In his spare time, Lewis Pesacov from Fool’s Gold writes operas for dogs…
“I recently wrote a dog opera. It’s an art project. We filmed these dogs, and they were dressed in human costumes, in the roles of the story of the opera. I wrote the libretto first, like a classic opera – it’s only twelve minutes long. I originally studied classical music for fifteen years, so it was kind of a fun way to get back to it. I wrote for a string quartet and five opera singers.
The title of the opera is ‘Tragedy On The Sea Nymph’. The story is that there’s a wealthy heiress who’s leaving in the middle of the night on a ship with her lover, who is poor, and the ship is wrecked in a storm. She is lost at sea and he is looking for her, and in order to find her, there’s three mermaids – who are played by three little chihuahuas – and the mermaids plea to the dogstar to shine a light. So he sees her, he finally finds her, and then they drown together. The lead character, the female, is a French bulldog, and the male is a mutt. I think that the mutt stole the show. He just had a very soulful face and soulful eyes.
We had a performance and everyone brought their dogs to watch. At the end, when everybody was clapping, all the dogs in the audience started barking along. It was actually really amazing; it couldn’t have been better planned.
I made a proper recording of it, and there is going to be a DVD form of it. We showed it at an art gallery in Los Angeles, but it’s going to be showing at the Walker Arts Centre in Minneapolis, and then we’re going to show it in New York City, and probably San Francisco as well.
I’d be interested in making operas for other animals, as long as it’s not cats. I think my dogs would be jealous if I were to write an opera for cats. I’d write a giraffe opera. With the long necks, maybe they can hit the really high notes. Maybe it can be scored with didgeridoos.”
‘Leave No Trace’, the new album from Fool’s Gold, is out in August.
