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The Poetry Project is delighted to be the venue for the
Workshop Premiere of a new opera, “Hell,”
written by renowned poet and 1992 presidential
write-in candidate Eileen Myles, with composer
and recording artist Michael Webster. “Hell” is
directed by Simon Leung, with sets by Beth
Stephens and costumes by Milena Muzquiz.
Performances will take place on two consecutive
Wednesdays in September, the 22nd
and 29th, at
8 pm.
This first production of “Hell” will be realized by ten
singers and a fifteen-piece orchestra. The lead
singers are Juliana Snapper (“The Poet”), Scott
Graff (“The Hunk”), and James Rio (“The
Devil”). Loosely based on Dante’s Inferno,
“Hell” is an opera about public speech,
corporate silence, global politics, and poetry.
This workshop production is the first step
towards a fully realized production in the fall
of 2005, and will also be making stops in
Provincetown, MA, Los Angeles, and San Francisco
before finally landing in Tijuana this fall.
“Hell” opens on the smoking spectacle of lower
Manhattan, where a disheveled poet wakes to find
herself in a cool Hell where people shop all day
and “leadership” is numbly provided by a stand
of talking trees (called Father Tree). The poet
is guided through this altered place by a slick
devil with a cellphone who wants her to write
for him. “Hell”’s features include a town
meeting with a bleeped-out information warrior
called “The Gnome,” a dirge-like rap by an
Icelandic band (in Icelandic), and a torch song
by a frog about the environment. After an
encounter with a terrible journalist who
believes that poetry should only be heard in
recordings of dead British poets, “Hell” becomes
a defense of poetry and live speech in a
democracy. “Hell” spins out in ever-widening
reflections on war as a tragic alternative to
speech, both now and throughout history.
The libretto is written by Eileen Myles, poet, novelist, and
performer. Her books include Skies, on
my way, and the novel Cool for You.
She lives in
New York
and San Diego, where she teaches writing at UCSD.
Myles has toured widely, having read and
performed all over the
US
and Canada, in Iceland, Germany, Ireland, and
Russia. In 1997 she toured with the legendary
post-punk performance troupe, Sister Spit.
“Hell” is her first libretto (available at
http://www.eileenmyles.net/) and
she is finishing a novel about the hell of being
a female poet, called The Inferno.
Michael Webster is a composer and recording artist working in
Los Angeles. He has worked in the studio with artists as diverse as Van
Dyke Parks, Negativland, and Winnie the Pooh.
Most recently he has
concentrated on setting contemporary poetry to
music: art songs, oratorio, and opera.
Webster’s composition for “Hell” takes the rhythms of speech
as its point of departure, changing speed and
meter every second or two. Just as Myles’
libretto gathers power with one short line after
another, Webster cobbles together an almost
constant stream of melody out of fragments of
vernacular music. The singers are accompanied by
a small chamber ensemble, with strings,
harpsichord, and vibraphone.
Simon Leung (Director) is an artist who lives in LA and NY and
teaches at UC Irvine. His solo museum
exhibition, Proposal for The Side of the
Mountain, an opera written with Michael
Webster, was presented at the Santa Monica
Museum of Art in 2002. His work has been shown
at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale,
and the International Museum of Surfing. He is
co-editor of Theory in Contemporary Art since
1985 (Blackwell, 2004).
Elizabeth Stephens (Sets) is an artist and professor who lives
in
San Francisco and teaches at UC Santa Cruz. She works in sculpture,
photography, video installation, and web-based
interactive media, and has exhibited in
California,
New York, and Europe. Stephens’ work can be
viewed on her website,
www.elizabethstephens.org
Artist, designer, and performer Melina Muzquiz
is, along with Martiniano Lopez-Crozet, the
founding duo of Los Super Elegantes, a unique
punk-mariachi-pop group based in Los Angeles
(via Tijuana and Buenos Aires). Los Super
Elegantes mixes original music with theatrical
stage improvisations in entertaining live
performances that have been described as
“fabulous, forever-up-and-coming,
Hollywood-via-south-of-the-border,
global-populist” (Artforum). They have
performed internationally and were featured in
the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
Soprano Juliana Snapper (“The Poet”) develops and interprets
experimental opera. Recent engagements include
the Fresh Sounds series at the San Diego Museum
of Art and the
UCLA Armand
Hammer Museum performance series, and her
current collaborations include JudasCradle,
an operatic duodrama with cathartic performer
Ron Athey.
Baritone Scott Graff (“The Hunk”) has appeared as a soloist
throughout southern
California and in the inaugural productions of
Long Beach Opera’s Downtown Opera series,
singing the role of the Voyeur in
Orlando
(composed by Martin Herman, libretto by William
Houston). Most recently, he sang the roles of
Apollo and Pluto in Marc Antoine Charpentier’s
Baroque Opera La descente d’Orfee aux Enfers
with the Catacoustic Consort in Cincinatti,
Ohio.
Tenor
James Rio
(“The Devil”)
has performed throughout the United States in
opera, musical theater and oratorio. Mr. Rio’s
European debut was in the Hal Prince production
of The Phantom of the Opera in Hamburg, Germany.
He was a featured artist at the East-West
International Music F estival in Altenburg,
Germany, and at the Belarussian Musical Autumn
Festival in Minsk, Belarus. Mr. Rio has appeared
with Opera Delaware, Elysian Opera,
Intermountain Opera and Manhattan Opera, and has
been heard on broadcasts on National Public
Radio. Oratorio performances include
Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Timothy Noble at The
Riverside Church and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9
with The Monmouth Orchestra and Chorus. Mr. Rio
resides in New York City.
ORIGINS
Founded in 1966 by the late poet and translator Paul
Blackburn, The Poetry Project has been a
crucial venue for new and experimental poetries
for over three decades. Time Out New York,
in its “Essential New York” issue, which listed
the Project as one of “101 Reasons To Be Glad
You’re Here,” says: “[The Poetry Project]
remains a major forum for experimental poets, a
meeting place for literary types and an
important part of what remains of the city’s
countercultural spirit.” Speaking recently about
the Project, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (poet and
cofounder of
San Francisco’s legendary City Lights Bookstore)
affirmed: “City Lights
has always thought of the Poetry Project in
New York
as a bellwether for the state of poetry. We have
always stayed tuned to hear the latest voices on
the frontiers of American poetry.”
Now entering its 39th season, the Poetry Project
offers a Wednesday night reading series, a
Monday night reading/performance series, four
weekly writing workshops, a quarterly
newsletter, a website (at
www.poetryproject.com), and
extensive audio and document archives.
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