The Snowy Day

Music by Joel Thompson
Libretto by Andrea Davis Pinkney

SNOW BALL

A young boy wakes to find his world magically transformed overnight—blanketed in fresh, glittering snow. Ezra Jack Keats’ 1962 book is a joyful, wonder-filled adventure through the city streets that became an equally delightful opera: the tale of Peter’s first snow day on his own.

In 2016, Andrea Davis Pinkney’s libretto started as an homage to that book—a poem entitled A Poem for Peter. Then composer Joel Thompson, who had already gained attention for his choral work Seven Last of the Unarmed, brought accessibility and emotionally rich musical language to this children’s opera.

The Snowy Day had its world premiere in 2018, produced by Detroit Opera (then Michigan Opera Theatre), following a long trajectory of a book that featured a Black child as its hero at a time when such representation in children’s literature was rare.