Frieze on Perfect Lives and Vidas Perfectas

AMERICAN OPERA

by Dan Fox in Frieze #145 (March 2012)

Vidas Perfectas – with ‘R’ and Buddy now in residency in La Vidas Perfectas Lounge – is an ambitious new Spanish-language version of Perfect Lives, directed by Alex Waterman (who, with Will Holder, is currently working on a study of Ashley’s practice, due to be published at the end of this year) from a translation by Javier Sainz de Robles. Produced under the auspices of ISSUE Project Room and Ballroom Marfa, Vidas Perfectas is, like the original Perfect Lives, designed for television, and will grow steadily in phases over the course of the next two years. Three episodes were staged in December 2011 at the Irondale Theater in Brooklyn – ‘El Parque’ (The Park), ‘La Iglesia’ (The Church) and ‘El Patio de Atrás’ (The Backyard) – with further episodes to be produced in Marfa, Texas, this summer, and a pilot version planned for the end of the year. It is a slow, carefully evolving project, because: ‘we don’t serve fine wine in half-pints, buddy.’

BOMB Magazine: Robert Ashley interviewed by Alex Waterman

Robert Ashley by Alex Waterman

BOMB Magazine, Winter 2011

When Robert Ashley talks about opera, he is referring to characters in a landscape telling stories musically. The landscape is represented either on television or on stage, and it is as expressive a feature in the music as any of the characters. In his operas, landscape becomes another piece in the puzzle of the grand cosmology of the American language.

Brooklyn Rail Interviews Alex Waterman

In Conversation: Alex Waterman

by Timothy Nassau, The Brooklyn Rail, December -January, 2011

Vidas Perfectas, a new Spanish-language production of Perfect Lives, Robert Ashley’s visionary television opera from 1983, will premiere December 15 through 17 at Brooklyn’s Irondale Theater, with performances of the first three episodes of seven. It will take three years to complete the adaptation, which will travel to Ballroom Marfa in Texas, where the next two episodes will be performed and filming for tv will begin. From there, its future is uncertain. Timothy Nassau discussed Vidas Perfectas via e-mail with its director, composer, and musicologist Alex Waterman.

Timothy Nassau (Rail): How didVidas Perfectas come into being?

Why Has Bodhidharma Left For the South?

Why Has Bodhidharma Left For the South? Vidas Perfectas

Augusta Palmer in doobeedoobeedoo, January 28, 2012

Alex Waterman’s production of Vidas Perfectas is a new Spanish translation of Robert Ashley’s 1979 opera, Perfect Lives. It’s a Buddhist soap opera, a series of visual and vocal images simultaneously held together and pulled apart by illusion.

Art In America: Robert Ashley Gets a New Backdrop

Sarah Crowner's backdrops for Vidas Perfectas

Robert Ashley Gets a New Backdrop

Catherine Kron in Art In America, 12/12/11

If there's such a thing as an "artist's composer," Robert Ashley is it. The 81-year-old opera composer and performer, who has earned a cult-like following, is credited with revitalizing the opera form for fine art crowds. He is admired for his scores, whose unorthodox formats appeal to musicians, performers and visual artists. But his underground credibility might be blown with Vidas Perfectas, a reimagining of his 1983 opera Perfect Lives. The new work opens next week at the Irondale Theater in Brooklyn.

Vidas Perfectas on Art International Radio

In this interview with Art International Radio's David Weinstein, Ned Sublette and Elio Villafranca speak about the development of Vidas Perfectas. Also includes some fantastic early remixes from the original Perfect Lives (released as "The Lessons").

 

Experimental Composers: Vidas Perfectas: Ned Sublette & Elio Villafranca

Hosted by David Weinstein, aired on Monday, November 28th, 2011

Robert Ashley: “The music has outgrown the architecture”

Still from Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives

On Oct. 23, Issue Project Room held a screening of Robert Ashley’s“Perfect Lives,” in support of our ongoing fundraising campaign for “Vidas Perfectas.”

Following the screening, Robert Ashley (composer), Alex Waterman (director), and Ned Sublette (who will play the narrator, “R,” in “Vidas Perfectas”) stuck around for a Q&A about television, the development of “Vidas Perfectas,” and methods of collaboration.

Here’s an excerpt, just to whet your appetite (listen while reading):

Alex Waterman reads Robert Ashley @FMA

Alex Waterman reads excerpts from his interviews with Robert Ashley according to Ashley's early indeterminate score "in memoriam . . . Esteban Gomez."

The score is circular, with no determinate duration, and with a suggested four players (although Waterman performed solo). More than just the words, the score drives the intonation of the reading, as Ashley's original four timbal indications become intonational indications in the speaking voice. In this piece, Ashley memorializes the man credited with deserting Magellan, financing his expeditions by selling slaves, and mapping the eastern shore of North America.

Also, this recording is one of the few ways to hear Alex read the following paragraph:

Willard called the cops one time about a flying saucer that was in the living room. The cops came over and asked him to show them where it was and Willard pointed to the window sill in the living room. They said, "Willard, that's a peach pit." And Willard said, "Well, it may look like a peach pit to you."

Recent:

EMP POP CONFERENCE

March 24, 2012 - 1PM

@NYU

 

VIDAS PERFECTAS

March 25, 2012 - 7:30PM

@ Le Poisson Rouge

 

"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."

 

—Alex Waterman

“Separated from the humming drone of his music—his lyrics serve as odd masterpieces of American vernacular, recalling the loose tongue of Bukowski, the neurosis of Spalding Gray, and the abstract lyricism of Ghostface Killah.”

 

—The Village Voice

(Ross Simonini)

"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."

 

—Alex Waterman

“Separated from the humming drone of his music—his lyrics serve as odd masterpieces of American vernacular, recalling the loose tongue of Bukowski, the neurosis of Spalding Gray, and the abstract lyricism of Ghostface Killah.”

 

—The Village Voice

(Ross Simonini)

© Vidas Perfectas 2012  |  info@vidasperfectas.org