Hoppers Wife
Video Designer, Scenic Designer
New York City Opera • 2016 • New York, NY
A noir-inflected chamber opera set in a distorted version of 1950s America, Hopper’s Wife explored fame, isolation, and fantasy through stark staging, dual surface video, and haunting visuals.
“Sean Cawelti provides invariably clever projections...” - Financial Times
“The attractive, minimalist staging, featuring Hopper-inspired designs by Sean Cawelti and lighting by Susan Roth, was nimbly directed by Andreas Mitisek.” - New York Times
Hopper’s Wife is an unconventional chamber opera by Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie that imagines a twisted what-if: what if painter Edward Hopper married Hollywood icon Hedda Hopper? Set in an alternate 1950s reality, the opera unfolds as a dark meditation on loneliness, gender roles, and disillusionment within American mythologies of art and celebrity.
For New York City Opera’s production, Sean Cawelti served as both Projection and Scenic Designer, crafting a tightly composed aesthetic that blended painterly visuals, video, and cinematic imagery to heighten the opera’s psychological stakes. Working within a minimalist scenic environment, the projections served as an emotional counterpoint — injecting dream logic, memory, and shifting mood into stark, physical space.
The result was a haunting, slow-burn production that blurred theatrical boundaries and immersed audiences in a fractured, mythic world.