Guerilla Opera on Bringing Her | alive.un.dead to Pao Arts Center

by Aliana de la Guardia, Guerilla Opera Artistic Director

Why focus on new operas?

Guerilla Opera was started by a group of artists steeped in a community that supported composers and frequently performed new work. I performed a staged song cycle by co-founding artist and composer, Rudolf Rojahn. The music was raucous. The intimacy of the venue and staging somehow made the performance that much more ferocious. The formation of Guerilla Opera was really to get Rudolf to write something more substantial, and to perform it with a larger ensemble in a similar vein… and we did… and we loved it!

At the time we formed, 2007, there were only 3 or 4 other companies in the states exclusively performing new work. So we knew that there was a space for this, and gathering from our audience, which consisted of many artists and colleagues at the time, there was also a need for it. 

We take it a step further by adding more limitations. We don’t like to exceed 4 singers and 4 instrumentalists, and we perform unconducted, with very few exceptions. This makes our performance practice unique, and dependent upon having a consistent ensemble of artists who work together often.

Supporting new opera creators is such an important part of the arts landscape. If companies only seek to remake or reexamine existing euro-centric repertoire, whether or not the opera has relevance to the issues of today, the genre still doesn’t move forward. 

Artists are social historians. They document events, moments and perspectives in ways that help us remember what it felt like to be there, or that allow us to step into someone else’s world with empathy and compassion so that we have a greater understanding of our shared world and of each other. This is the importance of new work creation.

Why Pao Arts Center for Her | alive.un.dead?

We don’t have one venue where we perform all the time, so this puts us in a unique position to bring new opera to communities. We first approached Emily in 2018, and when she settled on this story, from several initial ideas, I knew we needed to partner with the right cultural institution. 

It’s not often to get a new opera written about and from the perspective of or that is bilingual in a language that is not euro-centric. Although audiences of varying ethnicities can relate to the story and enjoy it, as I do, the opera has a culturally-specific audience and experience at the center of it. 

Unlike the most common depictions of Asian peoples in opera (the problematic Madama Butterfly, Turandot, or The Mikado to name only a few), Emily’s story offers audiences an opportunity to see contemporary versions of themselves in the art created with their life experience at the forefront. That is the importance of this collaboration with the Pao Arts Center.

Her | alive.un.dead by Emily Koh is premiering at Pao Arts Center May 12 - May 14. Purchase your tickets here.

The commissioning of Emily Koh for HER | alive.un.dead: a media opera received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

This opera is supported in part by a Grants for Arts Projects Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Live Arts Boston Grant award from The Boston Foundation and their partners at the Barr Foundation and Dunamis., a grant from Eastman’s Institute for Music Leadership’s funds from the Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research, and an award from the New Music USA Creator Development Fund.

This world-premiere opera was developed in partnership with the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and the Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts.