The Met’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ Reframes Ancient Tragedy Through the Lens of Propaganda John Adams’s opera sizzles and then loses steam in Elkhanah Pulitzer’s 1930s-set production.

On the page, John Adams’s opera “Antony and Cleopatra” is a pretty straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. But on the stage, it is something else entirely.

John Adams has been called America's greatest living composer. His adaptation of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" opens at the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, next week.

John Adams’s version of “Antony and Cleopatra” arrived at the Met on Monday at a time when new and recent pieces are frequently on offer, a shock for an art form in which the standard ...