Upcoming:
Vidas Perfectas: three episodes
September 28, 2012
@ Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London
Vidas Perfectas: two episodes
September 29, 2012
@ Café Oto, London
Robert Ashley: talk and performance
September 30, 2012
@ Café Oto, London
"Waterman and his collaborators delicately transform Ashley’s music; it remains unmistakably Ashley, but Latin influences are teased out and foregrounded, by both Villafranca’s piano and by new shifts of rhythmic emphasis in the pre-recorded drum patterns. The performances in Spanish put Ashley’s libretto into motion in new ways."
—Frieze (Dan Fox)
“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)
"Ashley brings us a totally new form of opera that makes sung speech sound like talk, synthetic orchestration sound like unconscious thought, and the performance feel like dream that we can't wake from. Ashley didn't just reinvent opera he has reimagined the American musical landscape."
—Alex Waterman
"Vidas Perfectas juxtaposes characters as all-American as the captain of the football team and the homecoming queen with a shout out to Giordano Bruno, the monk, mystic and mnemonist ... But, above all what struck me was that the collision of these elements resulted in something far more affecting than the sum of its parts."
—Augusta Palmer
"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
"Robert Ashley changed the game completely. There is no other composer living today that has been able to create an entirely new kind of opera. Others have innovated, played with, polished up, improved upon or just added to the form as it has existed for the last few hundred years. "
—Alex Waterman
"Waterman has built Vidas Perfectas along the same lines as Ashley’s productions of Perfect Lives: with Gordon back on board as producer, and artist Sarah Crowner designing the sets, Vidas Perfectas ‘uses the social relations that were involved in making the music as the model for its remaking’, embracing conversation, improvisation and process to tint and colour the production in new ways."
—Frieze (Dan Fox)
"WHAT ABOUT THE BIBLE? AND THE KORAN? IT DOESN'T MATTER. WE HAVE PERFECT LIVES"
—JOHN CAGE
"In the Vidas Perfectas lounge, Spanish and English are mutually understood. They trade both languages as common currency. In Vidas Perfectas, the Americas are sewn back together through the beauty of heightened speech and song. It is still very much a comic opera about reincarnation. This time through we hope to rebirth a part of the American spirit in the process."