The 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music has been awarded to composers Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels for their opera Omar.

The Pulitzer Prize committee called the work, which premiered in the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina in 2022, “an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries, a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage.”

Omar, Spoleto Festival USA, 2022

The other finalists were composers Tyshawn Sorey for Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) and Jerrilynn Patton for Perspective.

Abels is best known to Australians as the composer of the soundtracks for Jordan Peele’s horror films Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and Nope (2022).

Giddens has previously collected two Grammy Awards in folk music categories. She has composed for opera, ballet and film. America’s National Public Radio (NPR) named her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century.

Rhiannon Giddens. Photo © Ebru Yildiz

Omar is based on a true story, that of Omar ibn Said, whose autobiography A Muslim American Slave: The Life...