A queer fantasia on the cancellation of the straight cis- white male artist. A sex comedy about the origin of music. A mapping of the creative process and its distractions. An opera that tackles the nature of inspiration, originality, and illusion through the cautionary tale of a fictional composer’s actions on social media.
To Music is a four-episode musical sitcom. Most of the plot takes place on the internet, visualized by artist and video designer Joshua Thorson. Characters sing a primarily non-verbal soundtrack to their typewritten observations and feelings, interrupted by ringtones, ad jingles, pop songs, and notification alerts—alongside fragments of Schubert, Handel, Purcell, and Bach. When contrasting genres begin to resemble each other, the dramatic stakes rise.
Scenes one and two were produced in concert form by Experiments in Opera in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Scene three was developed in residency at Mount Tremper Arts and ISSUE Project Room in 2018. A concert of scene four—the “final act”—played at Roulette in October, 2019.
Early press for To Music:
"Gorgeous, heartfelt vocalises...it's a genius solution to expressing the inner lives of characters while keeping the action moving forward...most successful"—Opera News
"The best of the operas juxtaposed wildly contrasting musical styles. Hallett’s dark comedy To Music was the most elaborate collage”—Pitchfork
"Most engaging...Hallett craftily worked ringtones into the score and scripted a glitching and stalling streaming internet ad for soprano" —New York Classical Review
“(To Music) steps around opera, circumnavigates it, pierces it, undoes it…(I loved) its novel decision to allow the singers to use vocalise and other pre-verbal and semi-verbal and word-escaping techniques. Text was thereby separated from song; they met, but also, importantly diverged. Song had a life of its own, dovetailing with words, but not tethered to language…pushing away from "opera," to make this other emotive realm of vocalism prosper—a realm that includes language but is also not the language we customarily use and recognize…A utopian project, deliciously post-opera (and thereby rescuing opera).”—Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire.