Weekend Music 2: East Village Opera Company

This is the East Village Opera Company.

It seems to be on hiatus right now, and not a lot of information is available about the group, which performed wonderful mashups of rock and opera back in the earlier 2000s. Their Facebook page has had postings as recently as 2017, but their domain name is up for grabs, so I'm not sure if the group will ever get back together.

I was fortunate enough to find a five minute docu-video for the group!

I first learned about East Village Opera Company from an NPR radio story back in 2006. It's hard to fathom how long ago that was. I had four kids under the age of ten, and we had just started commuting an hour away to a swim team that would prove to be a competitive turning point for my older two kids. Our long car rides back and forth daily to the pool were endured with the help of some new technology–I had just acquired an iPod Touch. I was homeschooling my kids and used the Touch and the sound system in our van to give my kids the music education that I felt they needed to have. When I found the East Village Opera Company, it was magical, an incredible opportunity to show my kids how the arts are meant to grow and stretch and transform.

The group treated these timeless, over-the-top arias as modern pieces that deserved the treatment that popular music of today would get.

If you're an opera fan, you are in for an amazing treat! It's hard to find music videos for this group but I've got a few for you below.

The piece referred to by group founder Peter Kiesewalter as “silly” but a beautiful piece of music, it's to die for:

And last but not least, the gorgeous “Flower Duet:”