Hosted by The Institute for
Parapsychological Research
The Singing Cabinets are a haunted, interactive, site-specific, choose your own adventure, scavenger hunt opera that fits squarely into Opera on Tap’s mission of building audiences by taking opera to new places.
Six different pieces of automata or coin-operated “singing cabinets” will be strategically placed throughout a city, town, campus, building, grounds, etcetera.
Each interactive singing cabinet houses a unique, life-like automaton played by a female vocalist. When a coin is dropped into the cabinet, the curtains part, the gears whir, the elaborately decorated cabinet comes to life and a mysterious aria/monodrama is revealed.
The singer tells the tale of a captured soul yearning to be free and the men who trapped her there. Each aria unearths a secret. Each mechanical cabinet divulges a piece of a much larger narrative puzzle. When all six singing cabinets are viewed in succession, the vast meta-verse comes to life. The Singing Cabinets are a tale of misogyny, technology, witchcraft and revenge.
THE MUSIC:
The music for the cabinets will blend period-specific popular song, found sound, and extended vocal techniques with classical vocal writing. The design of each cabinet will guide the style of music and types of found sounds. For example, the Singing Cabinet of Mathilde LeBeau draws on 19th century music boxes (such as the Regina and Symphonion) paired with Schubertian art song. The Sideshow Cabinet is inspired by fairground automata such as the Limonaire organ.
