Photo by Joanne Savio, 2006

Coming Up:

January 14-25, 2009 - TWO WEEKS / THREE OPERAS at La Mama E.T.C. New York

Robert Ashley brings all three of his recent operas, DUST (1998), CELESTIAL EXCURSIONS (2003) and CONCRETE (2007), to La Mama in radically new productions designed in collaboration with David Moodey.

Although Ashley’s roots are deep and true in the classical operatic tradition, the music has a famously new and compelling sound and the librettos have a poignant and uplifting message.

My characters are ordinary people, Ashley explains. I am interested in their profoundly good qualities. They just happen to be ordinary people who are spiritually divine.

“I liken Ashley’s operas to Richard Ford’s novel Independence Day. We sense that great things—monumental things—are going on, of which the musical moments in the operas are but mere symptoms. The greatness is left inarticulate, merely sensed, slouching behind the sheer volume of the whole.” — Murray Dineen, Opera Today

The cast features new music luminaries Sam Ashley, Tom Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan la Barbara and Tom Hamilton.

Site updated July 31, 2008