Juana is an opera-in-development by Carla Lucero (Composer and Co-Librettist) adapted from the historical novel Sor Juana's Second Dream written by Alicia Gaspar de Alba (Co-Librettist), and published in 1999 by University of New Mexico Press.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) was a brilliant nun in New Spain (now Mexico) who wrote volumes of baroque poetry, plays and feminist critiques. Juana dramatizes her persecution by the Catholic Church as the Spanish Inquisition repressed her intellectualism and love for another woman. Tragically, her masterful poetry was being celebrated in Spain while she was living out a politically calculated death sentence. Shortly after facing the Inquisition, she began to care for her ailing sisters afflicted with a mysterious disease. Within weeks she succumbed to the sickness and died.

Juana will be performed as a chamber opera, through which Ms. Lucero creates a musical bridge between music composed in the baroque style, and contemporary music, giving Sor Juana's works and life story the sense of timelessness and timeliness it suggests and deserves. Sor Juana's character will be divided into three different roles: Sor Juana as an adult, living in her 17th Century convent (mezzo soprano); Sor Juana's soul, El Alma (countertenor); and Sor Juana as a child (mute). Creating the role of El Alma to be sung by a countertenor will accentuate the heroine's non-conformity to the gender restrictions of her time, and the muteness of the child will reinforce her vulnerability to the forces in control (the Church and Royal Court) during that time period, both of which ended up orchestrating her life, and ultimately, her death.