OPERA: SITE is a new collaborative operatic work, commissioned by Roulette with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. It portrays the rich sonic environment of New York City as well as people related to the city and its organisms. The new work shows the rich sonic environment of New York City as well as people related to the city and its organisms. OPERA: SITE, contains a new type of score and notation system derived from audio samples collected from across the boroughs, as well as sonic sculptures and new instruments. OPERA: SITE also exposes the queer body and provides space to be connected with other people through sound. Vítková hopes the piece can inspire people to notice themselves in their environment and find a new relationship with it.

“During my time as a composer, performer, and improviser, I have been developing my relationship to opera as a programmatic piece embodied by singers as well as exploring the related meaning of the word opera, operare, in the sense of doing, making, performing, or working. My previous opera had a striking review by Lucy Caplan in the San Francisco Classical Voice called Don’t Expect Conventional Arias at This OPERA: Vítková’s sound world might be described as music turned inside out. Through sounds both strange and unremarkable, they put the seams of music-making on full display. You hear the stuff in the nooks and crannies rather than the glossy facade.” —Lucie Vítková

Lucie Vítková composer, performer, accordion, voice, movement, objects, electronics, musical sculpture
Julia Santoli voice, feedback
Vered Engelhard stones, electronics
Maij Aladesuyi violoncello, dj
Ranjit Bhatnagar musical sculptures
Mae May piano, trombone, woodworking
Teerapat Parnmongkol sound engineer, navajo flute
Aine Eva Nakamura voice, movement
Leo Chang voice
Ashley Grier bel canto

Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice, and dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. In Lucie’s recent work, they are interested in the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life and in reusing materials to build sonic costumes. In their pieces, they use combined notation, such as graphic, audio, video, text, and staff notation, to achieve a diversity of ways to communicate a musical thought. Their pieces range from DIY cyborg solo performances to orchestral pieces, and in their dissertation, Lucie has analyzed the music of Christian Wolff, researching compositional techniques that change relationships between players to reform established hierarchies in music.