A Flowering Tree at Chicago Opera Theatre

From Chicago Tribune review:

With "A Flowering Tree," Adams turns from the contemporary political and moral issues of his earlier operas to the simple beauty of an ancient folk tale from southern India about hope, renewal and the magic of transformation. You could think of his newest opera as the luminous yin to the dark yang of "Doctor Atomic," which Lyric Opera mounted last winter....

The story has a local link. Adams and Sellars drew on an English translation of an ancient tale in the native Kannada language of the Indian poet and scholar A.K. Ramanujan, who unearthed it from an archive at the University of Chicago and translated it into English.

The story line, interwoven with a dozen ancient Tamil love poems, concerns Kumudha, a poor but beautiful young girl who can transform herself into a tree whose blossoms she and her sister sell at a market to support their elderly mother. She and a handsome prince fall in love, are married, then are separated through the vicious actions of the prince's jealous sister. As in all fairy tales, the lovers are happily reunited at the end.