EiO Artistic Director Jason Cady interviewed Flash Opera composer Miguel Frasconi about his early development as an experimental music innovator and about his approach to adapting ‘Things You Should Know’ by AM Homes for the opera stage. 

CADY: I wanted to start off with your background. I know you’ve worked with a lot of important artists like John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Joan La Barbara, and Jon Hassell.

FRASCONI: Yeah, well one name that you didn’t mention was Jim Tenney who I studied composition with up in Toronto. Jim and I worked a lot together and were really close, so he was huge influence on me.

CADY: And your father Antonio was an artist; you told me earlier that he was friends with Gerry Mulligan and Earle Brown.

FRASCONI: Yeah, I grew up in a creative household. Both my parents were visual artists, my dad was a pretty well-known woodcut artist and my mom, Leona Pierce, was also a well-known woodcut artist, but, as women did in the ‘50s, she gave up her creative work in order to make her household and family her creative work. When I was growing up every weekend was a dinner party with different people coming over like Nat Hentoff and Pete Seeger. They knew those people quite well from Greenwich Village which is where I was born.

from “On the Slain Collegians.” 1970. Antonio Frasconi.

Miguel Frasconi playing some of his glass instruments.

CADY: How many glass instruments were there? I assume this was not just the Benjamin Franklin glass harmonica.

FRASCONI: I always thought the objective in this group was to create a complete world music culture. There were wind instruments, percussion instruments, a whole range of instruments, but all made of glass. Before Franklin came up with the glass harmonica there was the glass harp, which was basically basically a table with a bunch of stemware on it. So we each had one of those. We would use duck calls in tubes that would create all sorts of wonderful harmonics. You’d play it vertically, blowing the tube up and you’d get all the different harmonics as the duck calls travelled up and down the tube. One of the guys in the group called it the puke-a-phone. So basically, anything made of glass was fair game, and that’s still the way I approach my glass instruments. After forty-some years I have a lot of broken glass instruments which sound amazing: rich and full of harmonics and unexpected sound. I still use glass as a totally exploratory mode.

CADY: Getting to your opera now [*], there seem to be two possible interpretations of the story: number one, that it’s a light and funny story, or number two, that it’s a dark story and it’s more Kafkaesque or like Samuel Beckett. Yet I think you’ve chosen a third interpretation: that it is an experimental process music kind of story. Do you find the other interpretations relevant?

FRASCONI: I found it not quite Kafkaesque but definitely Beckett-esque. This story is about a fellow who thinks there’s a list or there might be a list and he doesn’t know what’s on it. So, I wanted to create a situation where the audience will be put in a position to somehow start making their own lists about what they’re experiencing.  I’ve written a few operas and I thought this is an opportunity to create an opera that has more to do with what I’m personally interested in, which is I like to create music that is not so much presentational as it is experiential.

Marbles. 1955. Leona Pierce.

CADY: The story resonated with me because I often feel like I was not there the day when the list of rules was given out. Do you personally relate to it?

FRASCONI: Oh, absolutely. The first minute is basically just people singing, “There are things I don’t know” over and over again. It felt so cathartic. At this point in my life, I have no idea what will happen.

CADY: I remember you said your piece turned out really weird. Is this opera atypical of your work? Or did it just turn out in an unexpected way?

FRASCONI: I took the same approach with this opera as I do when I play glass instruments. If I’m doing something and I know what it’s going to sound like, it’s not terribly interesting to me. I need to discover something that’s new to me. That’s the approach I took with this opera. There are these first two and a half minutes where it’s pretty static and repetitive and then it quickly switches into a totally different gear. That’s the sort of thing that attracts me to experimental music: you never know what’s gonna happen.

CADY: You perform a little bit in this opera. I’ve been thinking about how being a composer/performer is part of what Experimental Music is because it’s about having a vision that’s so unique that the composer has to be involved in the realization of the music.

FRASCONI: For me it isn’t so much about the composer being the performer but the performer making compositional choices. The composition itself allows for the performers’ predilections to come in, so it makes sense that in experimental music the composer is also a performer. Experimental music keeps the door open for performers to be more active.

Miguel Frasconi’s adapation of ‘Things You Should Know,’ by AM Homes is one of the featured operas on May’s Flash Operas at Symphony Space.   As he sees it, his piece is in the lineage of experimental music stretching back to some of the very founders of this tradition in the US.  Questions, he says in his blogpost below, are the foundation of all art-making.  We couldn’t agree more!

If there was just one thing I took away from my many visits with John Cage it would be how every creative act can be thought of as nothing more than a series of questions. A painter could ask,”what colors will I use?” A composer could ask, “how does this piece start?” Then there is of course the “meta” question, which made Cage who he was and influenced anyone who came in contact with him: “Once I know what type of questions I’ll be asking, how do I then determine the answers to these questions?” That question beckons the essential experiment in “experimental music.” As an example, what we now call “minimalist” music started out being a wing of the experimental tradition called “process music,” where one could clearly hear the structural evolution that determined the answers to the more detailed compositional questions. It turned structure into a list of audible steps taken to complete the composition. Sometimes these steps involved an interaction with the performer. But still, they were all simply a list of steps to take to get to the final question, “how does this end?”

Excerpt from ‘Things You Should Know.’

I found this idea of how to determine the answer to these questions at the heart of the story, Things You Should Know. A man imagines a list. He knows that he does not in fact know what is on this list, but, still, he knows there is one. This, to me, is the essence of any art worth making. It’s the not knowing that draws me into the creative process. The more I don’t know, the more I can discover things I didn’t expect. This is the process I take when I play my glass instruments, and this is the process I took in composing my personal version of this story as an opera. I didn’t want things to simply be presented to the audience, but wanted to create a situation in which the audience experienced this need to make lists for themselves. Now, I’m not going to reveal how this happens but please come to the performance in May and let me know if I succeeded.

Nicole Murphy is an Australia-based composer and one of the featured artists of our forthcoming Flash Operas Program.  Below are a collection of her thoughts about ‘Mandela Was Late,’ her short work based on the story by Peter Mehlman.   Nicole will be in New York next week to attend EiO’s Flash Opera Workshop with the cast and orchestra for the production.

Mandela Was Late is based on a short story of the same title by author Peter Mehlman. The fictional story details the final meeting between Nelson Mandela and his parole officer after Mandela is freed from prison. The writing displays Mehlman’s dry wit, and highlights the tedium and redundancy of bureaucratic processes. My approach to transforming the short story into a libretto was to remain as close to the original text as possible, in order to maintain the integrity and comedic timing of the work. After all, it is unlikely that any attempt to rework the comedic set ups of a writer such as Mehlman (best known for his work as a writer on Seinfeld) would be an improvement. As someone who has a healthy scepticism of ‘red tape’ and bureaucracy, I was drawn to the farcical nature of the situation in Mehlman’s story. The parole officer is merely going through the motions, viewing Mandela as yet another criminal, tarring him with the same brush as every other criminal who passes through his office. He contemplates Mandela’s chance of reoffending, citing recidivism rates for criminals who have spent so long in prison to justify his thinking. And of course, it is absurd that Mandela must be processed in the same system as everyone else – no exceptions, one size fits all.

Score excerpt from ‘Mandela Was Late.’

Tedium is woven throughout the encounter. Initially the parole officer waits impatiently for Mandela to arrive. Once he arrives, the parole officer carries out the usual checks and searches. When he questions Mandela, the line of questioning is routine. I wanted to convey the monotony and tedium of the bureaucratic process in the score, which created a compositional challenge: Is it possible to convey a sense of monotony in music while still sustaining interest, creating contrast and generating forward momentum towards climactic moments? Another compositional challenge came in the form of the portrayal of Mandela. Representing a well-known figure is always somewhat of a challenge, and the distinctive nature of Mandela’s spoken voice was always in my ears as I wrote his lines.

When I initially read the text, there were a number of musical ideas that came to me. As I worked on the libretto I scribbled detailed notes of these ideas beside the text, sketched musical gestures on manuscript, and made a series of recordings of improvisations at the piano, while simultaneously commentating my orchestration ideas. The majority of these early ideas can be found in the completed score. During the upcoming workshop, I am most interested in exploiting the collaborative skill set of the creative team, singers and musicians in order to receive feedback to refine the piece. I am particularly interested in assessing the pacing of the opera in real time. Since comedic success is so often reliant on timing, I am curious to hear others’ opinions on the placement and timing of the text within the musical context.

I just finished reading the exquisite, insightful, and thoroughly engaging book, “The Art of Cruelty” by Maggie Nelson.  The book is a revelatory collection of thoughts and ideas about how artists engage with cruelty, and pain, and darkness in their work.  Nelson’s arguments are erudite and opinionated and she isn’t afraid to acknowledge the role her own preferences as a critic play in shaping the argument she is making.

My only disappointment with the book is that Nelson, while writing extensively about visual art, film, literature, poetry and media art, left out any robust examples of the way sounds can or should be cruel (with the exception of several mentions of the writings of John Cage).  I can think of a number of reasons why she might have done this, ranging from the lack of printed space or the general historical divide between the ‘fine arts’ and performance based work.  But neither of these reasons feels satisfactory.  Nelson’s deep dive into performance and media arts demonstrates a willingness to embrace a wider realm of art history, and there are so many mentions of what I would consider second rate examples of artistic cruelty (see Tarantino) that surely some could have been edited out in favor of a broader multi-disciplinary inclusion.

I suggest the real reason for this omission is much more about the perceived meaning of music and sound and the way the listener and our culture at large connect with the sonic arts.

Nelson explores the idea of cruelty through many lenses, but the closest she gets to a thesis for the book comes towards the end when she discusses the artistic goals of painter Francis Bacon:

What is “deepest” for Bacon is sensation, not psychology.  And the peeling away of psychology from sensation occasions a certain sort of pain–the pain of extinguishing the story behind the suffering, and of contending directly with the sensation of suffering itself.

I find this quote to be illuminating because it so clearly shifts the onus of meaning into the viewer’s experience as opposed to the artists’ experience.  The experience of the viewer depends on their willingness to look at and acknowledge their own unease with the cruelty enacted in the art.   Whether the art is or is not connected to the artists’ own experience is besides the point.

There are plenty of reasons that we haven’t developed a culture of sensing sound as an experience.  In classical music, we connect to the ‘difficult’ sounds of late Beethoven, the Rite of Spring or Milton Babbitt to the composer or time period, tying dissonance or complexity to psychological or intellectual rationales.  Even those sounds that deal directly with noise (ie. Marianetti, Schaffer, Xenakis, Cage, Aphex Twin) are quaintly seen as byproducts of social forces, technology, multidisciplinary exercises and or politics.  So there is no room in the midst of these works to say, “the ugliness or pain is so upsetting that I must turn away,” thereby triggering one of what Nelson identifies as a prescribed response to cruelty: that it reveals to the viewer something inconvenient or more ‘truthful.’

Not to mention, it is harder to turn away from sound.  There is no real aural equivalent of shutting your eyes, something that Nelson acknowledges in her discussion of how Paul MaCarthy’s videos retain their power even when only heard and not seen.  And then there is the fact that when one engages with sound it is normally in a formal setting whose rituals exclude walking out (though surely many people ignore this rule).  Also, when we are talking about instrumental music without words or theater, there is a perceived understanding that music by itself allows room for the imagination to create its own images.  This is a sweet and misinformed idea that listeners use to make sense of the power of sound to infiltrate ones mind and reorganize beliefs and emotions. Finally, there are the technical hurdles to deeper musical appreciation, knowledge of decisions composers make that carry political or historical weight.  Perhaps Nelson simply feels she doesn’t know enough about the material of sound to place it within her rubric of cruelty.

One place where it would have been easier to connect her thesis into sound would have been the realm of opera.  I wonder what Nelson would think of the operas of Alban Berg, who uses the language of modernism to address the pain and isolation of war, sexual violence and madness.  Surely the violence of Wozzeck bears mentioning in a book that also addresses the politics of meat in Pink Flamingos? And what about the operas of Bernd Alois Zimmerman (Die Soldaaten), John Adams (The Death of Klinghoffer), not to mention the ritual performances of Diamanda Galas, which while not technically opera are certainly operatic.  Should Nelson’s book have been written a couple of years later, it would have been appropriate to include a critique of the flagrant melodrama of David Little’s ‘Dog Days’ or Missy Mazzoli’s forthcoming opera adaptation of ‘Breaking the Waves,’ a movie that Nelson chews over in her book.  

Of course there are other worlds of sound art, noise, drone, metal or hardcore music that would also seem relevant to a discussion of cruelty in art.  But Opera would seem to just as fully present that magical space of transformation for audiences to engage with the intensity of experience that Nelson so admires in the work of Francis Bacon and Sylvia Plath.  

— Aaron Siegel

Composer/Vocalist Nick Hallett is a busy man.  On top of his regular work composing for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, he has just put the finishing touches on Scene 2 of his opera ‘To Music’ which will be performed at the upcoming Story Binge II on December 15 (tickets here).  We sat down with Nick to talk about ‘To Music’, his desire to subvert traditional narratives and the place of comedy in a tragic world.

EIO: Could you tell us what your piece is about.

HALLETT:  I think of To Music as a mapping of the creative process, but it also tells a very real story. It deals with a composer in his studio, and what happens when he’s trying to work and what distracts him. It’s also about and what keeps all of us composers from making music, and what music we make as a result of the distractions in our lives.

EIO:  The composer in your opera meets an admirer online. Do you feel like you’re making a comment about the future of online relationships?

HALLETT:  I’m interested in how the online experience affects the creative process and, at the same time, how it affects us on a very human level. It’s more about comparing how technology has changed our musical world and our world world.

EIO: What about the creative process you and Josh Thorson (video designer) are engaged in?

HALLETT: My agenda as a composer is to free up the voice from text. In order to do that in opera I tend to rely on video projection and what kinds of information the cinematic image can bring to the operatic stage. I collaborate with artists in the same way that a traditional composer works with a librettist.  Josh’s process is one I admire deeply and we have been working together for decades now.  He completes the storytelling process.

EIO: Do the singers still sing text?

HALLETT: Here and there. You’d be surprised by how little text was in scene one. I just trick you into thinking there are lots of words.  Perhaps I’m trying to avoid having people think they’re watching something experimental.

EIO: So it is experimental but you don’t realize it.

HALLETT: Well, I’m trying to introduce traditional narrative into an experimental matrix.

EIO: How would you describe the idea of traditional narrative?

HALLETT: Traditional narrative sets up a scene, introduces characters, creates conflict, stakes rise…theater! Opera tends to be different because of Music. I’m interested in creating an opera that mimics the storytelling devices of cinema and theater.

EIO: So people are going to be watching the second scene at Story Binge II. What are they going to be walking away with?

HALLETT:  There’s very little interaction between people in the opera and I imagine if people walk away with something specific it’ll be questions like “why don’t people connect with each other?” And “How do these people seem so alone and isolated?” I am trying to deal with reconciling this with music that has voices singing together.

EIO: Why did you decide to make this opera a comedy?

HALLETT:  I’m composing all this work with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company about what so often seems like the end of the world, so it makes me happy that I get to think about my little comedy—still a satire, still social commentary. It’s no less political because it’s funny. Did you see Dave Chappelle on SNL? George Carlin? Louis CK? What else do they make jokes about besides the most depressing stuff?

See the latest scene of To Music at Story Binge II at Merkin Concert Hall on December 15, 2016.

Lainie Fefferman is a composer and vocalist and one of the five artists who are sharing work at Story Binge II at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center on December 15, 2016.  We met with Lainie to talk about White Fire, her song cycle for vocalist and electronics, and what its like to grapple with old stories using contemporary perspectives and musical tools.

EIO: What is the story of White Fire.

LAINIE FEFFERMAN: White Fire is starting out as three songs about the matriarchs of the Bible telling their stories in their own voice. I’ve been thinking about ways of re-owning Jewish texts in my work for quite a while, but specifically for this project I’m looking at biblical heroines and I’m trying to present their stories in their own voices. Usually the Hebrew Bible gives you little snippets and little guesses as to what these women were thinking and feeling but I decided to make a piece that really personifies the emotional takeaway of their first person narrative for me. It’s really personal but it’s also trying to give a voice to these matriarchs that are often sidelined in the biblical narrative.

EIO: And tell us about the three different songs and about the women who we’ll hear from.

FEFFERMAN: So the first song is based on the story of Rebecca, who will marry Isaac and be one of the matriarchs of the Bible. She leaves her tribe and her family and everything she knows in order to go marry Isaac who she’s never met, and she will be the mother of Jacob and Esau, the quarrelling brothers who will claim the Jewish birthright. Her story is full of adventure but also in my mind, a bit of defiance. Rebecca is really an independent spirit and a strong character.

The second song is about Lilith who is a large figure in modern feminism.  I am taking a Jewish perspective on Lilith, the character often described as the first woman before Eve. She is mated with Adam but very quickly decides that being coupled with Adam is not for her and exiles herself from Eden.  Even at God’s request she will not return to him.  God decides that her punishment will be for ten thousand of her children to die every day*.  She will give birth to ten thousand babies and they will die every day. That’s such strong imagery and that really resonated with me and I wanted to bring out the agony of that decision. That she has the personal agency to separate herself but she has this curse to contend with and the strength to bear it.

The last song is about Miriam. Miriam is the sister of Aaron and Moses and she is one of the figures in the Bible who really has a short shrift for being a strong leader of her people through slavery and exile. I’m responding specifically to her figuring in the later Jewish thought as bringing water to her people when they are in the desert when they’re wandering.  The imagery of her bringing water from a stone to give strength to her people in the desert is really powerful to me and the song hopefully evokes that sense of power and nurturing both.

EIO: Clearly you feel like very passionate about telling these stories, and I’m wondering if you could give us a little more of a sense as to why it’s so important to you?

FEFFERMAN: This project White Fire its really important to me because it’s a new branch of my musical career. I’ve written for other people to sing, I’ve written for myself singing in a larger context, but this is just me singing alone, with my laptop. This is all my doing, all my sounds, all my processing.  I’m really out there and vulnerable and it’s exciting but terrifying.

I’ve been thinking about the part that my Jewish identity has played in my music for a really long time, and this particular project is really focused on my identity as a Jewish woman – not as a Jewish thinker, or a Jewish musician, but as a Jewish woman. Women have gotten some really crappy positioning in Jewish thought, Jewish history, Jewish social structures, and in a very tiny way, telling these stories as a reinterpretation using first person voice makes me feel as though I’m claiming the tradition. I feel empowered personally, and I hope just hearing these songs other people will find their power too.

EIO: What are we going to hear as part of the music supporting the stories?

FEFFERMAN: As part of this one-woman band aspect of my project, I wanted a way to be triggering sounds on the computer in a very physical and obvious manner from the stage. I’m going to have these orbs hooked up to stands that I will hit with drumsticks and their job is to trigger the laptop to do something, so you’ll see me hit these orbs and sometimes they’ll sound like cowbell, sometimes like a bass drum, sometimes my singing, but I made the piece in a very consciously gestural way so that in the sense it’s a choreography as much as it is performing on an instrument.

EIO: How come you decided to use contemporary electronics for stories that are thousands of years old?

FEFFERMAN: When I started thinking musically about these stories it was a very different political environment. Especially now, I feel like bringing any power I can to my female identity. This is my language: electronics, virtual instruments, sound collages, synthesizers. This is my modern language and bringing these ancient stories to my own world and my own strength feels new and fresh and topical. It doesn’t feel like a historical exercise. It feels like something I need to do to feel comfortable in my own skin, to feel comfortable as an artist making work now. Even though these are ancient stories, I do feel like it is important to treat these women like the strong actors they were and not objects being acted upon.

*Note: Lainie says “I actually chose ‘ten hundred’ as the number of babies to be killed in my lyrics. Traditional texts I’ve seen use numbers ranging from 100 to 10,000.”

White Fire will be presented as part of Story Binge II on December 15.  Tickets are available here.

On our EiO website, we have a form where artists can submit proposals to be considered for our future seasons. We get a steady stream of opera pitches at this address every week and try to get back to everyone in due time. Since we find many similarities in how composers conceive of their projects, here are some helpful questions to consider as you embark on the initial planing stages of your project.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but should spark some thoughts and/or ideas. Also, our questions are mainly geared towards first time opera-makers who may be working independently of a large institution. (If you already have a commission for a piece to be performed at the Met Opera, you probably know this stuff already):

1. Can you fully describe your opera in a single sentence?

   • While it’s not likely that any large project can be fully captured in a single sentence, it is wise to have a way to share the story, ideas, characters of your piece so succinctly that others can remember it when they try to tell their friends and associates about it.

2. What is the projected scale of your work?

   • Production scale is a key question when estimating how much funding you will need to realize your operatic vision. Our recommendation is to organize your idea around a moderately sized ensemble of singers and instrumentalists. Is there an existing ensemble in mind? If this is your first opera, a limited scale can facilitate getting your project off the ground.

3. What kind of budget are you imagining for your work?

   • Talking about money is tough, so it might not be the best idea to bring up your proposed budget during your first pitch, but one is often better off having a preliminary budget when starting a collaboration with a producer. Perhaps you haven’t thought of everything that you may eventually need, but at least you can begin organizing your ideas around the main constraint of independent opera.

4. What would be your visual or theatrical strategy?

   • We get most of our pitches from composers, so we don’t expect production or costume sketches, but we do find it important that someone has given some thought to the overall look of their piece. When sending a proposal, it is helpful to include a photo or drawing, even if it is just something you found online. Opera is a multi-disciplinary form, so demonstrating one’s ability to imagine the work beyond the music is key.

5. How can you share your ideas before they become too fully-formed?

   • We almost never choose to work with pieces that are completely finished. A finished piece gives the producer very little chance to make an impact on the terms and quality of a piece. Reach out to collaborators as you begin a project to maximize room for conversation and investment. You may believe that it is best to wait until the piece is fully formed to share, but you should realize that this approach limits the possibilities of others to get involved.

6. Are you able to clearly articulate what you have to offer as a partner?

   • Most successful projects include multiple parties bringing their strengths to the table. You may be looking for an opera production company to fundraise for and promote your project. But if you are an active artist you probably have relationships, audiences, musicians and other established resources that will also bolster the project. Be clear about what you are bringing to the table as you begin your project. We can also suggest artists from our network to help round out the initial collaborative partnerships.

7. How well do you know the organization that you are pitching?

   • You should avoide sending a proposal for a full orchestra, chorus, and 8 soloists to an organization that only works in small theaters.   Before you send in your proposal, get to know the organization you are pitching to. This means not only perusing their website, but also, if you are serious, going to at least one of their performances.  Not every organization operates the same way, so you want to make sure you can use language and ideas that are pinpointed to a specific group of readers.

— Aaron, Jason and Matt

For a certain kind of dreamer,  Bell Laboratories feels like the Land Of Oz.  The scientists working at the Princeton, New Jersey campus were the technology explorers of their time.  In tandem to the basic telephony services that their colleagues on the other side of campus were administering, the engineers at the labs developed some of the most essential technologies of the 20th century leading to awarding of eight Nobel Prizes for Bell Labs scientists over its 100 year history.

The idea of Research and Development (R & D) has been around for longer than Bell Labs, but has been embraced by technology companies over the last 50 years in hugely influential ways.  Think of unmanned drones, iPhones, GoogleGlass and self-driving cars and you will soon understand why technology designers are on the edge of innovation in the spirit of the artistic Avant-Garde.  Through their work, we have evolved as a culture in ways that can only be rivaled by the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.

But what about the artistic Avant-Garde? What about the institutions that have, for the past 300 years, first bucked then gradually accepted its ‘breakthroughs’ as part of the accepted evolution of art and culture?  In some parts of the art world (mainly the visual arts), we can find plenty of examples of new research and development pushing curatorial practices, exhibition schedules, capital projects and marketing.  This continued support for newness and exploration in the visual art world is mostly driven by the object-oriented obsessions of collectors.  In music and theater, however, where tickets sold are the measure of financial stability, the cultural institutions have adopted a significantly more conservative stance that all but relegates research and development to a successful subscription series, production or festival, preferring to cordon off their explorations into low-risk, half-hearted attempts to find a younger and hipper audience.

Part of the appeal of R & D in the world of technology is the David and Goliath myth, which posits that small scrappy thinkers can disrupt the hegemony and economic models of the ‘big boys’ and refresh both the creators and consumers of materials and ideas.  Nowadays, all major players in the tech market must maintain their campus of wild experiments in order to find their strategic next-steps as ideas and consumers churn.

So why don’t all the major Opera Houses, Symphonies and Presenters absorb the lessons of technology companies and create true R & D departments to help shape their strategies and audiences?  The answer is simple: too many failures.  I don’t know the statistics, but I imagine for every R & D success, there are likely many, many ‘failures.’  And as those of us in the arts world are aware, the ‘failures’ lose money and are very difficult to defend to board members and donors eager to be a part of something hugely successful.  And yet, what if true and sustainable success can only be found in one of the experiments that are undertaken by intrepid explorers toiling away in a safe environment of the R & D campus?  

Part of my interest in this question is in the work that Experiments in Opera does as a kind of research and development organization: big artistic risk-taking using moderate financial support and working hard to maintain a spirited and well-documented conversation that can inform future explorations.   This work is full of peril and plenty of ‘failures’ but always reaching towards the kind of disruption that could radically re-frame the status quo.

For now, we can only dream about what life might look like on our own artistic campus where risks are applauded and failure understood as part of the process of success. Until large cultural institutions embrace R & D as central to their strategies for growth, I will reserve my pity for the corded telephone, alone and dusty on the basement shelf in Princeton, NJ, still asking “what happened?”

— Aaron Siegel