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THE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
MOST of all, Edith Warner wanted to fade into the background. She was a delicate woman who went to New Mexico in 1922 for her health, and as so many people who go there have, she felt embraced by the land. In 1928, she settled in a place still in the middle of nowhere, where the road that snakes up to Los Alamos crosses the Rio Grande. She died in New Mexico of cancer in 1951.
She would be astonished, one imagines, to find herself the subject not only of two books - one a novel, the other a remembrance - but also a photography exhibition, and a full-length opera. But that is exactly what has happened, and the latter two involvements of Edith Warner are on exhibition or in preparation for performance right now in St. Louis.
The opera, called "The Woman at Otowi Crossing," was commissioned from Stephen Paulus by Opera Theatre of St. Louis to celebrate its 20th season. The opera's world premiere is June 15 at the Loretto-Hilton Center at Webster University. The exhibition opened last weekend at the Forum for Contemporary Art in Grand Center.
When Warner first lived at the Otowi Crossing, she made her living as receiving agent for goods dropped off from the train for a boy's boarding school up on the mesa. She also ran a little tearoom and offered good things to eat for folks traveling to and from the mesa.
Because of her gentle spirit and humility, she was beloved by the students and faculty of Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys, and was welcomed as well...