Lili Elbe: The Real Story Behind The Danish Girl, and the Surgery That Actually Killed Her

In August 2026, Santa Fe Opera put on an American premiere that Hollywood never quite managed to get right. The opera is called Lili Elbe, it's scored by a Grammy winning composer, and its libretto was written by a working neuroradiologist who spends his days reading brain scans and his evenings, it turns out, correcting the historical record. His reason for writing it was blunt: he'd seen The Danish Girl and decided Lili's actual life deserved better than the film gave it. He had a point....