Artwork by Dane Suarez

The Diary of One Who Vanished
Music by Leoš Janáček
Libretto based on From the Pen of a Self-Taught Writer by Ozef Kalda
Songs of Madness and Sorrow
Music and text by Daron Hagen
January 22 | 7:30PM
January 24 | 2:00PM

Performances at The OperaDelaware Studios
Sung in English and Czech with English supertitles
Run time: 1 hour

Written in Secret pairs Janáček's The Diary of One Who Vanished, a dark confession of forbidden love, with Daron Hagen's Songs of Madness and Sorrow, a fractured chorus of obsession and paranoia voiced entirely by a single performer. Company Artist Dane Suarez, who thrilled audiences last season in the title role in Andrea Chénier, brings raw intensity to this rare and intimate program. Don't miss this limited studio engagement, January 22 & 24, 2027, at OperaDelaware Studios.

Forbidden love, obsession, and paranoia.

the Cast of Written in secret

Dane Suarez

Praised by Opera Today as “simply everything one could wish for,” American dramatic tenor Dane Suarez has built a career at the center of the Italian spinto and verismo repertoire. Critics have described his instrument as “uncommonly poised” and “gleaming,” equally capable of powerful impact and melting nuance, and declared him “destined to become a tenor of choice” in the most demanding assignments the Fach has to offer.

The 2024/25 season brought his international debut at Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera, a return to his signature Don José with Opera Memphis, and his debut with the Erie Philharmonic as tenor soloist in Verdi’s Requiem. The 2025/26 season saw three major role debuts: the title role in Andrea Chénier with OperaDelaware, Radamès in Aida with Opera Southwest, and Giovanni in La hija de Rappaccini with Opera Columbus.

This season he makes role debuts as Dick Johnson in The Girl of the Golden West with Opera Columbus and Ulises in Salsipuedes with Opera Southwest. He debuts Opera Las Vegas as Radamès (Aida), the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra in a return to Rodolfo (La bohème), and Sioux City Symphony as tenor soloist in Messiah. Dane also returns to OperaDelaware where he can be heard as Javier in Fernanda (debut), Roberto in Le Villi (debut), and takes on two monodramas for tenor in Written for Secret (Janáček's The Diary of One Who Vanished and Hagen's Songs of Madness and Sorrow).

The Creative Team of written in secret

Katherine m. carter, director

Katherine M. Carter is a New York-based stage director of opera and theatre whose work spans major houses, young artist programs, and boundary-pushing new work across the country. Recent credits include a new staging of Verdi's Nabucco for the Canadian Opera Company, a new production of Dialogues des Carmélites for Wolf Trap Opera, and engagements with San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera. Frequently in demand for her consent and community-based approach to rehearsal, Carter brings expertise across a wide range of mediums and has worked with the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, and On Site Opera, among many others. Carter is a certified Intimacy Director through IDC Professionals and is the co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, a residency for emerging theatre artists in northern Michigan. Written in Secret marks her OperaDelaware debut.

The Diary of One Who Vanished - In 1916, a Czech newspaper published a strange and anonymous diary set in poems. They were the confessions of a village boy who falls hopelessly in love with a Roma girl named Zefka and abandons family, home, and the life he has known to follow her. Composer Leoš Janáček was so captivated by the verses and transformed them into a 22-piece, 30-minute song cycle for tenor. The setting was highly personal for Janáček who was, at the time, consumed by his own forbidden love for a much younger married woman, and he poured those emotions into Zefka’s character. The result is a diary of obsession penned by a man undone by desire, voiced by a composer who lived it.

Songs of Madness and Sorrow - There is no plot in Daron Hagen's Songs of Madness and Sorrow, only a single voice, channeling the pain of an entire fractured town. Drawn from period newspapers, mental health records, advertisements, and suicide notes, the piece resurrects the collapsing psyche of small-town Upstate Wisconsin at the close of the nineteenth century, as market panic and epidemic disease pushed ordinary people toward two kinds of madness: relentless ritual, or raw paranoia. What makes it unforgettable is the twist that not all paranoia is delusion.