USA Projects

VIDAS PERFECTAS is an all new, Spanish language version of the classic avant-garde television opera from the 1980s: PERFECT LIVES.

Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship
 between language and music, mixing chanting, storytelling, meditation and ecstatic
 revelation. And as the world’s first ‘television opera,’ has almost single-handedly
 changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.

In 2010, Issue Project Room was awarded an NEA grant to produce a new version of
 Perfect Lives in co-operation with Robert Ashley and Alex Waterman. The NEA grant
 provided the funds necessary to begin, but it constitutes only a fraction of the cost of
 a live performance run and an even smaller fraction of the cost of the television
 production.

Vidas Perfectas will be produced for television and appear in seven 30-minute episodes. We are now seeking partners throughout the country to co-produce the
 remaining episodes in the series. The newly completed installments will premiere at the hosting institution, joined by all episodes completed at the time of staging. This cumulative way of working allows us to spread the fund-raising and labour of creating a 3 hour opera, over a longer period of time. We can get deeper into the music and create shorter, more realistic goals along the way.

At the finish of all seven episodes, we intend to tour the full production (specifically 
in the U.S., Spain and Latin America), and to mount a complete television version on
 Spanish- and English language television. Furthermore, we plan to publish the
 resulting production as a CD and DVD.