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The Perfect American
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The Perfect American
The Perfect American is an opera in two acts composed in 2011–12 by Philip Glass. It is an adaptation of the Peter Stephan Jungk novel Der König von Amerika, a fictional work that re-imagines Walt Disney in his later years as a power-hungry racist. It was commissioned by the Teatro Real in Madrid in co-production with the English National Opera in London.
The world premiere of the work took place at the Teatro Real on 22 January 2013 with Dennis Russell Davies conducting and directed by Phelim McDermott. The first English production was on 1 June 2013 by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum, under the direction of Gareth Jones.
Jones and McDermott directed the third production with Opera Queensland (Australia) for the Brisbane Festival, commencing 15 September 2014. Christopher Purves, the baritone who sang the role of Walt, and Marie McLaughlin who played the role of Walt’s wife, also participated in a televised TV chat show about the opera along with McDermott.
The Madrid premiere was broadcast live on medici.tv and recorded for subsequent DVD release.
The Perfect American arose from a commission of the New York City Opera in September 2008. The project idea was suggested by Gerard Mortier, who was appointed director in February 2007, and gave a copy of Jungk's novel to Philip Glass, seeing a perfect frame for a future production.
The libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer is based on the controversial biographical novel Der König von Amerika by Peter Stephan Jungk. When he was a child, Jungk's parents received frequent visits from their friend, physicist Heinz Haber, who at the time worked for Disney as a scientific consultant. The novel imagines the last three months of the life of Walt Disney from the tales of the fictional Austrian cartoonist Wilhelm Dantine, who – before being fired – had worked for Disney between 1940 and 1950. The creator of Mickey Mouse is depicted as something of a megalomaniac racist, misogynist (only men were allowed to draw, women were only allowed coloring) anti-Semite and Nazi sympathiser, and for exposing three of his employees before the Committee on Un-American Activities. Disney, played in the opera by Christopher Purves, comments on the march on Washington in August 1963: "Where leads all this freedom, negroes walking to Washington, the misfits who fornicate like rabbits?"
Glass describes the last years of the life of Walt Disney "unimaginable, alarming and truly frightening", but cedes him responsibility for his own ideas because he believes they are the product of the context in which he lived. He sees him as "a child of his time with very conservative ideas, yes, but a great visionary", "a human being in ordinary and extraordinary times", "an icon of modernity, a man capable of building bridges between high culture and popular culture". In this sense it recalls that "Disney has always been conscious of the attitudes of ordinary people and also allowed the masses to address the high culture by introducing the music of Tchaikovsky and others in his films." For him, his opera "is not a documentary or portrait" but a "journey poetic and tragic" through the last months of the life of an artist who "faced the same doubts that beset us all". He therefore conceived the work as a kind of poem on the quintessentially American and a reflection on death.
Scenes from the end of the life of Walt Disney. The action goes from Disney's home town of Marceline, Missouri to his animated dream factory in Los Angeles. Disney is haunted by his own mortality, set against the backdrop of the creation of his visionary empire of imagination.
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The Perfect American
The Perfect American is an opera in two acts composed in 2011–12 by Philip Glass. It is an adaptation of the Peter Stephan Jungk novel Der König von Amerika, a fictional work that re-imagines Walt Disney in his later years as a power-hungry racist. It was commissioned by the Teatro Real in Madrid in co-production with the English National Opera in London.
The world premiere of the work took place at the Teatro Real on 22 January 2013 with Dennis Russell Davies conducting and directed by Phelim McDermott. The first English production was on 1 June 2013 by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum, under the direction of Gareth Jones.
Jones and McDermott directed the third production with Opera Queensland (Australia) for the Brisbane Festival, commencing 15 September 2014. Christopher Purves, the baritone who sang the role of Walt, and Marie McLaughlin who played the role of Walt’s wife, also participated in a televised TV chat show about the opera along with McDermott.
The Madrid premiere was broadcast live on medici.tv and recorded for subsequent DVD release.
The Perfect American arose from a commission of the New York City Opera in September 2008. The project idea was suggested by Gerard Mortier, who was appointed director in February 2007, and gave a copy of Jungk's novel to Philip Glass, seeing a perfect frame for a future production.
The libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer is based on the controversial biographical novel Der König von Amerika by Peter Stephan Jungk. When he was a child, Jungk's parents received frequent visits from their friend, physicist Heinz Haber, who at the time worked for Disney as a scientific consultant. The novel imagines the last three months of the life of Walt Disney from the tales of the fictional Austrian cartoonist Wilhelm Dantine, who – before being fired – had worked for Disney between 1940 and 1950. The creator of Mickey Mouse is depicted as something of a megalomaniac racist, misogynist (only men were allowed to draw, women were only allowed coloring) anti-Semite and Nazi sympathiser, and for exposing three of his employees before the Committee on Un-American Activities. Disney, played in the opera by Christopher Purves, comments on the march on Washington in August 1963: "Where leads all this freedom, negroes walking to Washington, the misfits who fornicate like rabbits?"
Glass describes the last years of the life of Walt Disney "unimaginable, alarming and truly frightening", but cedes him responsibility for his own ideas because he believes they are the product of the context in which he lived. He sees him as "a child of his time with very conservative ideas, yes, but a great visionary", "a human being in ordinary and extraordinary times", "an icon of modernity, a man capable of building bridges between high culture and popular culture". In this sense it recalls that "Disney has always been conscious of the attitudes of ordinary people and also allowed the masses to address the high culture by introducing the music of Tchaikovsky and others in his films." For him, his opera "is not a documentary or portrait" but a "journey poetic and tragic" through the last months of the life of an artist who "faced the same doubts that beset us all". He therefore conceived the work as a kind of poem on the quintessentially American and a reflection on death.
Scenes from the end of the life of Walt Disney. The action goes from Disney's home town of Marceline, Missouri to his animated dream factory in Los Angeles. Disney is haunted by his own mortality, set against the backdrop of the creation of his visionary empire of imagination.