“Harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time.” – Anne Midgette, Washington Post
“The music of Missy Mazzoli is a treat in and of itself and that is especially the case in collaboration with Royce Vavrek. It’s a rarity to see a tale set in Middle America and a welcome and much-needed addition to contemporary opera. To experience “Proving Up” is to see an American story nearly never told: one of the failure of its promise.” – Opera Wire
“Brilliant” – Musical America
“Ms. Mazzoli’s expert score” is “ominously insinuating and brutal by turns.”- Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal
“There is no better way to illustrate how hard it is to achieve the American Dream than to detail the struggle of homesteaders who desperately want to attain a farm deed on the unforgiving Plains. This production achieved that with excellence.” – Omaha World Herald, review of Proving Up, April 2018