 Good evening. I'm Tobin Anderson, and I want to welcome you all to what promises to be a very special event the first preview performances of Eric Nielsen's new chamber opera Alice Thymers with the libretto by Dana Walrath This evening has been three years in the making and you'll be getting just a taste tonight What your appetite for the full production which will be coming down the line? Tonight on one piano Allison Saruti will give us an accompaniment that will eventually be scored for an entire ensemble The extraordinary Mary Bonhag as Alice our Protagonist who lived with dementia for close to two decades will tell us her story as you probably know Producing a full-length opera is a very expensive undertaking So I want to draw your attention to the baskets in the rear of the sanctuary If you like what you see this evening and want to support the opera going forward Please consider making a tax-deductible donation through the opera's fiscal sponsor, which is the Monteverdi music school Everyone involved in the production. Thanks you and finally We hope you will all stick around after the performance for a panel discussion with the performers Dana and Eric will be happy to answer any questions you may have and then the traditional Invocations of any event like this Take out your cell phone take a good look at it. Will it remain quiet through the whole performance? The there are two exits the one you came in Emergency exit back here Please keep your mask on for the entire performance and forth Dana and Erica fast asked me to read this a statement about The Abenaki land that we all are on which is becoming I think more and more a standard practice in Vermont venues We want to honor the legacy of Vermont's indigenous people The Abenaki people of the dawn who have cared for this land for generations and continue to do so We recognize the colonialism and the oppression of native peoples are a current and ongoing process And we commit to building our awareness of our present participation We pay our respects to the elders past and present We honor with deep gratitude this land and all it gives us and now Please enjoy this preview of Alice I'mers a chamber opera as the curtain rises on broccoli Good evening. I'm Eric Nielsen and before I say anything else. I have a number of thank-yous to me Thanks to Bethany Church for allowing us to hold our event here Thanks to Tobin Anderson for hosting Many thanks to those who donated To make this evening possible Special thanks to Marion Allison for bringing our words and music to life And of course, thank you all for coming Together Dana and I created the opera Alice I'mers based on Dana's graphic memoir of the same name about her life with her mother Alice and dementia After the successful second run of my first opera a fleeting animal in 2015 I knew I wanted to write another work in the genre Something that had social relevance, but was very different from a fleeting animal. I Thought of creating a vehicle for a single singer namely Mary But even after she agreed I couldn't find a suitable subject until my wife Jackie suggested I check into Dana's work Once I saw the description of her memoir Alice I'mers on her website And we went from there Often the arc of an opera is chronological and generally speaking that's also true with Alice I'mers But the first act is anything but that as we follow Alice's present tense from today to her childhood to her dreams to her fantasies To her realization that she can no longer live with her daughter The second act then follows her seven-year journey in care to the end of her life Tonight you'll see about half the work With scenes from Act 1 and Act 2 While there is only piano accompaniment this evening in a full production There will be an ensemble of ten instruments and on stage along with Alice will be a silent actor dancer Who will take on several parts during the course of the opera? We're delighted that Crystal Brown will be taking that role Working with Dana's libretto and Alice's story has been a wonderful challenge for me And I'm so grateful that I can be here tonight To share a first glimpse of the fruits of our labor with all of you Thank you. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening and here's Dana Mary Thank you and thank all of you for coming out tonight When Eric approached me about the opera I had to say yes Alice loved opera for her opera was a way into the American dream The brown daughter of refugees of the Armenian Genocide young Alice first listened to Saturday afternoons Metropolitan opera radio broadcasts while she was cleaning other people's New York City apartments For the rest of her life. She tuned in each week She and my father Dave had a subscription and when Dave couldn't make it on account of work I was the kid who went in his place Now the opera like the first book which I have the first book and a sequel which is a work in progress Replace and the opera yes Replace the flattened dementia story of loss and fear and stigma and shame With one that restores the humanity of people living with dementia Now what better way to do this than to tell the story let Alice tell the story And this is what Eric envisioned and I just thought wow gotta do this now Together we get to show the magic and the healing and the laughter that's possible in the midst of loss Now before you get too worried about the magic part. Let me tell you what I mean by magic magic is mysterious Naturally occurring phenomena, which so far at any rate has eluded scientific inquiry Love is magic music is magic and so is story and opera has it all Now Alice's story is universal. We're born. We live we die But if we're lucky along the way we also heal so what's healing? Healing is being seen and being heard of being loved and loving others of letting our current collective memories mean It's for giving others and it's for giving ourselves and The story of this opera is Alice's use of dementia to heal Now because tonight we're only presenting selections and the opera of course is a whole story We have to ground you along the way So for the rest of the evening, I'm gonna come in between The different beautiful music and give you excerpts from the book or the sequel or the libretto To fill in gaps and to pull you forward in the story In the next scene mama no Alice works through the shame and the guilt that she felt toward your younger brother on honey Who is named for a general adorned by his big sister Rose and was born with an extra chromosome 21 Now before dementia, I only knew that I had an uncle with Down syndrome. I Didn't even know his name. That's how great Alice's shame was. I Knew that he had died young the third of Papa's son to meet death at a tender age The other two were among the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the genocide Now Alice said that Papa was never happy with his daughters She said when you said he would be like why are they the ones that were survived instead of the sons But during dementia Alice told me what she really felt she said when mama and Rose Mop the floor. It was my job to mind him on the street corner People stared and called of names like they did on the bus and I was glad when he was gone The young bird Lancaster together on the ship or the island hints of another bird Lancaster beach scene Seemed to linger about her after they let her go famished They're sent filling the air You live here. It's pretty Cows and fresh young cats chopped the green grass down to tusks in fenced fields Hey Alice put her hand on my shoulder Promise me you'll do something else when it gets too hard Wondering how stand in case she was hungry two scenes to close this evening though Not to end the opera which has a few scenes more will run without any narration between them just a musical interlude Together they honor the Extraordinary care work done in this country Primarily by black and brown people many of whom are new Americans from the global south who up in Burlington Greeted Alice like this. Hey mama These two scenes show the love flexibility Generosity and creativity these cares bring daily to their essential work