Experiments In Opera Presents A Double Bill Of World Premiere SOLOperas

Experiments In Opera has announced the world premiere of SOLOperas, two back-to-back operas written for and inspired by the self-accompanying solo performer.

In Jason Cady's This is Not About Natalie, soprano Sarah Daniels performs a tour-de-force of singing, accompanying herself with electric guitar and ventriloquist dummy.

Anna Heflin's The INcomplete Cosmicomics features actor/cellist Aaron Wolff (The Coen brothers' A Serious Man) as the Italo Calvino character Qfwfq.

The productions, directed by Shannon Sindelar, will run for three performances: Thursday, March 20 at 7PM, Friday, March 21 at 7PM, Saturday, March 22 at 7PM at The Tank
312 W 36th Street, NYC. Tickets start at $18.

“SOLOperas was inspired by the one-woman, or one-man show. Unlike monodramas which highlight solitary singers accompanied by full orchestra, our model was the actor, comedian, or singer-songwriter alone on stage performing their own accompaniment. The INcomplete Cosmicomics melds speculative fiction with the folk tale to ask the big questions about life and the universe. This is Not About Natalie is a comedy about ambition and jealousy that brings the tropes of vaudeville into the time of viral video.” 

SOLOperas

This is Not About Natalie

Jason Cady, composer/librettist
Sarah Daniels, soprano / electric guitar / ventriloquist
Shannon Sindelar, director
Krista Pineman, Costume Designer
Celia Krefter, lighting designer

This is Not About Natalie is a one-act opera with words and music by EiO co-founder Jason Cady. It features a solo soprano with a ventriloquist doll and guitar. She portrays Kris, a songwriter who uploads a new, original song every day to YouTube and introduces each song in dialogue with her puppet. She was formerly one half of the underground duo, “Kris and Natalie,” and her former partner, Natalie, went on to become a famous popstar. But this is not about her.   The always compelling Sarah Daniels stars in this one-woman opera, accompanying herself with electric guitar and a ventriloquist dummy. Sarah made her debut with Experiments in Opera in 2019, as the title character in Chunky in Heat (AM Homes)—a standout performance that was described by James Jorden in Observer as “so convincing that at times the piece felt more like reality television than an opera.”

Soprano/actor Sarah Daniels' other notable roles include Monica in The Medium, Constance in Dialogues of the Carmelites, and The Rooster in The Cunning Little Vixen. Sarah has been in several world premieres with companies such as Fresh Squeezed Opera, Chelsea Opera, and Rainy Park Opera Company, and has performed new chamber works by and in collaboration with composers Raven Chacon, Alex Temple, and Melanie Richards. She makes her Shakespeare Opera Theatre debut this spring as Ophelia in Rachel Luann Strayer's new play Drowning Ophelia in which Sarah will sing Ophelia's famous Mad Scene, as well as other excerpts from Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet. Sarah has a B.M. in Classical Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music and was a performance fellow in Longy's Divergent Studio. She currently studies voice with Francesca Mondanaro.

Jason Cady is a composer and librettist. He often performs on pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer. Pitchfork called him a “mod-synth mastermind…funny and engaging.” Anthony Tommasini, in The New York Times, described his video opera, I Screwed Up the Future, as “charming fantasy...drably comic and spacey.” Cady's music has been released on Aerocade, Lockstep Records, and Peacock Recordings, and his podcast opera, Buick City, 1:00 AM is available on Apple Podcasts. Cady is the Artistic Director of Experiments in Opera. He was born in Flint, Michigan and now lives in New York City with his wife, Ann Heppermann, and their two cats. He is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

SOLOperas

The INcomplete Cosmicomics

Anna Heflin, composer/librettist
Aaron Wolff, cello / voice
Shannon Sindelar, director
Krista Pineman, Costume Designer
Celia Krefter, lighting designer

The INcomplete Cosmicomics is a one-man opera by composer/librettist Anna Heflin for vocalizing cellist/actor and electronics in which author Italo Calvino's mystical entity Qfwfq continues his journey. After being stuck in a void for thousands of years with only a cello and a looper, the incongruous and multifaceted Qfwfq comes to life. Upon exiting the void, he faces a choice: he can either explode into existence as all beings, or end linear time. 

Inspired by Calvino's The Complete Cosmicomics, Heflin's work is an original creation in which Qfwfq takes the reins of his own narrative. Equipped with a sharp sense of humor and sensuality, Qfwfq ruminates, charms and hypnotizes in his quest to break the loops of life.

The multi-talented cellist/actor Aaron Wolff, described by the Chicago Tribune as “a musician of quicksilver brilliance," brings the role of Qfwfq to life. A laureate of the 2024 Naumburg International Competition, Aaron gave his Carnegie Hall debut as the 2023 Leo B. Ruiz Memorial recitalist, and is the newest member of Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird. Aaron's acting credits include the lead role (Danny Gopnik) in the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man. A graduate of Oberlin and Juilliard, where he was a Kovner Fellow under Joel Krosnick, he is currently pursuing a DMA at CUNY: The Graduate Center.

Anna Heflin is a composer and writer who constructs high-octane, humorous, and sensual worlds with non-linear narratives that thrive on musical and psychological fragmentation. Whether writing a symphony or a staged literature-inspired solo opera for an instrumentalist, she is drawn to the unexpected and channels her highly imaginative virtuosic visions into complex characters and unorthodox narrative arcs that often integrate text and staging. She resides in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing her Doctorate in music composition at the University of Southern California.

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