Experiments In Opera Announces Its Spring 2024 Season

Experiments in Opera will present a four-part tour of the world of contemporary opera as part of their Spring 2024 season in New York from April 15 through August 2, 2024.  These four programs highlight the full range of EiO's voracious appetite for new opera commissions, inclusive community actions and new production models that challenge the bedrock assumptions of repertory opera.

Coming off the success of 2022's daring Everything for Dawn 10-part television opera, and 2023's celebrated Anthony Braxton Theater Improvisations, EiO returns to the opera house in full force, delivering a panoply of musical styles and diverse stories. While many opera companies are struggling to make ends meet in the tenuous reality of the post-COVID performing arts, the lithe and risk-taking Experiments in Opera community is thriving, lighting the way to a whole new world of what is possible.

The spring 2024 season includes seven commissions, three workshop performances, and two world premiere productions. Over 60 artists will be involved in EiO's activities over the four months of the season, demonstrating the vitality and strength of the community.

From EiO's Artist-Leaders:

“Our company has always been about artist-led collaborations. After twelve years of commissioning and producing new operatic works, we are proud of how we continue to adjust to the new realities of the performing arts ecosystem. Even with the disruptions of the pandemic, the changing philanthropic landscape, and the balancing of cultural and political experiences, we have been able to hold to our original vision of creating a place where artists of all stripes can try out their ideas with music and story in a supportive, open-minded environment. This year, our spring season is an embodiment of these efforts. We are presenting works that run the gamut in terms of style and personality, in world-class arts institutions and local clubs. We have significant first productions and more intimate forays into the experimental. Premieres and workshops. In-person events and remote experiences. Our vision for a strong artistic community is dependent on the tension and energy between all of these perspectives and activities. We are thrilled to invite you into our work to see and hear for yourself the wonder of EiO!” – Aaron Siegel, Jason Cady, Kamala Sankaram and Shannon Sindelar

Five Ways to Die

June 27 - 30, 2024
HERE
145 6th Avenue
New York, NY
Tickets available starting May 1, 2024 ($30 general/$20 students)

Five Ways to Die is a world premiere opera written and composed by artists in Experiments in Opera's critically-acclaimed Writers' Room, a regularly-occurring program for composers and librettists that Experiments in Opera began in 2019. The Writers' Room challenges the precedent of single authorship and embraces a model where multiple composers and librettists create a large-scale work that embodies the spirit of an inclusive and collaborative community. Prior Writers' Room works include Aqua Net & Funyuns (2020) and Everything For Dawn (2022). Five Ways to Die will feature a chamber ensemble of five instrumentalists and a cast of singers in four short, interconnected stories featuring poison, plague, magical portals, and of course, death. Directed by Shannon Sindelar.

“Mischief (or Rathattan)”
New York City's rats devise a plan to deal with their most annoying pests: human beings.
Libretto Britt Hewitt
Composition Jesse Gelaznik

“Valhalla Valley Mall”
A woman explores an abandoned mall as Sirens induce her to venture further into what becomes an infinite labyrinth.
Libretto & Composition Jason Cady

“Water Prayer”
Water struggles with the inherent loss and destruction of maintaining Earth's tenuous balance.
Libretto Marcella Murray
Composition Seong Ae Kim

“Serials Killers and The City”
Four women, brunching in the Upper East Side, discuss life, love, and how best to dispose of a body.
Libretto Joanie Brittingham
Composition Del'Shawn Taylor

Cast:
Alize Francheska Rozsnyai, Soprano
Rose Hegele, Soprano
Melisa Luna Bonetti, Mezzo-Soprano
Lisa Neher, Mezzo-Soprano
Kannan Vasudevan, Tenor
Seth Gilman, Baritone

Instrumentalists:
Clarinet/bass clarinet: Eileen Mack
Electric guitar: James Moore
Acoustic/Electric bass: Tristan Kasten Krause
Vibraphone/Percussion: Joe Bergen
Drumset: Matt Evans

Director: Shannon Sindelar
Conductor: Dmitriy Glivinskiy

Off The Ground workshop performances

May 30, 2024
Brooklyn Art Haus
24 Marcy Ave
Brooklyn, NY
Tickets available starting April 15, 2024 ($20 general/$15 students)

Off the Ground is Experiments in Opera's long-standing program featuring works that are getting their first performances in front of audiences on their way to a full premiere. 

Crystal's Channel is written and composed by EiO Co-founder Jason Cady. The new opera features a solo singer with a ventriloquist doll and guitar. She portrays a songwriter who uploads a new, original song everyday to YouTube. The singer and dummy together tell the funny and painful story of how she mastered ventriloquism in her adolescence—and how that obsession ended when her mother took her and the doll to an exorcist. Crystal's Channel will feature singer Sarah Daniels and will be directed by Shannon Sindelar.

Soul's Unscreened is the new opera by Philadelphia-based composer Roger A. Martinez and librettist Alize Francheska Rozsnyai. This performance will feature the first act of this installation opera about a computer scientist deep-faking herself during the Covid-19 pandemic, developing groundbreaking technology in AI and uploading her consciousness to the cloud. Featuring performances by Alize Francheska Rozsnyai and Roger Martinez and a five-person chamber ensemble

SOAK

A live, online bathtub opera for soaking until the ache dissipates into lull
Saturday, July 13 at 7pm
Sunday, July 21 at 3pm
Friday, August 2 at 7pm
Presented over Zoom
Free event | Sign up here

SOAK is an accessibility-centered, virtual and immersive electroacoustic toy opera by artist alexa dexa. The live performance features ritual singing and spell-casting by alexa dexa who will perform from their own bathtub for audiences who join in via Zoom. This ritual soak for sinking into ease and effortlessness is built around the everyday routine that alexa relies on to weather the flares of their chronic illness and will feature American Sign Language, song-signing, open creative captioning, open audio and sound description, and access doulas to provide care and support for everyone in attendance.

The Lives and Dreams of Nikola Tesla as summoned by the Honorable Spirits of the Grand Gotham Hotel

Monday April 15
7pm
The Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Avenue
New York, NY

Experiments in Opera, in partnership with Works & Process, presents the workshop performance of the new opera by Phil Kline and Jim Jarmusch. This work has been in development for seven years, and EiO came on board as a producer following the successful collaboration with Phil as part of 2022's Everything for Dawn. Anthony Roth Costanzo will play Nikola Tesla, and a full production of the opera is expected in the 2025-2026 season.

In an abandoned New York City near the end of time, a small group of survivors gather for a seance in the ruined ballroom of the once mighty Grand Gotham Hotel. Here they encounter the ghost of the hotel's most famous resident, Nikola Tesla, whose last years were spent in Room 3327. One by one, they join Tesla, acting out his dreams in a ritual circus of life, conveyed in a series of vignettes that mix elements of spectacle, absurdity, avant-garde film, blackout comedy, and musical theater. 

A striking figure—tall, elegant in dress, and grandiloquent in speech—Tesla was a brilliant scientist and engineer whose view of the physical world was imbued with mystical spirituality. He once dined daily at the famous Delmonico's, seated among the barons of Wall Street, who celebrated and profited mightily from his inventions. As his dreams of the future were thwarted by the powers of big money and government, he gradually retreated into a parallel world of his imagination, watching over the pigeons in Bryant Park, especially the one he said was his true love, “a creature of purest white, with silver traces on her wings.” 

Music and words by Phil Kline
Story concept by Phil Kline and Jim Jarmusch
Films by Jim Jarmusch and Deco Dawson
David Bloom, Conductor

Cast
Anthony Roth Costanzo - Nikola Tesla
Jennifer Zetlan - Katharine Johnson
Amanda Lynn Bottoms - Sissieretta Jones, Djuka Tesla
Timothy Stoddard - Thomas Edison
James Harrington - J. P. Morgan
Clementine Kline - Young Tesla, Young Girl
Eric Brenner - Ensemble, Tesla understudy

with Ensemble LPR members:
Conrad Harris, violin
Tom Chiu, violin
William Hakim, viola
Carolina Chan, viola
Alex Waterman, cello
Felix Fan, cello
Tristan Kasten Krause, bass
Sam Yulsman, keyboard
Violetta Norrie, harp