PERFECT LIVES: AN OPERA FOR TELEVISION BY ROBERT ASHLEY
Dir. John Sanborn, 1983.
United States. 183 min.
In English.

Spectacle is thrilled to present this series of screenings commemorating the 40th anniversary restoration of Robert Ashley’s seminal seven-part television opera, PERFECT LIVES. Commissioned by The Kitchen in 1978 and produced over the span of four years, the piece was adapted for television in 1983 in collaboration with video artist, John Sanborn. The resulting seven-episode series stands as one of the most unique and ambitious projects to in the history of broadcast television, intertwining spoken-word narratives, musical textures, and hypnotic analog video compositions to form what Ashley has described as a “comic opera about reincarnation”.

In a loose sense, the series follows lounge singer, “R” (Ashley), and his friend “The World’s Greatest Piano Player”, Buddy (“Blue” Gene Tyranny), as they hatch plans to commit the perfect crime (“metaphor for something philosophical”) alongside the son and daughter of the local sheriff, Isolde (Jill Kroesen) and “D” (David van Tieghem). Yet to say that Ashley’s opus is “about” one particular narrative or theme or even medium, would be a disservice to its beautifully digressive nature. Ashley’s narration, accompanied by Tyranny’s and Peter Gordon’s musical soundscapes, flows effortlessly between settings and subjects, sincerity and satire, to create a constantly unfolding image of 20th century Americana.

PERFECT LIVES has been been described as “the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s”. A quintessentially “American” work of art, not just in its vernacular language and skewering of Midwestern ennui, but also in its television format— described in Fanfare as catered specifically to American attention spans— in which Ashley adopts similar editing techniques and effects used in commercials to appeal to the viewer’s subconscious association between the comforts of consumerism and the broadcast television format.

“What about the Bible? And the Koran? It doesn’t matter. We have PERFECT LIVES”
—John Cage

This program would not be possible without the generous support of Lovely Music and Performing Artservices.