The opera 'Riders of the Purple Sage' marks an unprecedented collaboration between the work of Zane Grey, celebrated American composer Craig Bohmler, librettist Steven Mark Kohn, and Arizona's 'visual poet laureate,' painter Ed Mell. Now, for the first time, Zane Grey’s work is being adapted for the live stage in the grandest way possible: as an Opera. Over the past century the novel 'Riders of the Purple Sage' has been translated into 20 languages, made into five Hollywood movies, and ranks on the Library of Congress list of 'One Hundred Books that Shaped America'.

Add to the story an outlaw bent on vengeance, young lovers hidden in a desert Eden, rustlers and a stampede, and you have the bedrock of an entire genre. The book's polygamist antagonists played their roles against a 'patriarchy-smashing heroine', the devout Jane Withersteen, creating a clear conflict between two views of religion. When the novel was first published in 1912, 'Riders of the Purple Sage' was met with fascination and criticism for its harsh characterization of Mormons. With his signature mix of action and romance, Grey's books inspired hundreds of Hollywood movies and 'golden era' TV shows, and helped establish a distinctly American art form, the Western. Zane Grey's writing transformed the history of the frontier into the mythic territory of the West. A lone gunman silhouetted against the sky, a rancher fighting to save her land, a stampede, a shoot out, and a feared masked rider. These classic frontier themes were made legendary by author Zane Grey.

Riders of purple sage zane grey