When composer Mason Bates approached Michael Chabon about turning his novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” into an opera, he said the writer told him frankly that “opera was not his thing.”.

The Los Angeles Opera scrapped plans for the world premiere of Mason Bates’ “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” this fall because of finances, and the work will instead open with a student cast at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.