Travis Preston American Mother premiered to powerful acclaim on May 31, 2025, at Theater Hagen, and quickly established itself as one of the most emotionally charged and artistically daring operatic works in recent memory. Audiences and critics alike hailed it as a rare convergence of bold storytelling, powerful performance, and musical innovation. From the very first bars of Charlotte Bray’s haunting score, it was clear that under the direction of Travis Preston, this opera would not merely recount a tragic chapter in modern history, it would immerse its audience in a raw and unflinching emotional journey exploring grief, confrontation, and the elusive possibility of forgiveness.
The opera tells the story of Diane Foley, whose son, American journalist James Foley, was brutally executed by ISIS in 2014, in one of the most widely viewed and horrifying videos of the modern era. Years later, she met with one of his captors, Alexanda Kotey, inside a U.S. prison. This story of unimaginable loss and fragile reconciliation was adapted into a book by Colum McCann and Diane Foley and now finds powerful new life in operatic form. Travis Preston, a director renowned for his immersive and psychologically resonant stagecraft, was the ideal artist to bring this complex narrative to the operatic stage.
Travis Preston brings to American Mother a minimalist but deeply potent visual style. Critics from Der Opernfreund praised his ability to maintain “piercing, extremely concentrated intensity” throughout the 85-minute opera. With very few prospects, a table, two chairs, and sparse lighting, Travis Preston crafts a visual world that keeps the focus locked on the characters and their emotional landscapes. The stage, designed by Christopher Barreca, remains intentionally uncluttered. Shadows stretch across a stark, sloped platform, leaving room for silence and stillness to take center stage.
This design choice complements the story’s intimacy. With a script that unfolds almost entirely in the claustrophobic confines of a prison visiting room, Travis Preston refuses to distract. Instead, he allows small gestures, brief pauses, and silences to generate the kind of psychological tension more often found in film or tightly wound drama. The opera’s emotional stakes are magnified, not diluted, by this restraint. The audience is left to confront the same questions Diane Foley must ask herself: Can empathy exist without absolution? Can humanity be found in someone responsible for inhuman acts?
The reaction to the premiere was immediate and passionate. Pedro Obiera of Die Deutsche Bühne wrote of “long-lasting applause after a deeply moving performance,” and praised Travis Preston for a staging that brought powerful clarity to a complex narrative. Following one performance, Diane Foley, Charlotte Bray, and Colum McCann addressed the audience, adding further gravity to a production already rich in meaning.
The applause was not merely for technical excellence, it was a response to the emotional depth the production achieved. Preston has an uncanny ability to bring out performances that go beyond acting, tapping into the lived emotional truths of his characters. He doesn't force catharsis; he draws it out slowly, methodically, until it becomes inevitable. Travis Preston American Mother doesn’t overwhelm; it lingers. And in doing so, it forces reflection that lasts far beyond the final curtain.
The ensemble assembled under Preston’s direction is nothing short of exceptional. Katharine Goeldner, portraying Diane Foley, delivers a performance of staggering depth. With what Online Musik Magazin described as a “room-filling, slightly dark voice,” she brings every layer of Foley’s inner turmoil, grief, anger, resolve, doubt, to visceral life. Her physical stillness at moments of tension and explosive vocal expression at moments of emotional breaking are guided masterfully by Preston’s direction.
Opposite her, Timothy Connor plays Alexanda Kotey with a baritone that initially conceals emotion but gradually reveals a fractured soul behind the stoicism. He is not absolved. He is not reimagined as a victim. Yet through Preston’s direction, Kotey is humanized, not to erase his guilt but to suggest that understanding is not synonymous with excusing.
Roman Payer, with a lyrical tenor, appears as the murdered James Foley in abstracted visions, at first distant and spectral, eventually more emotionally present, in a transformation that Preston stages with subtle brilliance. Angela Davis, in a brief but affecting role as Kotey’s mother, becomes a symbol of the pain shared across enemy lines. Dong-Won Seo’s portrayal of the hate-filled prison guard provides necessary tension, anchoring the narrative in a reality unwilling to yield to forgiveness.
Joseph Trafton’s direction of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Hagen further enhances Preston’s vision. Charlotte Bray’s score doesn’t offer grand arias or traditional leitmotifs. Instead, it hums with tension, creating soundscapes that shimmer, fracture, and collide in tandem with the drama. Trafton brings out the best in this complex composition, its melodic fragments, ambient textures, and sudden bursts of orchestral force become an emotional extension of the characters on stage.
Preston understands this language fluently. His staging allows the music to breathe, to shape the narrative without overwhelming it. He does not “illustrate” the music with the action; instead, he lets them exist in dialogue. When James Foley first appears in his iconic orange coat—visually referencing the footage of his final moments—he is slowly lowered from the fly loft, accompanied by a fragile, ascending musical line. It's a moment that chills, not because it is graphic, but because it so precisely captures the weight of memory.
Though based on a singular, deeply personal experience, the themes of American Mother are global. Travis Preston understands this, and his direction avoids overt national symbols or regional specificity. The story becomes one of shared humanity: the pain of mothers on either side of a conflict, the search for meaning after violence, and the impossibility of neat moral resolution. He balances historical specificity with emotional generality, making American Mother as resonant for audiences in Germany as it would be in America, Syria, or anywhere else where violence has left scars.
As Der Opernfreund notes, the production has "the potential to be performed at other theaters, not only because of its sociopolitical relevance." In Preston’s hands, American Mother becomes a living conversation, not a frozen historical reenactment. The question it asks -how do we go on living with unhealed wounds? —is one every audience member carries with them long after the lights dim.
What is perhaps most impressive about Travis Preston’s approach is his refusal to sentimentalize. The opera never dips into cheap catharsis or emotional manipulation. When Diane Foley and Alexanda Kotey finally shake hands at the end, the moment is devastating not because it resolves anything, but because it doesn’t. The act is not redemptive. It is not dramatic. It is human—and therefore unbearably difficult.
Charlotte Bray’s music in this moment is tentative, unresolved. McCann’s libretto offers no declarations. Preston’s direction ensures no gestures are exaggerated. And yet, the moment stings. It holds all the weight of the opera’s central question: Can we acknowledge another’s humanity without betraying the dead?
Preston’s work with American Mother signals a potential turning point for the genre. In a time when contemporary opera often struggles to find footing between musical experimentation and emotional resonance, Travis Preston proves that both can coexist. He doesn’t shy away from the complexity he embraces it. And in doing so, he ensures that opera remains not only artistically vital but also socially urgent.
His staging may influence a new generation of directors seeking to grapple with modern material in operatic form. American Mother doesn’t rely on the mythical or the historical—it uses the present. The recognizable. The traumatic. And yet, it elevates those experiences into something poetic and transcendent, without ever letting the audience forget real life beneath the art.
In American Mother, Travis Preston has created more than a production—he has created a moment. A moment where opera becomes an act of witness, of compassion, of reckoning. The story it tells may be rooted in one family's tragedy, but its message is for us all.
Opera has always been about the extremes of the human experience. Love, death, betrayal, ecstasy. But Travis Preston shows us that opera can also be about the quieter extremities, the impossible choices, the silent griefs, the tentative gestures toward forgiveness.
As critics and audiences continue to reflect on the premiere, one thing is certain: Travis Preston’s American Mother will echo throughout the opera world for years to come. It challenges, it devastates, and most importantly, it matters. In the realm of contemporary opera, that may be the rarest achievement of all.
