Vidas Perfectas: A new version of Robert Ashley’s opera Perfect Lives
Presented in Spanish for stage and television • Directed by Alex Waterman
“Nothing less than the first American opera, written within an American language utilizing various American attention spans: snippets for the channel switchers, layers of meaning for the smart-alecks, something for everyone, and accessible. Works such as this put to rest any doubts if opera can or should survive, and how.”
—Fanfare (Allan Evans)
“What about the Bible? And the Koran? It doesn’t matter. We have Perfect Lives”
—John Cage
“Robert Ashley is not only an opera composer, but the greatest opera composer of the last half-century, and the most innovative opera composer since… Monteverdi. No one else has applied to opera the kinds of structure Ashley has invented. He has blazed a completely independent path. Robert Ashley is the postmodern opera composer. There is really no one else.”
—Kyle Gann
Perfect Lives, the world’s first “television opera,” almost single-handedly changed the way we think about opera, television and performance.
Commissioned by The Kitchen in 1979 and co-produced by Channel Four in Great Britain, parts of the seven-episode series have been seen on American, Japanese, German, Austrian, Spanish and Australian television. It was also celebrated in Peter Greenaway’s 1985 Four American Composers series.
In 2010, ISSUE Project Room was awarded an NEA grant for musician Alex Waterman to produce a new version of Perfect Lives or Vidas Perfectas. Instead of simply reviving Ashley’s masterpiece, Director Alex Waterman is presenting an entirely new version for the 21st century from a Spanish-language translation by Javier Sainz de Robles, re-imagined on the Mexican/American border. Vidas Perfectas will present each of Perfect Lives‘ seven, 30-minute episodes in a stage and television production with all new cast, arrangements and staging.
Ballroom Marfa is proud to present this project in conjunction with ISSUE Project Room and Irondale Brooklyn. The first three episodes of Vidas Perfectas will premiere December 15-17, 2011 at at the Irondale Theater in Brooklyn, with additional episodes filmed in Marfa and presented in 2012. For tickets, visit http://www.irondale.org/VidasPerfectas.html.
More information about Vidas Perfectas in The New York Times, Art in America, BOMB, and Brooklyn Rail.
Support Vidas Perfectas! A video from ISSUE Project Room about the project.
Vidas Perfectas is presented in conjunction with ISSUE Project Room and Irondale Brooklyn.
Support Vidas Perfectas by making a donation at USA Artists.
