rhymes with dolly

george here. a little bit more about the dolly opera. by the way, look for an "official" "announcement" of our upcoming tour schedule soon! baltimore on may 23, durham on may 24. rhymes with opera brings new opera to where you live! (well, where *we* live, anyway.)

i'm working on my piece with playwright John Clum, currently the head of the theater studies department here at Duke. last fall, i wrote music for John's production of Shakespeare's Pericles, where the entire ensemble produced the music; the actors sang, played and strummed throughout the play.

this new project is a short opera about a man obsessed with dolly parton. the inspiration came with Robert Maril telling me about this documentary that came out on LOGO (and probably a few movie theaters) a while ago, which chronicled the fanatic fans who followed dolly everywhere. they were in love with dolly's image, dolly was in love with dolly's image, and all of this slowly became "heartbreak express".

a little bit from the beginning of the libretto:

Mama used to play me Dolly
The happy songs
She played the sad stuff after I went to bed
She thought I didn’t hear it.
For me,
even Dolly’s sad songs sound like hope.

I can’t remember when Dolly didn’t sing to me.
When I was little, I loved the sound of her voice.
It’s the voice of joy, of resilience.
Our favorite was “Here You Come Again”
Mama would pick me up in her arms and dance around the room with me.
Filled with the joy of wishful thinking.
She never stopped wanting Daddy back.
But he was in love - how does the line go? –
He was in love with long distance.

“Here you come again
Lookin’ better than a body has a right to.”