The Boston Modern Orchestra Project produced a concert version of the opera, but with costumes and projections, in 2019. The libretto appeared as part of a collection of Fenton's librettos, The Love Bomb and Other Musical Pieces by Faber and Faber in 2003. The opera was published by Edition Peters. Heather Buck appeared in the title role, and Peter Strummer as Rashid. The complete opera was premiered on October 31, 2004, at the New York City Opera, directed by Mark Lamos, and conducted by George Manahan, with stage design by Riccardo Hernandez. The world premiere was planned for 2001, but was postponed after the September 11 attacks. Įxcerpts from the opera were performed at the New York Cooper Union on May 2, 2000, by the New York City Opera. Wuorinen composed the opera in two acts, including musical quotes and 'musical puns', to emphasize Rushdie's wordplay. He created a number opera, reducing the characters and adding to its political meaning.

Fenton had translated Verdi librettos for the English National Opera, but Haroun was his first libretto. He found James Fenton to write him a libretto. Charles Wuorinen was attracted by both the plot, and the circumstances of the story's writing, admiring the absence of self-pity. It was Rushdie's first book after he had to hide because of a fatwa call for his death.

Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a short novel for his son Zafar, then aged eleven.

It was premiered at the New York City Opera in 2004. But he never suspected how much.Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an opera in two acts by American composer Charles Wuorinen, based on the children's novel of the same name by Salman Rushdie, with a libretto by James Fenton. (Maybe the sadness of the city finally crept in through their windows.) The day Soraya stopped singing, in the middle of a line, as if someone had thrown a switch, Haroun guessed there was trouble brewing. To his wife, Soraya, Rashid was for many years as loving a husband as anyone could wish for, and during these years Haroun grew up in a home in which, instead of misery and frowns, he had his father’s ready laughter and his mother’s sweet voice raised in song. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. “And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that looked like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by the name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, short and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames.

Haroun and the sea of stories