Culture! Culture! , An Opera by Robert Owens August 7 | 7:30PM ·
The Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will present the North American premiere of composer Robert Owens’ opera titled “Culture! Culture!” on Friday, Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theatre, located on the first floor of the Temple Building at 12th and R st. The performance is a culmination of Assistant Professor of Voice Jamie Reimer’s eight-year collaboration with Owens to study his music and bring it to a wider audience.
The opera’s plot centers on the intersection of the artist and the business of making music.
“The focal figure is a tenor, Paul, who is on the brink of a spectacular career, and he’s discovering that his time is being spent less on the making of music, and more on the business of music,” Reimer said. “And it’s the process by which he does or does not work through that in the pursuit of his career.”
The subplot involves Tobias, a composer, who has written what he thinks is his life’s masterpiece, an oratorio. He desperately wants Paul to sing it.
“And by means of lots of plot devices, they end up together intoxicated in a bar talking about this,” Reimer said. “Paul not knowing that Tobias is a composer, and Tobias knowing Paul is a famous and gifted tenor. There’s a love interest for Tobias, and a very overbearing producer and manager that try to manipulate the situation for their benefit. It’s universal to anyone who is trying to make great art, and it’s a little scathing of those that assist in the making of great art.”