This is an art project by Andy DuCett that was commissioned for SITE Santa Fe in 2019. Working with singer Tara Khozein, we’ve turned grocery lists into original operatic compositions, and sent messages of support in the early days of COVID-19. Given the current circumstances, and working with Tara and programmer Than Tibbetts, we’ve created an opportunity to send a message for these times: support, encouragement, allyship or the kind of thing that a person needs to hear these days, but in Operatic form.

Fill out the form with you’re the message you’d like transformed into music, and the email address of the person who needs to have their reality reframed and affected by soaring operatic tones.

That’s up to you. What do we need to hear when we’re in unfamiliar territory? With all of the new space around us, and the need for social change, what needs to be said Operatically? Is this a message for a friend? A partner? The world at large or maybe just for yourself?

Regardless of who it’s for, here are some suggestions to help you consider what might make a good message:

Give it an arc

You are writing a tiny opera, so think about the tone of your message, and how it naturally arcs like a conversation with some kind of beginning, middle, and end.

Write the way you speak

Feel free to use a combination of complete and incomplete sentences, and creative punctuation, lettering, or word-spacing to emulate your unique way of speaking. The more information you give the singer, the more they have to interpret.

Keep it brief

A short paragraph is best. Think a maximum of four medium-length sentences. Longer messages might be edited for time and clarity, depending on capacity and artistic license.

Eventually. We’ll get to the messages in the order we receive them, but depending on the amount of requests we receive, that time could vary from a week to longer. In the event we’re inundated with libretti, we’ll post updates on operaticservices.com.

We’d love to hear from you. As our name suggests, we want to use the Operatic voice to address the time we’re in, as Opera is well equipped to do. So if you’ve some training or are an enthusiast who thinks this might be the kind of thing you were made to do, send us an email at: hello@operaticservices.com

Please do. Let us know what you do with them. Please see the Creative Commons disclaimer on the website.

Let’s meet up at the bar after this is all said and done, until then take care of yourselves, we love you.