TELL ME YOUR NAME

the fifth in the ELECTRIC OPERA series

TELL ME YOUR NAME features musical settings of stories of creation and the end of the world from cultures around the world. Using video projections, a shadow screen and puppets, singer/composer Michael Kallstrom brings these stories to life in two acts of music and theater with electronic music accompaniment. A video created by the composer’s brother, Daniel Kallstrom, opens the concert. Symbols, human figures, puppets and lights appear on the large shadow screen that is centered on the stage. The first act presents tales of the creation of the earth and mankind while the second act tells of the end of the world and the world to come.  All these stories are adapted from different cultures and recombined into a dramatic, music theater presentation.

  
                                                  TELL ME YOUR NAME                                                        
-    a music theater work for bass voice, electronics,
video projections and shadow puppets,
adapted from the book BEGINNINGS: CREATION
MYTHS OF THE WORLD, compiled and edited
by Penelope Farmer, with original texts by the composer.

Michael Kallstrom, bass
Video by Daniel Kallstrom
Shadow puppets created by Michael Kallstrom and Jeff Jensen

ACT ONE

In the Beginning (“No one knows where or when creation began…”)

Raven (“Life has begun with his sighs.”)

Big Bang (“So here we sit on our lump of clay…”)

The Moon Made Man (“But woman he formed from a gentle tree…”)

When (“When there was no joy, no singing…”)

I Am That I Am (“What is his name?”)

Trickster’s Song (“And time is the driftwood that’s bleached on the sand…”)


ACT TWO

Behold (“The trumpet shall sound…”)

In The Age Of The Fifth Sun (“The center sun will destroy us…”)

Scorching Fire (“Would that you knew what the disaster is like.”)

Someday (“Someday, it will come to an end.”)

I Tell You A Mystery (“We shall be raised incorruptible.”)

Immeasurable Space (“… engulfs the universe and finally, falls asleep.”)