Project

LOVE/HATE
Music by Jack Perla
Libretto by Rob Bailis

About Love / Hate

Love/Hate is a dark-hued comedic rhapsody on contemporary intimate partnerships of every persuasion. Told from the heart, it's a little like Canterbury Tales meets Milan Kundera, with a splash of Dr. Ruth.

Love/Hate traces the arc of the blossoming love between a chilly college professor and her tech-geek, sexually confused new boyfriend. Their affair triggers a quixotic romp through the characters¹ personal histories, dropping in on pivotal moments in time that have shaped for each their views on love: from clumsy sexual experimentation to full blown commitment, bloodthirsty fights to tender acknowledgements. Reveling in the 21st Century¹s increasingly absurd mating methodologies, and roiling at the isolation of point and click social lives, Love/Hate shamelessly posits an old paradox for a new era.

Love/Hate is a chamber opera conceived for contemporary performing arts spaces as well as small to medium opera houses and musical theater presenters. As such, it will be orchestrated in two formats - 1) Four singers playing multiple roles and five musicians (Clarinet, Cello, Bass, Percussion; Piano) 2) Eight singers and sixteen member chamber ensemble. Love/Hate gleefully deploys a dizzying array of styles from foxtrot to minimalism to atonality to 80's cheese-pop, to embrace and skewer a cast of urban contemporary character-types we all know and love (and sometimes hate), all too well.

Love/Hate is being developed in part with generous grants from the BMI Foundation, the Virgil Thomson Foundation and the "Composers & the Voice Circle of Friends". 

About the Creators

JACK PERLA (composer)
Jack Perla was recently commissioned by the Minnesota Opera to compose a full evening work for their 50th anniversary. In 2008 he participated in Composers and the Voice, a program of American Opera Projects. He's currently at work on a new piece for the Paul Dresher Ensemble with tenor Thomas Glen, and several other projects including Love/Hate with AOP and a new work for Tapestry New Opera in Toronto.

Jack earned his DMA at the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman and Lukas Foss. He has received commissions, awards, grants and performances from the Oakland Symphony, James Irvine Foundation, Louisiana Philharmonic, New Music Chicago, Absolute Ensemble, Argosy Fund for New Music, MATA, Chicago Symphony, Yaddo, MacDowell and many other organizations. He won the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Composers Award in 1997, and remains an active jazz performer & composer. Jack was commissioned by ODC/Dance to create the score for the dance theater work “On a Train Heading South” which recently toured the country. For more information, visit www.jackperla.com

ROB BAILIS (librettist)
Rob Bailis is a musician, director, and writer based in his native San Francisco. As a dramatist, Rob’s first musical play The Culture Counter was produced in 1991 in Chicago. Since then, he has created a widely performed body of work primarily in art song, song cycle, and more recently libretto, including his solo shows, Ride with Me (2000) and Theseus on String Theory (2009).

Since 2003 he has been the Artistic Director of ODC Theater, SF’s oldest and most esteemed venue for contemporary performing arts.  In 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle honored Rob, naming him ‘MVP’ in the field of arts presenting, describing his curation as, “smart and sophisticated...his enthusiasm is infectious.” A renowned classical clarinetist Rob has toured the U.S., Canada, Asia, and the U.K. and performs regularly with the Santa Rosa Symphony and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the Yale School of Music.

AOP Presentations

March 20, 2009
Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
Staged scenes from Act I
in association with the Manhattan School of Music
MUSIC DIRECTION: Silas Huff
STAGE DIRECTION: Caren France
PERFORMANCES BY: Leona Carney, Alexandra Smith, Kristen DiNinno,Margaret Peterson, Cooper Grodin, Leslie Tay, Adam Cavagnaro, Joseph Flaxman

March 15, 2009
Manhattan School of Music, Greenfield Hall
Developmental workshop of Act I
in association with Opera Index and the Manhattan School of Music
MUSIC DIRECTION: Silas Huff
STAGE DIRECTION: Caren France
PERFORMANCES BY: Leona Carney, Alexandra Smith, Kristen DiNinno,Margaret Peterson, Cooper Grodin, Leslie Tay, Adam Cavagnaro, Joseph Flaxman

October 3-4, 2008
South Oxford Space
Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes
MUSIC DIRECTION: Jennifer Peterson
STAGE DIRECTION: Ned Canty
PERFORMANCES BY: Jennifer Berkebile, Marcus DeLoach, Michelle Jennings, Thomas Wazelle