New Visual Opera Divide Light Premieres In California

Montalvo Arts Center presents a new opera, Divide Light, a world premiere commission by New York-based visual and performance artist Lesley Dill, with music by composer Richard Marriott, and additional music by Tom Morgan, Aug. 13 at Montalvo’s Garden Theater in Saratoga, California.

Commissioned and produced by Montalvo Arts Center, Dill redirects the classic form of opera using Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) to celebrate and investigate American Transcendentalism, a school of thought particularly prevalent in mid-19th century New England. By incorporating all of Dickinson’s 1,775 poems, Divide Light goes beyond rational reason into the world of obsessive informational insanity, which refers not only to the aficionados across the country holding yearly marathon readings of the complete body of Dickinson’s poems, but also to the overflow of information we now have at our fingertips made possible by the Internet and amazing new technologies. Divide Light parallels this global process by musically and visually translating the language of a 19th century philosophical movement into a representation of current forms of linguistic availability.

“One of our goals for Divide Light is to redefine what opera is and with the inclusion of so many different voices and musicians, we are certainly achieving that goal." said Dill.

Incubated in the heart of Silicon Valley at Montalvo’s Sally and Don Lucas Artist Programs residency as an interdisciplinary collaboration between Dill, a visual artist, and Colorado-based composer and conductor Tom Morgan, Divide Light has expanded to include additional creative collaborators. Philadelphia-based stage director Eleanor Holdridge is on board, and the project is under the musical direction of Daniel Hughes, who also serves as director of The Choral Project, San Jose.

Divide Light premieres at Montalvo’s Garden Theater on Aug. 13. Ticket and showtime information can be found by visiting www.montavloarts.org

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