{"id":82234,"date":"2023-10-12T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T04:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/operawire.com\/?p=82234"},"modified":"2023-10-16T11:45:20","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T15:45:20","slug":"opera-meets-film-robert-ashleys-perfect-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/operawire.com\/opera-meets-film-robert-ashleys-perfect-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Opera Meets Film: Robert Ashley’s TV Opera ‘Perfect Lives’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easier to appreciate Robert Ashley<\/a>\u2019s 1983 “Perfect Lives” by simply accepting it on faith as an \u201copera\u201d rather than try to cram it into the narrow definition established for the genre. There\u2019s quite a bit of text, some singing, a story with characters, and perhaps too much of a visual spectacle. Purists with preconceived notions about how exactly these elements should fit together needn\u2019t give “Perfect Lives<\/a>” a passing glance.<\/p>\n

But for those of us with open minds and adventurous spirits, Ashley\u2019s opera\u2014recently remastered on Blu-ray by Lovely Music\u2014offers a bizarre yet transcendental experience.<\/p>\n

“Perfect Lives” Beyond the Veil of Triviality<\/h3>\n

Ashley dubbed it \u201can opera for television.\u201d However, “Perfect Lives” is nothing like “Amahl and the Night Visitors” or “Owen Wingrave”\u2014works that premiered as studio broadcasts but transfer perfectly well to the opera house. The televisual is embedded into the very concept of “Perfect Lives,” which is divided into seven 25-minute episodes. Ashley\u2019s text makes frequent allusions to the camera angles and editing effects onscreen. Its non-linearity also demands the kinds of cuts, montages, and superimposition that can only be executed on video. It would be absurd to imagine a \u201cstaged\u201d version.<\/p>\n

What is “Perfect Lives” about? This is, fundamentally, the wrong question to ask. Granted, there\u2019s some semblance of a plot: a group of conspirators in a small Midwestern town pull off a bank heist. Only, the culprits don\u2019t plan to keep the cash. After transporting the stolen money across state lines, they promptly return it to the vault. Their strange caper stands as \u201ca metaphor for something philosophical,\u201d as Ashley wryly puts it in his synopsis.<\/p>\n

Philosophical is the key word. The events of the opera, including a series of vignettes tangentially related to the robbery, largely serve as a platform for Ashley\u2019s musings on life and metaphysics. These are recited by the composer himself in a monologue that fills some 140 pages in its printed edition. As the characters go about their humdrum activities\u2014driving a rusted car to Indiana, buying canned succotash, sitting on a bench in a courthouse park\u2014they make arcane observations, like Zen monks pondering existence. Unsurprisingly, Ashley was reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead when he wrote the libretto.<\/p>\n

The juxtaposition of corn-belt banality with lofty philosophizing is intentionally comical. The opera never takes itself too seriously, and there are jokes aplenty. In one scene, an elderly couple ponders what would happen if the grocery store suddenly became sentient. In another, Buddy the pianist delivers a discourse on man\u2019s spiritual development in between snippets of folksy conversation overheard at a dive bar. Beneath the irony, there\u2019s something deeper at play\u2014a reminder that even the mundane is endowed with meaning and mysticism, if we only know how to look beyond the veil of triviality.<\/p>\n

Just as Plato spoke through Socrates and his interlocutors, Ashely performs the dialogue for all his dramatis personae in addition to the narration. Occasionally, a two-voice \u201cchorus\u201d chimes in with a cheeky aside or to emphasize an important phrase. But mostly we hear and see a leisure-suited Ashley in a studio: silk scarf around his neck, glitter spray in his hair, too much foundation on his face. On the wall behind him is an assortment of neon lights, whose colors and positions change from episode to episode. It has all the vaguely uncanny feel of a late-night public-access program. Indeed, the opera first aired on a British public-service channel at 10pm.<\/p>\n

Ashely\u2019s storytelling could never be mistaken for arioso or recitative\u2014it\u2019s closer to the heightened speech of epic poetry, with Ashley posing as a postmodern Homeric bard. Yet, the composer referred to the episodes of “Perfect Lives” as \u201csongs\u201d and to his declamation as \u201csinging.\u201d Certainly, his vocal cadence possesses an innate musicality. In one list-form passage, each repetition of the word \u201cand\u201d is drawn out into a playground chant, with sing-songy rises and dips. Pages from his performance text, reproduced on the inside flaps of the Blu-ray case, reveal a personalized notation of asterisks and underlines.<\/p>\n

Robert Ashley’s Hypnotic Voice<\/h3>\n

Ashley\u2019s drawl, though one might hesitate to call it that, since he was raised in Michigan, is positively hypnotic. It resembles the soft-spoken self-assurance of Matthew McConaughey\u2019s laid-back intonation. Granted, this often proves a drawback. There are large stretches that are virtually unintelligible, rendering it impossible to follow his more abstruse commentary. Subtitles were inexplicably not included on this re-release; a copy of the published libretto is a must-have to avoid feeling totally at sea.<\/p>\n

Ashely had composed dozens of works at the time of “Private Lives” and went on to write both the text and music for a vast Wagnerian cycle, to which this opera belongs. Yet what one might call the \u201cscore\u201d\u2014referred to in the credits by the TV industry term \u201cmusic beds\u201d\u2014was largely the creation of producer Peter Gordon<\/a> and pianist \u201cBlue\u201d Gene Tyranny<\/a>. Each track, preceding at an invariable 72 beats per minute, is grounded in a drum-machine beat layered with dreamy synth sounds. Over this, Tyranny improvises solos in a range of styles: lounge music, supermarket Muzak, boogie-woogie, honky-tonk, classic jazz, and minimalism.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t mere background music\u2014in the performance libretto, Tyranny\u2019s chord changes are closely coordinated with Ashley\u2019s words. In fact, many of the episodes even emulate conventional operatic forms. Episode two has a kind of ternary structure, in the pattern of a Baroque da capo<\/i> number. Occasionally, there\u2019s some actual singing, like the idiotic pop-song parody \u201cCoo Coo,\u201d hilariously droned in a bored monotone by backup vocalists Jill Kroesen<\/a> and David Van Tieghem<\/a>. The tune reappears throughout Episode three like a ritornello or the recurring refrain of a rond\u00f2<\/i> aria.<\/p>\n

Aside from the master shot of Ashley, as well as some cross-cutting to Tyranny\u2019s bejeweled hands at the keyboard, director John Sanborn<\/a> intersperses filmed depictions of the opera\u2019s action. They\u2019re more like reenactments than realistic portrayals. The entire cast of characters is represented by a pair of eccentric stand-in figures played by Kroesen and Van Tieghem. Decked in sunglasses, old-fashioned bathing caps, and garish tunics, they come off like a couple of mischievous alien visitors. The videography editing by Dean Winkler\u2014undoubtedly state-of-the-art for the early \u201980s\u2014is charmingly dated now, with its swipes, text overlays, and rotating cubes. While the HD upgrade significantly cleans up the picture, there\u2019s still some inevitable VHS fuzziness and halo effects. But many viewers will welcome the nostalgic \u201cvaporwave\u201d aesthetic of the whole affair, with its fabulous pink-and-green palette.<\/p>\n

Making Sense of “Perfect Lives”<\/h3>\n

By the seventh and final episode, it becomes clear that “Perfect Lives” exists as something simultaneously ridiculous and cosmic. Isolde, one of the bank-heist plotters, steps into her mother\u2019s backyard at twilight, constellations rising behind her and picknickers assembled on the lawn like a miniature solar system. In her mind, she practices meditation exercises and ponders the cryptic significance of numbers that crop up in her daily life. An electronic dance riff somewhat undermines the poetic beauty of this passage, as do Ashley\u2019s cheeky, self-aware remarks like \u201cGod, this is sentimental.\u201d Tyranny\u2019s arpeggiated progression, straight from Chopin or Rachmaninov, is just on the verge of kitsch. And yet, for all its sweetness and silliness, this scene instills a profound sense of reassurance\u2014an impression that everything is connected and that all will be well. It\u2019s one of the mysteries of this enigmatic opera that keeps fanatics returning with religious devotion. \u201cWhat about the Bible? What about the Koran?,\u201d asked John Cage<\/a>. \u201cIt doesn’t matter. We have ‘Perfect Lives.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easier to appreciate Robert Ashley\u2019s 1983 “Perfect Lives” by simply accepting it on faith as an \u201copera\u201d rather than try to cram it into the narrow definition established for the genre. There\u2019s quite a bit of text, some singing, a story with characters, and perhaps too much of a visual spectacle. Purists with preconceived notions about how exactly these {…}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":82500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2348,6],"tags":[20561,20560,19743,20562,20556,20558,5119,20559],"class_list":["post-82234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opera-meets-film","category-high-notes","tag-david-van-tieghem","tag-jill-kroesen","tag-john-cage","tag-john-sanborn","tag-perfect-lives","tag-peter-gordon","tag-robert-ashley","tag-blue-gene-tyranny"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOpera Meets Film: Robert Ashley's TV Opera 'Perfect Lives' - OperaWire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s easier to appreciate Robert Ashley\u2019s 1983 "Perfect Lives" if one simply accepts it on faith as an \u201copera\u201d rather than try to cram it into the narrow definition established for the genre.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/operawire.com\/opera-meets-film-robert-ashleys-perfect-lives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Opera Meets Film: Robert Ashley's TV Opera 'Perfect Lives' - 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