Blind Witness: Three American Operas

by Charles Bernstein

Drama. BLIND WITNESS brings together three libretti written in the early 1990s by poet Charles Bernstein for composer Ben Yarmolinsky. Bernstein & Yarmolinsky's trilogy combines vernacular American lyrics with vernacular social forms. 'Blind Witness News' uncannily mimics the format of the eleven o'clock evening news with segments for international and local news, weather, business news, and sports. Then, as now, war sets the dark undertone. 'The Subject'--at times elegiac, at times parodic--sets a psychoanalytic session to music. 'The Lenny Paschen Show' focuses on Lenny, the Kamikaze King of Comedy, a late night talk show host at the edge of his career, pushing his schtick to the limit. When 'Blind Witness News' was first performed in 1990, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times "Mr. Bernstein's libretto catches with near perfection the stock verbal moves--the forced laughter, empty banter, catch-phrases and cutesy segues--in which television news reports are cushioned."

110 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets). In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, Bernstein was awarded the Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Brown University, and Princeton University.

Bernstein's highly anticipated new work, All the Whisky in Heaven, will be published in Spring 2010 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Also to be released in the upcoming year is a Companion to Charles Bernstein, which will be published by Salt Publishing, the winner of the prestigious 2008 Nielsen Innovation of the Year award.

Reviews

[birdslibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

1990-1992, three operas with three distinct concepts, a news show, a therapy session, and a talk show. All available here:
https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x...

[Reese Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

good stuff.