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Now Eleanor's Idea
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| At long last, the complete Now Eleanor's Idea quartet of operas is available on CD with the release of the final opera in the quartet, also called Now Eleanor's Idea. This release includes a booklet with the libretto and several pages of fantastic color photographs from Chimayo, NM, the town that helped inspire the story (well, that and Low Rider magazine). 'Opera likes to simplify and enlarge its characters to make them fit grand themes. Mr. Ashley goes in the opposite direction and arrives at the cosmos just as easily. Mundane chitchat about good eating habits or car repair turns to metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, not to mention psychiatry, before we know it.' --Bernard Holland, The New York Times. Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, for an individual's self-realization within the context of a major religion found in the United States. Improvement takes its imagery and plot from Judaism, 'Foreign Experiences' from Pentecostal Evangelism, 'eL/Aficionado' from Corporate Mysticism, and 'Now Eleanor's Idea' from (Spanish) Catholicism. While working at The Bank, the title character, Now Eleanor, has a sort of 'religious experience' that fills her with an 'approach of the end of the world feeling.' This feeling compels her to leave her job in the Midwest, move to New Mexico, and become a newscaster to try to discover the point where the religions of America -- Judaism, Protestantism, Business and Catholicism merge. But there is more in store for her than she realizes. |
ARTISTS
Music & Libretto by Robert Ashley
Featuring: Joan LaBarbara as Now Eleanor
Amy X Neuburg as Now Eleanor’s Low Rider Double
Marghreta Cordero as Now Eleanor’s Guardian Angel
Ensemble Voices: Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert
Mixing and Electronics: Tom Hamilton |
TRACKS
Disc 1:
1. Change (22:03)
2. The Miracle of Cars (22:02)
Disc 2:
3. Questions and Answers (21:57)
4. The Song (22:26) |
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