Support Precipice

My latest project is an eco-activist oriented opera. We are currently raising funds to bring it into creation.

Your donation is tax-deductible and will go directly toward helping Precipice reach its next goal: $10,000 will allow us to stage a full sing-through with the cast in late 2022 or early 2023. This will be a public presentation, to attract co-producers and launch Precipice into full production.

Your contribution will help to pay our seven performers for three days, plus musicians, space rental, office costs, and incidentals. You could help us:

Rent our rehearsal space for one hour: $12.00
Rent our performance space for one hour: $24.00
Cover our printing costs: $100
Pay a performer for one day: $250
Pay a performer three days (full cost): $750
Funds raised so far: $3,700

Links

FAQ

What’s a libretto?

A libretto is like a screenplay for an opera. In other words, I’ve written the story and all the

lyrics for a chamber opera. A chamber opera is smallish, with six instruments, not a full

orchestra. In this case, the music is inspired by both folk and modern music, and is sung in a

clearer, plainer voice than what you’d normally think of as operatic. An opera is just a story,

told all in song.

How did that happen?

Ideas have to come knocking so hard I can’t refuse. This time, out of the blue, a set designer

called me. Susan lives in New York, had worked for many years in opera and theater, and now

had an idea for how to bring huge landscapes to the stage.

She was going to make dioramas and miniatures, then move a tiny camera around in them as

the actors were performing. The images of mountains or interiors would be projected on a

screen behind the performers, like a real-time movie. It’s art, it’s projection, it’s a set, all in one.

But she needed a story. Because nothing like this had ever been done, there were no ready-

made operas featuring large mountainy landscapes. She loved A Sudden Country, and

wondered if I might consider writing a libretto.

I said yes?

Because I love to sing, and love lyrics. I think a lot about words, and what makes words “work,”

and how much a good lyric can say in so few words, but the ship in which I became a rock star

had long ago sailed, I was just a person alone in a room typing, so who would ever hear a lyric if

I wrote one? Then, suddenly, the door opened!

So what’s the story?

When I asked Susan what had inspired her to make her beautiful sets and dioramas featuring

lakes and trees, she told me how, as a child, and later as a young woman, the natural world had

been an essential refuge, a place of healing and restoration where she could find and be

herself. I understood, because, while our families were quite different, our cultures were the

same. So, I’d had the same experience.

This was the summer of Me Too, of silenced women really speaking, and yet another summer

of climate change and environmental devastation, and it was easy to see how all these

exploitations and abuses were part of the same culture, in which wealth and power and

hypocrisy and division aren’t just normalized, but seem to represent the only possibility. We

talked about creating a story about how it felt to be a woman growing up, expected to accept

all of this, told that nothing was wrong, that everyone was “happy,” and how broken this

version of happiness felt. And about going into the wilderness and coming out again

transformed, with a story about what can and has to change.

Where does the music come from?

Once we had the concept, the story, and most of the lyrics, we set out to find a composer. Rima

had exactly the sound we needed—grounded in both folk and modern sounds, sophisticated

but simple, emotionally essential. Her music never competed, always supported and wove itself

into exactly the sounds I had imagined, only so much better.

When will we see Precipice?

Fortunately, Precipice was good enough to go into development with American Opera Projects.

This was the first huge step from dream to reality. Unfortunately, the Covid epidemic put

everything on hold, and has now created a big backlog of projects waiting to be realized, and

also a funding deficit as production companies depleted their resources just to stay in

existence, with no income from ticket sales. As a consequence, AOP, like other companies, is

more in need of donations than ever, to put waiting projects into development and production.

Precipice is now complete, and ready for a full sing-through. If we can raise enough money to

do this with the cast (in late 2022 or early 2023) it will, we hope, attract co-producers with

enough funding to launch Precipice into full production.