Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Adoration Makes GRAMMY History with Best Opera Nomination

The electroacoustic opera from the Pulitzer-finalist composer, praised for its potent sonic landscape, tackles the timely collision of media distortion, racism, and grief.

The world premiere recording of composer Mary Kouyoumdjian’s electroacoustic chamber opera, Adoration, has been nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Opera Recording. This honor is a significant historic milestone, marking the first time in history that an opera by an Armenian composer has been nominated in the category. The nomination is a major validation for the work and for Kouyoumdjian, who herself was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Adoration is an adaptation of the 2008 film of the same name by acclaimed Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan. With a taut, “exemplary” libretto by Royce Vavrek, the opera confronts the volatile intersection of grief, racism, and media distortion in the digital age. The narrative centers on Simon, an orphaned high school student, who is encouraged by a teacher to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as part of a dramatic writing exercise, claiming the perpetrators were his parents. When this fabricated story goes viral, the opera charts the ensuing hysteria and suspicion, using the community’s reaction to highlight the deep-seated challenges of intolerance. The work’s dramatic architecture powerfully juxtaposes this fictional online narrative against a private, real story of family strife and rejection, until a final, shocking revelation forces them together.

Kouyoumdjian, a first-generation Armenian-American, is known for her “music as documentary” approach, often blending experimental composition with sounds informed by her family’s history with the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide. For Adoration, this instrumentation is powerfully electroacoustic, weaving the composer’s own electronics with the live performers to create an immersive, unsettling sonic landscape. The score’s ability to maintain tension has been widely praised; BBC Music Magazine noted that it “smartly captures the sense of unease, claustrophobia and grief,” while The Los Angeles Times celebrated its “profound rapture”.

The nominated album boasts exceptional production values, captured live from the opera’s world premiere run at New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival. The project was produced by Beth Morrison Projects, an organization renowned for shepherding artist-led, boundary-pushing vocal works. The recording features the precise leadership of conductor Alan Pierson, leading a cast that includes Miriam Khalil, Omar Najmi, David Adam Moore, and GRAMMY® winner Karim Sulayman. The rich instrumental and choral textures are provided by the Silvana Quartet and the GRAMMY®-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street. The final mix is essential to the opera’s impact, integrating the acoustic performers with the detailed electronic sound design by Daniel Neumann.

Kouyoumdjian has framed the opera’s difficult themes as a creative responsibility, noting her belief that artists are “the speakers of difficult truths.” As a member of a family displaced by multi-generational conflict, she considers her freedom of expression a privilege. She notes that while our world is “fractured over unresolved multi-generational traumas,” stories like Adoration show how “individuals and communities… also find beautiful ways through these divisions”.

Adoration premiered at The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in New York City, with performances held between January 12 and 20, 2024. It received its West Coast premiere at LA Opera in February 2025. The world premiere recording was released digitally by Bright Shiny Things on August 8, 2025, and is available on all major streaming platforms. The GRAMMY® nomination was announced on November 13, 2025.