Vidas Perfectas by Robert Ashley

Live television production for Robert Ashley's Vidas Perfectas, as directed by Alex Waterman. Performances include 2014 Whitney Biennial, Ballroom Marfa and Tricky Falls in Texas and Museo de la Revolución en la Frontera in Juarez.

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Photo © Paula Court

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An all-new, Spanish-language version of Ashley's opera-for-television, Perfect Lives

Composed by
Robert Ashley

Directed by
Alex Waterman

Starring
Ned Sublette as Raoul de Noget

Co-Starring
Elio Villafranca as Buddy, “The World’s Greatest Piano Player”

Featuring
Elisa Santiago as Isolde, Gwyn, and Ida
Raul De Nieves as Will, Ed, and The Captain of the Football Team

Music Produced by
Peter Gordon

Original Keyboard Melodies and Harmonies
“Blue” Gene Tyranny

Translation
Javier Sainz de Robles, adapted by Elisa Santiago & Ned Sublette

Production Design
Sean Daly

Backdrops and Set Pieces
Sarah Crowner

Lighting Design
David Moodey

Costumes
Elisa Santiago

Live Televisual Composition
Victoria Keddie and Scott Kiernan (E.S.P. TV)

Director of Photography
Peter Szollosi

Vidas Perfectas - El Patio De Atras (The Backyard) Filmed before a live television audience at the Whitney Museum, NYC April 19, 2014 at 4:30pm EST.

Vidas Perfectas is a Spanish-language version of Robert Ashley's groundbreaking “television opera” Perfect Lives (1983). With Ashley's blessing, Alex Waterman directs this all-new production, from a Spanish translation by Javier Sainz de Robles.

In the Vidas Perfectas lounge we discover a place where Spanish and English are mutually understood through the transformative and magical act of singing. Originally set in “The Corn Belt” of the Midwest, Vidas Perfectas transports us to the deserts and ranches of the Southwest⎯a vision of (an)other America.

These performances of the work’s seven episodes marked the beginning of the filming and recording of the complete opera in full theatrical staging. All episodes were filmed in front of a live audience. Footage shot on-location in Marfa, Texas, in February 2014 will be mixed with live camera feeds as part of the live television experience. Between the performances, Alex Waterman and E.S.P. TV used the room as a workspace to rehearse, edit, and prepare footage for live television.

Perfect Lives was originally commissioned for television by The Kitchen, New York, in 1979 and was completed in 1983, co-produced by The Kitchen and Channel Four in Great Britain. It was aired on Channel Four in 1983 and 1984, and subsequently on German, Austrian, and Spanish television. Parts of the seven-episode series have been seen on American cable channels and in Japan and Australia. Perfect Lives’ innovative combination of chanting, storytelling, meditation, and ecstatic revelation, challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship between language and music. It has almost single-handedly changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.