LOA Live: A conversation with Adam Guettel and Adam Gopnik
Musical performance by Elena Shaddow and Andrew Resnick

July 14, 2021 — 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, accompanied by Broadway conductor/pianist/music director Andrew Resnick.

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Presented in partnership with the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics & Writers; Centenary College; the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi; Concord Theatricals; MasterVoices; the Mississippi Humanities Council; the New York Festival of Song; and the NYU/Skirball Center