The Tin Angel Opera, written to a libretto by Paul Pines and based on his widely acclaimed novel of the same name, with music by award-winning composer Daniel Asia, is set in the edgy world of a NYC downtown Bowery jazz club, where a unique cast of characters play out their dramatic story as a call for redemption.

The inspiration behind the story is The Tin Palace, the real-life New York City’s jazz mecca of the 70s, founded by Paul Pines in 1973.​​

The Tin Angel is a grand opera in the tradition of Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Carlisle Floyd, great American composers who incorporated popular folk songsT into serious works with an unmistakably American flavor. Daniel Asia (music) and Paul Pines (libretto) have based the story on Pines’ own hit novel from 1982, and it’s a story unlike any other in opera, combining the American immigrant experience with the energy and suspense of a detective thriller. It incorporates elements of jazz into serious art music in a tale of love, revenge, and redemption set in the dangerous, underground world of a Bowery nightclub.

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MUSIC BY

Daniel Asia**

LIBRETTO BY

Paul Pines

LOCATION

Ellen Stewart Theater, La MaMa, Creative Shares

66 East 4th Street, New York, NY

SUNG IN

English with Supertitles

RUNNING TIME

100 minutes - no intermission

ACCESSIBILITY

La MaMa and all Teatro Grattacielo productions are wheelchair accessible and disability-friendly. Please contact us in advance for any specific accommodation needs.

PRODUCTION SUPPORT GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation
The DuBose & Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund
Michael and Kay Anderson
Michael and Beth Kasser
Gary and Tandy Kippur
Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson
Eric Bottcher, New York City Council Member, Third District

Lee and Stuart Rolfe

The Tin Angel is partially made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts
with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Set in 1970s New York, The Tin Angel unfolds within the walls of a downtown jazz club where memory, music, and loss intermingle. Pablo, the club’s owner, is forced to confront the sudden death of his longtime friend and business partner, Ponce, killed in a botched drug deal. The event sends Pablo spiraling into a journey of grief, memory, and reckoning—with the living and the dead.

As Pablo seeks answers, he’s haunted—literally—by the ghosts of Ponce and his own father, Ben, a Holocaust survivor. The club becomes a stage for confrontation and communion: with Ponce’s estranged sister Maria, with Hattie, a mysterious underworld figure, and with Garrett, the young son Ponce never met. From backroom confessions and spectral visitations to a chaotic bartender consciousness-raising group, the story blurs boundaries between reality and dream, justice and vengeance, love and regret.

Through jazz, elegy, and surreal theatricality, The Tin Angel explores the echo of trauma across generations and the possibility of redemption through art. As Pablo struggles to hold the club—and himself—together, the Tin Angel becomes more than a venue: it’s a sanctuary for the broken, a battleground for memory, and a final gift from one friend to another.

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Teatro Grattacielo recognizes the importance of the well-being of our audience members and is committed to providing transparency around potentially sensitive material in our performances.

The Tin Angel includes:
We encourage audience members to engage with this production in the way that feels most appropriate for them.

• Slurs and crude language

• Depictions of gun violence

• References to drug use

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ACT I

In the heart of Alphabet City, the jazz club The Tin Angel becomes the site of mourning and memory. Pablo, its owner, is shaken by the news that his partner Ponce has been killed in a drug-related shooting. As Pablo grieves, the boundaries between the living and the dead begin to blur. Ponce’s ghost appears, along with that of Pablo’s father, a Holocaust survivor. Old wounds resurface with the arrival of Maria—Ponce’s estranged sister and Pablo’s former lover—who returns to identify the body. In the shadows of the morgue and the glow of the club, memory and music collide. A makeshift memorial at The Tin Angel becomes both elegy and reckoning, with tributes offered by bartenders, misfits, and specters alike.

ACT II

Pablo searches for meaning in Ponce’s death, uncovering clues in a diary that point to a woman named Heather Moore and a child named Garrett. He visits Heather—terminally ill and raising Garrett alone—and discovers the boy is Ponce’s son. Meanwhile, tensions simmer at the club as Black Hattie, a powerful underworld figure, returns. Pablo suspects her lover Rodolfo was involved in the shooting. In a surreal blend of the everyday and the metaphysical, the bartenders hold a consciousness-raising session, ghosts interrupt conversations, and memories erupt into poetry and jazz. Pablo, burdened by inheritance and guilt, signs adoption papers for Garrett—offering a future to Ponce’s son amid the wreckage of the past.

ACT III

As The Tin Angel prepares to host a long-awaited concert featuring the last surviving member of the Mingus jazz ensemble, the club is vandalized. Files are destroyed, money is stolen, and threats loom. Pablo and Maria face mounting pressures, both personal and financial. A confrontation with Hattie confirms that Rodolfo, her lover, was indeed the driver in the fatal shooting. Later, Rodolfo turns up dead—his nose torn off, a grim message from the street. Amid the chaos, Maria agrees to take in Garrett, and with Pablo, she begins to reclaim the club. The Tin Angel—once a place of loss—becomes a space for rebirth. In a final act of defiant beauty, music rises again as jazz, memory, and love merge in one last improvisation.

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