Video Out

Your High Imperial

Your High Imperial has duration of seventeen minutes with music composed by Kenneth Doren who also developed the concept. The libretto developed by Christina Willings forms disparate sexual and political text inspired by the biblical Songs of Solomon, George Bernard Shaw s The Intelligent Woman s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer) which served as a guidebook for Inquisitors during the Inquisition during the Middle Ages. This is a digital video opera based on the compositions of J. S. Bach s organ music and Giuseppe Tartini s The Devil s Sonata form the digitally re-composed music that is transcribed for a brass quintet and two violins for a live rendition. Two opera singers, Christina Willings and Maman (a man in drag) perform the libretto in a number of different costumes and settings. Opera singers are combined edited with a video performance of Bizet s symbolic Carmen to create a visual and musical collage while also being intellectually slippery. The opera create a visually pulsing new musing on the selected text while penetrating traditional musical and theatrical methods with the use of technology.