‘Unborn in America’ is a twisted satire of American excess. Created by composer Luke Styles (Glyndebourne Opera) and director-librettist Peter Cant and stared by acclaimed opera singer and cabaret artist Jessica Walker.
“We don’t want the right to life! We’re dead and lovely just the way we ain’t!”. In the afterlife, aborted foetus Ziggy performs at The Petri Dish – legendary cabaret bar for the unborn. Androgynous, sexy, provocative, she doesn’t know or care if she’s in heaven or hell, but the clientele are getting hot under the collar. A fast, feisty trash-punk new cabaret opera. Brecht/Weill on acid!
‘Unborn in America’ is a twisted satire of American excess. Created by composer Luke Styles (Glyndebourne Opera) and director-librettist Peter Cant and stared by acclaimed opera singer and cabaret artist Jessica Walker.
The Galician stage designer Ricardo Pardo has been in charge of both the production design as well as the set and costume design of this fantastic cabaret opera show that is setting the stage for what’s expected to become the future of opera.
To match that concept of blending a cabaret and an opera, Ricardo Pardo drugged the design with an atmosphere which is both futuresque and picturesque. It transports you to the real excess of America: a cocktail of sex, drugs and exploitation, politics and celebrity, aspiration and self-destruction. This taboo-busting musical satire gives full hysterical voice to America’s culture wars, re-imagining the Brecht-Weill song-cycle in the spirit of John Waters.
The music is what drives the whole show: it is dark and melodic, borrowing from jazz and tribal rhythms. Luke Styles’s first opera since completing his residency as composer at Glyndebourne, crackles with caustic humour and bold genre-hopping appeal.
Unborn in America comes to London via the Vault Festival 2015. The show is on at Crescent from Jan 28th to Feb 1st on a single daily performance at 8pm.
An Ensemble Amorpha production in association with OperaUpClose | Composed and conducted by Luke Styles | Libretto and direction by Peter Cant | Production design by Ricardo Pardo | Produced by Rosalind Wynn and Ruth Mulvey | Cast includes Jessica Walker and Andrew Dickenson | Funded by the Stephen Oliver Award and the RVW Trust, developed with support from the Hinrichsen Foundation.
© unborninamerica.com
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Read (Spanish) Interview to Ricardo Pardo at Brit Es Magazine here.
Source and official sites:
http://www.unborninamerica.com/
http://www.vaultfestival.com/project/unborn-in-america/