Meet the Composer
Duke Performances Commissions Phil Kline
Composer Phil Kline and writer/director Jim Jarmusch will create Tesla, an opera about Nikola Tesla, a man of incredible gifts about whom we understand little, and his years in lower Manhattan. The main character of this piece is his spirit, his desire to invent and make a better world. His fate is tragic, but the spirit is heroic. Like Baroque opera, mixing men and gods, the natural and supernatural, the aim of the production is an essential and symbolic, rather than literal, truth, rooted in the suggestive power of image and sound. Vivid hallucinations trump dull facts. The reality is that of dreams, memories or myths. The musical ensemble will be for string quartet, four electric guitars, keyboard and a small children's chorus. Staging is reductive and symbolic, with creative use of light and shadow and selective use of video.
World premiere: Fall 2013