Join us on Zoom for a conversation between Adam Guettel and Adam Gopnik and a musical performance by Elena Shaddow. Presented by Library of America.
Elizabeth Spencer’s The Light in the Piazza is an exceptionally beautiful and memorable work in the literature of Americans abroad—in this case in Florence, aglow in summer light, shadowed by a family secret. Her 1960 novella inspired in turn a great twenty-first century American musical, the Tony Award-winning adaptation by acclaimed composer Adam Guettel and playwright Craig Lucas.
To honor Spencer’s centenary and the new Library of America collection of her novels and stories, Guettel joins New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author Adam Gopnik for a conversation about reimagining Spencer’s dark comic masterpiece for the musical stage. Elena Shaddow, who played the lead role of Clara in the show’s national tour, performs.