Feature Article on Yankovskaya's "Juventas" ensemble: THE BODY POLITIC -- Ovid Meets
"On Wednesday the United States Justice Department warned North Carolina that its House Bill 2 violated civil rights laws, stymying efforts to deny transgender people the right to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who has called for Muslims to be banned from entering the country, is now the apparent Republican nominee for president.So an opera about a transgender man moving from Afghanistan to the United States premiering in Boston this weekend could be perceived as a political statement, a critique of the government, a call to action. Composer Leo Hurley and librettist Charles Osborne could have conceived the idea for the opera while flipping through The New York Times the last month. But this opera’s story doesn’t begin on the front page of The Times, and that’s not really what this story is about. . . "