Opera Philadelphia Presents World Premiere of Joseph Keckler’s Let Me Die (Sep 21–28) at Festival O19

The world premiere production of Let Me Die, a new company commission, is a highlight of O19, the third edition of Opera Philadelphia’s annual season-opening festival. Presented in partnership with FringeArts as part of Philadelphia’s 2019 Fringe Festival, this genre-bending new performance piece showcases its creator, Joseph Keckler, recently described both as a singer and writer of “unnerving artistry … who hardly seems human” (The Observer) and as “an artist who refuses to be pigeonholed, … a gifted composer, poet and musician who uses his classically trained baritone in idiosyncratic contemporary material” (Opera News). Interspersing famous operatic death scenes with original video and Keckler’s own signature brand of comedic storytelling, Let Me Die underscores Opera Philadelphia’s commitment to providing extraordinary artists with opportunities to create their most imaginative and inspired work, serving as a reminder that the company is not only “one of the leading instigators of new work in the country” (Opera News), but also “one of American opera’s success stories” (New York Times).

“A major vocal talent … whose range shatters the conventional boundaries” (New York Times), Keckler began developing Let Me Die during residencies at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design and New York’s Baryshnikov Arts Center. As Hyperallergic noted, after an early work-in-progress showing at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit:

“What begins as funny becomes increasingly tragic. Keckler’s power as a singer and his commanding stage presence draw the audience out of the comedy of the work – but then he punctuates the drama with humorous commentary. … Keckler effectively demonstrates that opera and its mechanics require only the simplest of bridges to offer new insight into our condition of daily living.”

Named 2013’s Best Downtown Performance Artist in New York (Village Voice), Keckler has appeared at international venues including Paris’s Centre Pompidou, New York’s Lincoln Center, Austin’s SXSW festival and LA’s Adult Swim Festival, and looks forward to opening a concert run at London’s Soho Theatre this October. Also a writer, artist and humorist, his book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2017. As he explains, Let Me Die was inspired by an aria of that name:

“When you start to study voice, one of the first songs that a lot of people are given, and I was given, is Lasciatemi morire, ‘Let Me Die.’ I like this idea that somehow if you’re a student of opera, of voice, you have to be sort of a student of dying. And that’s where I took the title of this from, that aria, which is also the only existing part of the Monteverdi opera. The rest of the opera has been lost, except for an extended sequence, the center of which is that aria, the lament of Ariadne, who is stranded on the island of Naxos. I liked that conceptual rhyming – that she is lost, bereft, stranded, and the aria also stranded. It has survived its own context. So, what if all the rest of the operas were lost, but all the deaths survived?”

About the death scenes featured in his new work, Keckler adds:

“Well, there are a lot of old chestnuts, a lot of favorites, a lot of greatest hits in there. … We’re going into weird corners of the repertoire to pull out certain moments as well. … The scenes are alternately – or sometimes simultaneously – sublime and absurd. That’s my jam.”

As for what he hopes audiences will take away from Let Me Die, he deadpans: “Nothing. To the contrary, I hope they leave something behind.”

For the world premiere production of his performance piece, Keckler reunites with dramaturg and director Elizabeth Gimbel, praised for her “poetic direction” (Village Voice) of his earlier works Cat Lady, Human Jukebox and the recent, critically acclaimed Train With No Midnight. He will be joined on stage by soprano Veronica Chapman-Smith, as seen in Opera Philadelphia’s world premiere productions of The Wake World and Sky on Swings; countertenor Darius Elmore, a George Shirley Vocal Competition semi-finalist; and mezzo-soprano Natalie Levin, whose credits include Santa Fe Opera, Virginia Opera, and Carnegie Hall; with a guest appearance by “startlingly precise” dancer (New York Times) Saori Tsukada, a two-time Dublin Fringe Festival Best Actress nominee. Like Keckler himself, Elmore, Levin and Tsukada will all be making company debuts, as will musical arranger Matthew Dean Marsh, a regular collaborator of Keckler’s, whose work has been heard at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Madison Square Garden, and the White House. Let Me Die also features sound design by Isaac Levine, lighting design by Evelyn Shuker, and original video design by FringeNYC Award-winner Lianne Arnold.

About Opera Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia, the only American finalist for the 2016 International Opera Award for Best Opera Company, is “the very model of a modern opera company” (Washington Post). Committed to embracing innovation and developing opera for the 21st century, the company has recently commissioned and co-commissioned a number of important new operas, including Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Silent Night, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music; Jennifer Higdon and Gene Scheer’s Cold Mountain, winner of the 2016 International Opera Award for Best World Premiere; Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves, winner of the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA)’s 2017 Best New Opera Award; Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s We Shall Not Be Moved, named one of the New York Times’s “Best Classical Music Performances of 2017”; and David Hertzberg’s The Wake World, winner of MCANA’s 2018 Best New Opera Award. Scheduled to premiere at Festival O19, Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s Denis & Katya has already been recognized with the 2019 Fedora-Generali Prize for Opera, further ensuring Opera Philadelphia’s status as “a hotbed of operatic innovation” (New York Times) that represents “one of North America’s premiere generators of valid new operas” (Opera News). For more information, visit operaphila.org.

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Opera Philadelphia presents Let Me Die at Festival O19
World premiere

Sep 21, 22, 25, 26, 27 & 28
FringeArts
Creator: Joseph Keckler*
Director and dramaturg: Elizabeth Gimbel*

Veronica Chapman-Smith, soprano
Darius Elmore*, countertenor
Natalie Levin*, mezzo-soprano
Saori Tsukada*, dancer and actor

Arrangements: Matthew Dean Marsh *
Lighting design: Evelyn Shuker*
Sound design: Isaac Levine*
Video design: Lianne Arnold*

* Opera Philadelphia debut

Performed in English and other languages with English supertitles
Presented in partnership with FringeArts as part of the 2019 Fringe Festival

Major support for Let Me Die has been provided by the William Penn Foundation. Let Me Die is a project of Creative Capital. It was developed in part during a Roman J. Witt Artist Residency at The University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, with a work-in-progress preview at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Let Me Die was also developed in part during a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York, NY, with assistance from the Orchard Project and from Camp Fringe 2017 at FringeArts, Philadelphia. The project also benefited from residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell.

Media Contacts

Opera Philadelphia: Frank Luzi, [email protected], (215) 893-5902
21C Media Group: Glenn Petry, [email protected], (212) 625-2038

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© 21C Media Group, August 2019