Improvement: Don Leaves Linda
This newly reconstructed opera by the late Robert Ashley from 1985 (and first performed in 1991) follows the adventures of its protagonist Linda, whose travels and romances can be read as attempts at assimilation and cultural cross-pollination, with varying degrees of success and rejection. The metaphor stretches in time from 1492--the beginning of a European consciousness of America and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain--to the late 1940s on the West Coast (representing the future of the USA). Amidst minimalist staging, lush vocals—synchronized amalgams of live and recorded—and the minutely structured electronic orchestra interface and overlap with densely layered streams of text to present Ashley’s portrait of a reality-skewered world revealing of disjunctions of the American psyche.
February 7–9, 13–16, 8pm. $25 General / $20 Members.
Tickets go on sale January 3!
Improvement is made possible with support from Howard Gilman Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
