Now here’s a project to get behind.

I’m very wary of these projects where the set­ting of a story to music is promis­cu­ously called an “opera” — it’s because unlike a lot of peo­ple who love them­selves for going to the Opera, I love opera, and I write it.  Believe me, you would never do any­thing so com­pletely futile as writ­ing opera if you didn’t love it.

And that love would be deeply unhealthy if it did not have a good mea­sure of irrev­er­ence, and that’s why I’m excited about this.  Ergo Phizmiz!  Flann O’Brien!  The Third Police­man!  A thrilling and quite prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous com­bi­na­tion of com­plete lack of respect for every­thing decent to bour­geois val­ues and the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of cul­ture (not to men­tion instru­ment mak­ers, tech­nol­ogy, reli­gion and sci­ence).  I am in-fucking-love!

Seri­ously, Phizmiz makes great music by evis­cer­at­ing and then rebuild­ing every cliché of pop that has ever existed.  His work, espe­cially with Peo­ple Like Us, is a joy­ful bal­ance of sin­cer­ity and mock­ery, and is totally musical.

O’Brien is one of my favorite writ­ers and one of the greats of Mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, styl­ish, incred­i­bly smart and scream­ingly funny.  In a way it’s a shame that Phizmiz finds him­self hav­ing to beg on the Inter­tubes, it’s a con­trast between great artistry and mean­ing­less noto­ri­ety.  While I’m a great lover of New York City Opera, I must tem­per that with my irrev­er­ence for their pick­ing up the opera, such as it is, of Rufus Wain­wright.  There’s a com­mer­cial logic to it, but I don’t see how their mis­sion and qual­ity is served by pro­mot­ing music and drama, such as it is, that is clichéd to the point of bom­bast.  City Opera is about music drama, not about the stars stand­ing around singing while the audi­ence eval­u­ates their cos­tumes and those of the peo­ple sit­ting around them.  I’m not con­fi­dent about the results — but will gladly admit if I am com­pletely mis­guided.  Still, some­one needs to pro­duce The Third Police­man, and that some­one appears to be us.

UPDATED: Now with more snarky links!