The play was adapted into an opera by composer Nicolas Flagello in 1983. According to the PBS "American Experience" program, "Theater historians point to O'Neill's "Beyond the Horizon", which debuted in 1920, as the first native American tragedy. That play emerged from O'Neill's association with the Provincetown Players, one of many so-called 'little theaters' that developed in the 1910s to provide alternative fare to commercial drama of the time."