Free preview of new sci-fi opera at Longy features top New England vocalists
A free workshop performance of The Onion, a new opera that deals with issues of memory, thought, and consciousness will take place Sunday, January 19 at 3:00 PM in Pickman Hall at Longy School of Music of Bard College. The semi-staged performance of the opera’s concluding half will be followed by a conversation with composer/librettist Eric Sawyer and director/librettist Ron Bashford, along with the cast. The first half was recently staged in conjunction with the UMass Initiative on Neurosciences. The performance is co-presented by the Longy Voice Department, of which cast members Dana Lynne Varga, Corrine Byrne, and David Small are current faculty and David Mather and Ifeanyi Epum are alumni.
The opera unfolds on an island in the Pacific Northwest where a neuroscientist has sequestered herself with her daughter, her co-inventor, and their invention, the Onion, which allows a person to re-experience a memory as a visceral reality. Rounding out the singing roles are her ex-partner, summoned in memory by both mother and daughter, and the Onion itself, which seems to gain its own personality with each use.
