A Star Next to the Moon

A new opera by Stephen McNeff

Mon 26 Feb—Mon 4 Mar 2024 Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Stephen McNeff’s new opera, A Star Next to the Moon

Based on Juan Rulfo’s iconic novel Pedro Páramo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix, the opera explores how love and belonging struggle under the tyranny of entitled despotism.

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 decaying 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 madness and death drive Pedro to despair, and to commit his ultimate act of vengeance.

Creative team

Martin Lloyd-Evans director

Dominic Wheeler conductor

Anna Reid designer

Anthony Doran lighting designer

Further information and tickets on the Barbican website here.

A Star Next to the Moon is generously supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation