This is a new production of Robert Ashley’s 1993 opera Foreign Experiences for seven voices and pre-recorded electronic orchestra, co-produced by Roulette Intermedium and Performing Artservices. May 9-11, 2024.

Foreign Experiences follows Don, Jr., who leaves the Midwest to take a position at a small college in California. But everything goes wrong. He loses his family and friends, he loses his car, he fears that he will lose his mind. He lives alone in a small, cheap apartment near the campus where he cooks rice and vegetables in a single saucepan, drinks vodka and reads books on esoteric subjects.

In his madness and isolation Don concocts an elaborate plot to explain to himself the situation he is in. He remembers important and unbelievable premonitions. He confuses his past with the present. He imagines that he has been called to some secret purpose other than the work at the college and that this purpose will be revealed by a message that he finds in the “personals” of the local newspaper. He is sure the message is meant for him. It is a simple statement, “Higher than eagles he wanted to learn to fly,” along with a phone number.

Don calls the number, and he is told to learn to curse. Cursing overcomes emotions embedded in language and clears the mind to recognize premonitions as they appear. He curses in almost every statement. Finally, after multiple hallucinated adventures, he gets to “the man” who will reveal to him priceless information about the meaning of life…….

This is all happening in the sordid apartment in the middle of the night in Don’s imagination. Too many broken dreams. Too much vodka. Too many esoteric books. Too much loneliness. Too much California.

We will never find out what happens to Don. Maybe he will go into writing screenplays.

Singers
GELSEY BELL
KAYLEIGH BUTCHER
BONNIE LANDER
BRIAN MC CORKLE
PAUL PINTO
DAVE RUDER
ALIZA SIMONS

Music Director and Sound Design
TOM HAMILTON

Stage Design and Lighting
DAVID MOODEY

Producer
MIMI JOHNSON

Created by ROBERT ASHLEY

Foreign Experiences, along with Improvement (Don Leaves Linda), eL/Aficionado and Now Eleanor’s Idea, is part of Robert Ashley’s monumental opera tetralogy with the overall title, Now Eleanor’s Idea. The tetralogy was premiered at the 1994 Festival d’Avignon followed by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Next Wave” Festival.

Robert Ashley (1930–2014) is particularly known for his work in new forms of opera. In Ann Arbor in the 1960s, Ashley organized the ONCE Festival and directed the legendary ONCE Group, with whom he developed his first operas. Throughout the 1970s, he directed the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College and toured with the Sonic Arts Union. He produced and directed Music with Roots in the Aether, a 14-hour television opera/documentary about the work and ideas of seven American composers. His opera for television, Perfect Lives, is widely considered the precursor of “music-television.” Stage versions of Perfect Lives, Atalanta (Acts of God), Improvement (Don Leaves Linda), Foreign Experiences, eL/Aficionado and Now Eleanor’s Idea toured throughout the US and Canada, Europe and Asia during the 1980s and 90s. Dust, followed by Celestial Excursions and The Old Man Lives in Concrete toured from 1999–2012. He finished his last two operas (Crash and Quicksand) in 2013. Crash was presented as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial; The Kitchen presented Quicksand in early 2016. www.robertashley.org