Stephen McNeff’s latest opera, A Star Next to the Moon, receives its world premiere at Guildhall School. Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the piece explores how love and belonging struggle under a tyrannical regime.

Juan Preciado, as a deathbed promise to his mother, sets out to find his estranged father, Pedro Páramo. But the town of his birth, Comala, is not as he expected. Strange and disturbing encounters with the mysterious inhabitants start to build a picture of a town drowning in its own past.

The details of how Pedro Páramo ruthlessly rose to power as a cruel and tyrannical landowner begin to emerge. Pedro’s one glimpse of humanity is Susana, the young woman he has loved since childhood. However, her decline into sickness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of malice.

Image Guildhall School of Music

Martin Lloyd-Evans director
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Anna Reid designer
Anthony Doran lighting designer
Jonathan Waller fight director
Raniah Al-Sayed intimacy director