SF OPERA LAB PRESENTS
TED HEARNE’S THE SOURCE
February 24–26; March 1–3, 2017 at the Taube Atrium Theater
Tickets $35 | sfoperalab.com | (415) 864-3330
The Source photos by Noah Stern Weber/MASS MoCA and (far right) James Matthew Daniel
“A 21st-century masterpiece, Ted Hearne’s harrowing oratorio about Chelsea Manning and her revelations to
WikiLeaks blends rock propulsion, chamber-music intimacy and four eerie, Auto-Tuned voices to create an
enigmatic space of reflection on horrors of recent history, aided by Mark Doten’s collage text and Daniel Fish
and Jim Findlay’s ambiguous, claustrophobic staging.” (The New York Times)
“Its relevance is the poetic pondering of the universal implications of information and what it can do to us …
The opera itself makes vivid the confusing yet crucial bigger picture of how we handle, and how free we are to
handle, information—a subject our leaders do their best to avoid.” (Los Angeles Times)
“Hearne’s piece holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and
remains staggering in its impact.” (The New Yorker)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (January 23, 2017; updated February 20, 2017) — SF Opera Lab presents
composer Ted Hearne’s universally acclaimed digital-age oratorio The Source, drawn from the
contents of Chelsea Manning’s WikiLeaks release and called "some of the most expressive socially
engaged music in recent memory—from any genre” by Pitchfork. Previously performed in New York
City and Los Angeles, the six performances of The Source on February 24–26 and March 1–3, 2017 at
the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater open Season Two of San Francisco Opera’s SF Opera Lab
programming.
The work for four singers and an ensemble of seven musicians features a libretto by Mark Doten that
sets Manning’s words and primary-source documents, including sections of the classified material
known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary. At the heart of The Source is Manning, the US
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Army Private who infamously leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks and
whose 35-year prison sentence was commuted last week by President Barack Obama.
Doten’s libretto pulls from a litany of primary source texts—including Twitter feeds, cable news
interviews, personal chat transcripts and declassified military reports, all contemporary to the
WikiLeaks scandal. Hearne brings this patchwork of text to life with his signature “maximalism” and
collaging, "like an hour's collaboration between Witold Lutosławski, Philip Glass, Jonathan Larson,
Thom Yorke and Erykah Badu, with driving rhythms reminiscent of a Broadway style of rock 'n' roll,
filtered through a computer, put on a loop, then busted open with shades of avant-garde classical or
a soulful groove...the work of a true twenty-first-century polyglot" (Opera News).
As Manning’s story continues to unfold, The Source's most powerful asset remains its abstraction.
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects and directed by Daniel Fish, with production design by Jim
Findlay and video design by Jim Findlay and Daniel Fish, The Source first premiered at Brooklyn
Academy of Music (BAM) in 2014 and received its West Coast premiere in Los Angeles in October
2016. A recording of the work was released on New Amsterdam Records to much acclaim, landing on
the best of 2015 lists for both The New Yorker and The New York Times: “Hurling from propulsive
small-ensemble chamber rock to eerie Auto-Tuned ruminations, Mr. Hearne’s oratorio about Chelsea
Manning and WikiLeaks doesn’t aim to score easy political points. Instead it does what great art
should: It pushes you to think and feel about the world in new ways … ‘The Source’ (with a brilliant
collage libretto by Mark Doten) is remarkable and essential” (The New York Times).
SF Opera Lab will host a post-show Q&A with The Source singers, musicians and creative team
members immediately following every performance.
About composer Ted Hearne:
Ted Hearne (b. 1982, Chicago) is a Los Angeles-based composer, singer and bandleader noted for his
“voracious curiosity” (NewMusicBox) and “fresh and muscular” music (The New York Times), who
“writes with…technical assurance and imaginative scope” (San Francisco Chronicle). A "vocal hellion"
(Time Out Chicago), Hearne performs/composes with Philip White as the vocal-electronics duo R WE
WHO R WE. He was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize for his modern-day oratorio, Katrina Ballads.
Hearne serves on the composition faculty at the University of Southern California. Recent and
upcoming commissions include orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles
Philharmonic and New World Symphony, chamber works for Eighth Blackbird and Ensemble Dal
Niente, and vocal works for The Crossing and Roomful of Teeth. Next month Hearne releases an
album of provocative choral music, Sound from the Bench (Cantaloupe Music), performed by The
Crossing. The works on the album are Hearne’s virtuosic and hauntingly beautiful musical settings of
texts from the Iraq War Logs (Ripple), Bill Moyer’s 2009 interview with The Wire creator David Simon
(Privilege), the 2013 case of rape by high school students in Steubenville, Ohio (Consent) and the
Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (Sound from the Bench). tedhearne.com
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About librettist Mark Doten:
Mark Doten’s novel, The Infernal, about America’s recent military actions and the media’s coverage
of them and the end of the world, was published by Graywolf Press in 2015. He wrote the libretto for
composer Ted Hearne's The Source, an oratorio about Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks, which had its
world premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival in October 2014, and was called a “21st-century
masterpiece” by The New York Times. His writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, the
Believer, and New York Magazine. Doten has an MFA from Columbia University and is the recipient of
fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony. He is the literary fiction editor at Soho Press
and teaches in Columbia University's graduate writing program. markdoten.com
SF OPERA LAB: SEASON TWO
Intimate, eclectic, adventurous—San Francisco Opera’s SF Opera Lab celebrates the power of the
human voice theatrically in intimate spaces. Season Two explores a rich tapestry of sound worlds that
draw thematically on the intersection of personal expression and musical experimentation. The
season continues with:
 La Voix humaine (March 11, 14, 17, 2017) — Francis Poulenc’s 1958 one-act monodrama, with a
text by Jean Cocteau, presents the private crisis of a woman spurned by her lover via a shared partyline phone. Riveting Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci brings to vivid life one of her most
celebrated roles in a program that also includes a set of French art songs. Pianist Donald Sulzen
accompanies Ms. Antonacci. [Tickets: $95 general admission]
 Roomful of Teeth (April 23, 2017) — The “remarkable vocal octet” (The New York Times) Roomful
of Teeth make their San Francisco debut in a one-night-only performance co-presented with SF
Performances’ PIVOT. The program features the West Coast premiere of four new works based on
Shakespeare and the Bay Area premiere of Caroline Shaw's Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices.
[Tickets ($25 general admission) are SOLD OUT; call the Box Office for any last minute availability]
 ChamberWORKS (April 27, 2017) — Members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra curate and
perform in this intimate and eclectic evening of music and song. [Tickets: $25 general admission]
Performances take place in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater at San Francisco Opera’s Diane
B. Wilsey Center for Opera (located on the fourth floor of the Veterans Building in San Francisco). For
SF Opera Lab tickets and more information, visit sfoperalab.com or call (415) 864-3330.
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SF OPERA LAB PRESENTS:
THE SOURCE
February 24 (8pm), 25 (8pm), 26 (2pm); March 1 (8pm), 2 (8pm), 3 (8pm), 2017
Taube Atrium Theater
Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera (Veterans Building, Fourth Floor)
401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102
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Approximate running time: 75 minutes with no intermission
Composed by Ted Hearne
Libretto by Mark Doten
Directed by Daniel Fish
Production Design by Jim Findlay
Video Design by Jim Findlay & Daniel Fish
Lighting Design by Christopher Kuhl
Costume Design by Terese Wadden
Sound Design by Garth MacAleavey
Vocal Processing by Philip White
Music Direction by Nathan Koci
Vocalists
Mellissa Hughes
Samia Mounts
Isaiah Robinson
Jonathan Woody
Ensemble
Nathan Koci, keyboard
Jennifer Cho, violin
Natalia Vershilova, viola
Emil Miland, cello
Taylor Levine, guitar
Greg Chudzik, bass
Ron Wiltrout, drums
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects
The Source was commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and Judy & Allen Freedman, with additional
commissioning support from Justus & Helen Schlichting.
“With an enigmatic libretto by Mark Doten, and in a chilling production by the director Daniel Fish and the
designer Jim Findlay…‘The Source’ prompts dinner-table debates and lingers in the mind. It offers a fresh
model of how opera and music theater can successfully tackle contemporary issues: not with
documentary realism—television and film have that covered—but with ambiguity, obliquity, even sheer
confusion.” (The New York Times)
Composer Ted Hearne’s “ambitious, bewildering, stealthily shattering new oratorio” (The New York
Times) asks how we, as individuals and a nation, confront the information brought to light by Chelsea
Manning, the U.S. Army private who disclosed classified military documents to WikiLeaks. Through a
larger than life four-channel video installation, a chorus of silent witnesses looms. Four singers sing
with (at times) electronically-processed voices. Accompanied by a live ensemble of seven
instrumentalists, they inhabit an assemblage of Twitter feeds, cable news reports, chat transcripts
and classified military video.
See a video trailer about The Source.
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Content advisory: Includes graphic war footage. Discretion is advised.
Meet the artists: SF Opera Lab will host a post-show Q&A with The Source singers, musicians and
creative team members immediately following every performance.
Tickets & information: $35 general admission. Tickets available at sfoperalab.com or by calling the
San Francisco Opera Box Office at (415) 864-3330. For more information about The Source and
Season Two of SF Opera Lab, visit sfoperalab.com.
San Francisco Opera is sponsored, in part, by The Dolby Family, Ann and Gordon Getty, John A. and Cynthia Fry
Gunn, Franklin and Catherine Johnson, Edmund W. and Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Fund, Steven M. Menzies,
Bernard and Barbro Osher, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem, Dianne and Tad Taube, Phyllis C. Wattis
Endowment Funds, Diane B. Wilsey.
The Taube Atrium Theater is equipped with the Meyer Sound Constellation® acoustic system.
Media Sponsor: Classical KDFC
- SFO -
For further press information and downloadable photographs of The Source, visit sfopera.com/press or
contact San Francisco Opera Communications:
Jon Finck (415) 565-6472 / [email protected]
Julia Inouye (415) 565-6430 / [email protected]
Jeffery McMillan (415) 565-6451 / [email protected]
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