Preview: “The Incompetence Opera”

The 2017 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will include the premiere of a new mini-opera: “The Incompetence Opera.”

It’s a musical encounter with the Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s about how and why incompetent people rise to the top — and what that implies for everybody.

Music by Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, John Walter Bratton, and Anon. Story and words by  Marc Abrahams .
Directed by  Maria Ferrante  and  Robin Abrahams
Starring  Maria Ferrante  and Ray Bauwens
With The Peter Principle Chorus — Ellen Friend, Jan Hadland, Dakota McCoy, Anabel Graetz, Abby Schiff, Jean Cummings, Scott Taylor, Andrew Ross, Bjorn Corleis, John Jarcho, Ted Sharp, Michael Skersky, Daniel Rosenburg
Orchestral accompaniment by the Dunning-Kruger Effective Orchestra — Yulia Yun, Dr. Thomas Michel, and Dr. Bruce Koplan

The opera has three acts, which will intersperse with the awarding of this year’s ten new Ig Nobel Prizes, and with other goings-on. (The entire libretto is included in this year’s IgBill, the printed program distributed at the ceremony. You can download a copy now, in PDF form.)

WHEN AND WHERE: You can watch the opera premiere — and the entire Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — on the live webcast on Thursday evening, September 14. (A few tickets are still available, if you’d like to attend the ceremony at Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus.)

BACKGROUND (the principles and the prizes): The Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger Effect have each led to an Ig Nobel Prize.

The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for management was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. [Their research is described in “The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,” Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72.]
The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize for psychology was awarded to David Dunning and Justin Kruger, for their modest report, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” [Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, December 1999, pp. 1121-34.]

BACKGROUND (the operas): Every Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony since 1996 has included a new mini-opera, performed by professional opera singers (with Nobel Laureates acting in supporting roles). These mini-operas honor the tradition of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Rabbit of Seville“— each mini-opera is a pasticcio that marries a brand new story & words to beloved old music (from operas, popular songs, etc.). Here’s a list of the other Ig Nobel mini-operas:

2016: “The Last Second”

2015: “The Best Life”

2014: “What’s Eating You?”

2013: “The Blonsky Device”

2012: “The Intelligent Designer and The Universe”

2011: “Chemist in a Coffee Shop”

2010: “The Bacterial Opera”

2009: “The Big Bank Opera”

2008: “Redundancy, Again”

2007: “Chicken Versus Egg”

2006: “Inertia Makes The World Go Around”

2005: “The Count of Infinity”

2004: “The Atkins Diet Opera”

2003: “Atom and Eve”

2002: “The Jargon Opera”

2001: “The Wedding Complex”

2000: “The Brain Food Opera”

1999: “The Seedy Opera”

1998: “La Forza Del Duct Tape”

1997: “Il Kaboom Grosso”

1996: “Lament Del Cockroach”