The Second Hurricane was Copland's first attempt at composing opera. It was commissioned by the
Henry Street Settlement in New York City, and it premiered at the settlement's playhouse on April 21, 1937, performed by students at its music school. The premiere production was designed by
Orson Welles and conducted by
Lehman Engel. The young
Joseph Cotten played the small speaking role of Mr. Maclenahan. The work was performed on
CBS Radio May 9, 1937, in a one-hour broadcast directed by Earle McGill. The work has only been sporadically performed since its premiere. During a weeklong celebration of Copland's 80th birthday in 1980, it was performed one night at
Memphis State University with students from the Memphis Public Schools, directed by Robert Swift. In honor of Copland's 85th birthday, it was revived at the Henry Street Settlement in November 1985 in a production by
Tazewell Thompson which restored an
aria and a ballet which had been cut from the work at its premiere. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, a new version was premiered at the 11th
Chicago Humanities Festival. For the Chicago production, the producer and musical director Michael Barrett and Jamie Bernstein Thomas (the daughter of
Leonard Bernstein) wrote a new libretto updating the story from the 1930s to 2000; the action takes place in a television studio, where the protagonists describe their adventures for a cable-television show called
Teen Heroes. In 2014, the opera was revived in
Columbia, South Carolina as a co-production between the
University of South Carolina's Magellan scholar program, Opera at USC, FBN Productions, Inc., and Columbia Music Festival Association. The cast was composed of community students from across the
Midlands region of South Carolina and was directed by a university senior, Kate McKinney. ==Roles==