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Album
Dennis Cleveland
Mikel Rouse →551 listeners12,838 plays
art popneed to re-listentotalismcontemporary classicalexperimental
about this album
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 solois
