THE VISITATION an opera for a vanishing world
music by Christina Campanella
words by Stephanie Fleischmann
An epidemic of loneliness…
is sweeping the city. Its solitary inhabitants dwell in little box-like apartments, cut off from the natural world, their dreams haunted by the deer who appeared in a city park in Harlem a few years prior. A woman who builds dioramas eavesdrops on her next-door neighbor—an elderly, housebound naturalist who conjures the rapidly disappearing topography of the planet earth by reciting a forgotten language. In the city park across the street, a park gardener ponders the deer’s route as elsewhere, a vocalist confined to a sound booth voices the creature, periodically stepping out of the booth to embody a woman who dreams of riding through the woods on the back of a deer. A rainstorm like no other pummels the city. As the storm clears, a chorus of agoraphobics steps outside and looks up at the sky.
This atmospheric new music-theater work shot through with solastalgia (a longing for the lost natural realm) explores a dreamtime and a heartspace that can only be experienced in the context of music. Deploying a dramaturgy of miniature gestures that trigger epic ripples through a hermetically sealed universe, THE VISITATION investigates the ramifications of the built world on the ever more fragile wild, and plumbs the loneliness of the urban environment.
This work coexists in relationship with / in proximity to the SOUNDWALK created by Campanella and Fleischmann with Mallory Catlett in the spring of 2021 and revised by Campanella and Fleischmann and relaunched in May 2023 c/o URHERE. You can experience it in context, in Jackie Robinson Park or remotely, at home.
Duration: 60–70 minutes
Forces: 4 singers (2 sopranos, 1 tenor, 1 mezzo, 3 multi-instrumentalists (guitar/bass/ukelele, drums, keys), electronics and video
Workshop—June 21, 2022, Tape Kitchen, Brooklyn, NY; with Damon Daunno, Gelsey Bell, Alma Cuervo, & Kasper; and the band: Mark Spencer, Sammy Baker, Michael Chinworth
The development of THE VISITATION received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers Discovery Grants program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.
website: www.ihaveseenthedeer.com
“Looking out,
looking out my window,
I see the world.
I see it changing
day by day.Berm turns to plain.
Shale grinds to dust.
Inlet wears marsh away.I see green,
how it slips to orange.
I see the rain
how its slick paints the stone
a blackened grey.I see the change looming in the trees.
I watch the sky marching across the pane.
”I read the stain of time in the summer haze..”
