s twangy, down-home voice was as refreshing as a bubbling mountain stream.
John Maclean, the author’s son, narrated the preview, providing the thread that stitched the musical selections into a compelling dramatic whole. His voice rang with authority, compassion and hard-earned wisdom as he spoke of people whom he not only knew but loved. It doesn’t get more authentic than that.
Rick Perdian
Production:
Director – Matt Foss
Libretto – Matt Foss and Kelley Rourke
Video – Kristin Ellert
Cast:
Narrator – John Maclean
Paul – Patrick Bessenbacher
Norman – Trevor Martin
Jessie – Cristina María Castro
Neal – Brian Wallin
Heidi – Kate Morton