Dennis Cleveland by Mikel Rouse

“DENNIS CLEVELAND is the most exciting and innovative new opera since Einstein on the Beach.”
-KYLE GANN, The Village Voice

“…the idea is an inspired one and Rouse has fashioned a stunning 90 minute musical drama out of it.”
-PETER G. DAVIS, New York Magazine

“I know of nothing that has this combination: the compositional intelligence of the best of New York’s downtown avant-garde, the musical means of a rock band and the ability to transform the sleaziest side of popular culture into near-Wagnerian exaltation.”
-MARK SWED, The Los Angeles Times

“Rouse’s music is gripping and hypnotic, alternating singing with sing-songy recitation and blending rock, classical and African elements.”
-BRUCE CULP, Toronto Globe and Mail

“Of all new music composers, only Rouse is at home enough in the world of mass media to have had the chutzpah to engineer the first operatic talk show, with singers in the audience, choreographed cameramen, and an audience watching itself on video.”
-Time Out Magazine

Dennis Cleveland is a multimedia opera that is set entirely on a television talk show in the late 20th century. It is the second opera in a Trilogy that consists of Failing Kansas, an opera based on the events surrounding the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas and inspired by the examination of those events in Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ and The End Of Cinematics an opera that explores the nature of corporate entertainment.

The host, Dennis Cleveland, is the catalyst and provacatour of the opera, as well as the vehicle through which the story of the opera is told. The various soloists (placed in the audience) and chorus (guests that appear on stage) are linked together by the talk show host. As befits the current obsession with confessional talk shows, the content of the story evolves through the constant interaction of Dennis Cleveland and his guests. Though the guests appear to be telling their own stories, stories of lost love, obsession, crimes and regrets, what soon becomes clear is that they are telling the story of Dennis Cleveland as well.

Dennis Cleveland uses the live tape talk show format as its model while subverting the structure of this format through a series of cleverly disguised motifs. Like the various talk shows that abound worldwide, the audience and the stage become one under constant unrelenting television studio lighting. Live video of audience reactions and the inclusion of actors in the audience as well as trained singers and soloists complete a staging that offers a new way of looking at opera.

Ultimately, the narrative is derived from the libretto, which follows Dennis Cleveland through a myriad of encounters chronicling the promise of salvation through popular culture. There is an Elmer Gantry like quality to the host and his reality, particularly the late 20th century phenomenon of television ritual as a replacement of ceremony previously associated with religion. Thus, the ritual is enforced in real time as the opera progresses and it soon becomes apparent that the audience exists in Dennis Cleveland’s future: that of the ultimate voyeur, the T.V. talk show host.

-1996 Mikel Rouse

Mikel Rouse is a New York-based composer, director, performer and recording artist hailed as “a composer many believe to be the best of his generation.” (NY Times 2002) His works include 25 records, 7 films (including Funding and Music For Minorities), and a trilogy of media operas: Failing Kansas, Dennis Cleveland and The End Of Cinematics.

mikelrouse.com