TIGHTROPE – AN ELECTROPERA (2016/2017)

Libretto by Tatiana Wechsler

About: TIGHTROPE was developed as part of Artists‘ Beit Midrash at the Town and Village Synagogue in New York. The piece is based on Ecclesiastes and is set as a conversation that Kohelet and one of his wives have before he writes the text.

History of Development: 

• First presentation on October 19th, 2016 at the Town and Village Synagogue, New York

Music directed: Peter Michael von der Nahmer
Cast:                                                                                                
WIFE: Tatiana Wechsler
KING. Raji Ahsan
Backing Vocals: Ruthy Froch

• Revised version premiered: January 12, 2017 at the Actor’s Temple, New York.

Music directed: Peter Michael von der Nahmer
Cast:                                                                                               
WIFE: Tatiana Wechsler
KING. Raji Ahsan
Backing Vocals: Ruthy Froch

About: Tightrope is an exploration of Ecclesiastes, one of the most debated books of the Bible. Ecclesiastes delves into the meaning of life, the many inconsistencies encountered during life, and how to handle those inconsistencies. The process of writing Tightrope began by Mike and I examining and analyzing the text thoroughly. We then highlighted the verses we were most interested in and that we thought had the potential to form a narrative. We quickly decided that the story would be told from the viewpoint of the author of Ecclesiastes and his wife. Once we set that, we settled upon a basic outline: the author is trying to write a book about the meaning of life but is stuck until his wife, through various scenarios tackling the topics of women, wisdom, time, and death, enlightens him to what he could write. Then I began a trial-and-error stage of writing; I wrote a few different versions of a libretto, each time keeping some parts and changing others. After a few weeks of that, I realized that something larger structurally had to change to make it work. We decided that it should only include the characters of the author and wife (with additional singing voices), and I also wanted to make all the dialogue rhyming, making it more like spoken word or rap going in and out of sung pieces. Once those decisions were made, I quickly wrote a draft, and then Mike wrote most of the music separately. We worked, sometimes together in person, sometimes separately, then to make further edits and changes until we settled on a version we were both happy with.

MUSIC: