 Student performances have included the University of Houston's Moores School of Music in 2011 and the Mannes School of Music in 2014 (the opera's New York City premiere).In writing the libretto, Catán followed the plot of the Michael Radford's Italian film "Il Postino" (and its attendant anachronisms) quite faithfully, but he also used Antonio Skármeta's 1985 novel "Ardiente paciencia" (on which the film had been based) to develop the characterization of Pablo Neruda.The actor Massimo Troisi, who played the title role in the film and died shortly after it was completed, owned the rights to the screenplay and had willed them to his five siblings.