Premiere of uniquely Montana opera coming to a venue near you.

By Micah Drew, Jordan Hansen and Darrell Ehrlick

Next weekend (well, Friday, but close enough) I’ll be headed downtown in Helena for the spring Art Walk, which is a pretty cool event, hosted by Omertà Arts. It’s from 4-8 p.m. and there will be plenty of stuff to do along the pedestrian mall and throughout downtown.

Artists are matched with businesses, which have longer hours those nights. It’s an awesome thing for everyone in Helena — and takes place three times a year — and I’m eternally grateful to live in a place where community events like this are commonplace.

But that also brings me to an ask — I love things like this, and even more, I love a good story about a community event. So if you’ve got a thing your town loves to do, shoot me an email and let me know about it.

~Jordan Hansen

Fifty years after Montana author Norman Maclean published “A River Runs Through It,” a new opera, commissioned by Opera Montana, is set to come to the stage.

An Wednesday, May 20, the National Sawdust in New York is hosting a preview of the new opera “A River Runs Through It.”

The multi-year effort to adapt the celebrated novella to the operatic stage will culminate in a premiere this fall in Bozeman, but audiences in the Big Apple will get an early look at what is already turning out to be a popular performance.

Due to demand, there will be two preview performances in New York, at 5:30 and 8:00 p.m. later this month.

For the preview, John Maclean, son of Norman and author of Home Waters and other works, will read passages from his father’s book paired with corresponding music from the new opera by composer Zach Redler and librettists Matt Foss and Kelley Rourke.

The world premiere will be in September at the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, with additional October performances in Missoula, where some of the story is set. Montana PBS will be filming the production to air at a later date.

Learn more about the opera, hear an excerpt, and read the synopsis online.

~ Micah Drew

I was a literature major and there were several book-ish jokes we would tell each other. One of them has stuck with me because it’s true: The definition of a classic book is one that everyone agrees is great, but no one has ever read.

There is an entire canon of great literature — and though the books that ascend to that literary pantheon can be found at every bookstore, they may only be read in literature courses in college.

Recently, as I was in one of the truly great bookstores in Montana, A Few Books More in downtown Billings which is an unbelievable paradise of used and rare books, I was talking to several friends. We were discussing folks like Charlie Russell, Will James and Frederic Remington. The topic switched to great western literature and “True Grit” — the novel by Charles Portis which was immortalized on the silver screen by John Wayne as “Rooster Cogburn.”

Sheepishly, I admitted: I have never read it.

At that moment, both my good friend Chris and the store owner found a mass-market paperback and just gave it to me, after I promised I would read.

Good friends recommend books. Great friends buy books.

The story of Mattie Ross, a rich spinster who is said to love only her money and the Presbyterian Church, is one of those book characters in which you wish could have been with longer, and had more stories. Ross hires a grumpy, rugged one-eyed U.S. marshal to help track down the man who killed her father.

The story is a delightful, even if, at times, dated western tale as well told as any. And, if you’re a fan of the West and the mythology surrounding it, this a story that is satisfying and enjoyable, without being more than just a good old western tale. The book doesn’t demand a lot of you, and reads well because of the strong voice Portis develops in the Mattie Ross character.

Another quip from my undergraduate days studying literature. A professor of mine often reminded us: The classics are classics for a reason.

And “True Grit” is a classic.

~ Darrell Ehrlick

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