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FULL ID Please (Soosan Lolavar) London 2017 Patrick Dailey, Shannyn Rinker, Robert Raso
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: ID Please
- Composer: Soosan Lolavar
- Libretto: Daniel Hirsch Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London, UK
- Recorded: July 25, 2017
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Patrick Dailey, Shannyn Rinker, Robert Raso
- Conductor: Daniel Nesta Curtis
- Orchestra: CHROMA
- Stage Director: Stephen M.Eckert
- Stage Designer: Caitlin Ayer
- Costume Designer: Nina Bova
Information about the Recording
- Published by: tete a tete
- Date Published: 2017
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
ID, Please is a 40-minute chamber opera about immigration and border security featuring music by Soosan Lolavar and libretto by Daniel Hirsch. The pair met in the US while studying at Carnegie Mellon University.
ID, Please was developed in reaction to xenophobic rhetoric surrounding the American presidential campaign, Brexit referendum, and Syrian refugee crisis. It was also inspired by personal experiences of its creators: Soosan is a British-Iranian composer whose music incorporates Western and Iranian traditions; and Daniel is a queer, American Jew who has travelled and written about the Middle East. To include verbatim text and original research, Soosan and Daniel composed an online questionnaire seeking personal experiences related to crossing international borders. They received about two dozen responses and several direct quotes from the questionnaire are included in the libretto.
The opera’s themes became even more personal for the collaborators when President Trump’s de facto Muslim ban threatened to keep Soosan from entering the United States due to her Iranian citizenship. It was unclear if they would be able to finish the opera during this time. Luckily, her flight was on the day a federal judge struck down President Trump’s executive order, and the opera was completed as scheduled.
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