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11.18.2003 posted by William 23:47 link |
Saw Robert Ashley speak tonight at the CMC. It started off pretty slowly, with him giving an extended summary of his career, most of which was basic stuff that even I knew, and I'm certain that just about everyone else in the room was more knowledgeable about him than I. Then he played excerpts from some of his operas, like Improvement (Don Leaves Lisa) and Perfect Lives, pieces I had never heard of.
He explained his vision for these operas: each is conceived of and written entirely for production on television. The scores even specify SMPTE timecodes, I guess so that the whole thing can be mapped out down to the individual frame. And don't think performers-on-a-stage opera, but rather, a film wherein all the dialogue is sung. It's just his idea about extending one of human culture's oldest performing arts to the present era. But of course no funding exists for the full-blown productions he has envisioned for the past thirty years, so he's only been able to do audio recordings of the operas. At some point, he flat out stated that he believes one of the next big things in American TV will be opera. Maybe he could be excused for having thought that during the fifties or sixties, but how anyone could ever think opera will catch on in America at this point is beyond me. I kinda felt sorry for the guy, though, when he talked about how he'll be dead in a few years and most of his operas will never be fully realized. Sorry, buddy, you picked the wrong country and the wrong genre and the wrong medium. |
