Photos by Christa Baclia-an
Essence of Clover, for laptop, sine waves, and voice | Video by Temporary Correspondence.
Solo performance + interview with Dorothy Carlos.
A Matinee LP, Whited Sepulchre Records, 2023
I Saw Freak Joy LP, Sweetwreath records, 2023
Unravels By a Thread EP, Drongo Tapes DR 49, 2023
“A Silver Gilded Hand-mirror or Whispered Shell” is a new opera written by Lula Asplund which had its first premiere in October 2025 at Chicago’s The International Museum of Surgical Science.
Told through a series of surreal vignettes, the work takes shape as an exquisite corpse—where each fragment adds to a strange, dreamlike whole. At its core are two enigmatic figures: Dr. Giunetti (Justin D’Acci) and The Green Lady (Vim Grace Hile), joined by a shifting ensemble of characters who emerge and dissolve between them.
The libretto was crafted to accompany seven chamber pieces Asplund began at Mills College in 2020. Once composed for string quartet, this iteration reimagines the music for a motley orchestra of Chicago-based musicians, blending diverse traditions and instruments.
The music was recorded after the fact with Jamdek studios. An LP for the music is in the works and pending release.
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Music written by Lula Asplund.
Libretto written by Lula Asplund.
Co-directed with Allegra Harvard.
CAST
OFLIVIA DERUT ALLEGRA HARVARD
AMELIA DERUT DOROTHY CARLOS
THE GREEN LADY & HER REFLECTION………..
VIM GRACE HILE & JUSTIN D’ACCI
DR. GUINETTI JUSTIN D’ACCI
SHELL VIK TOMAC
WOMAN WITH A MICROSCOPE MARY AMELIA
THE PROFESSOR LEVI DAYAN
INVENTOR 1 SARAH CASSIDY
INVENTOR 2 ANDREW SELLER
THE MUTE INVENTOR JOCELYN GRAY
THE PAIR SHAEFER LUNDT & PARKER DAVIS
FLASHLIGHT LISE IVANOVA
DANCE ENSEMBLE
CHRISTA BACLIA-AN
VIK TOMIC
SARAH CASSIDY
VIM GRACE HILE
MARY AMELIA
JOCELYN GRAY
ACT I
OVERTURE.
THE GREEN LADY.
THE STRING FIGURE.
AWAKE IN THE MARSH OR THE GREEN LADY’S FINAL MOMENTS.
DUGESIA SUBTENTACULATA.
15 MINUTE INTERMISSION
ACT II
ABSURD INVENTIONS.
STRANGE SINGING SHELLS.
MANIFOLD OF RITUAL.
Director’s Notes
Tableau Vivant Schizophrene.
Stories of personal possessions.
Oh beautiful rotting mass, I hold you close to my heart, you are my nest.
Artifacts collected by the Derut sisters. They struggle to piece together a story in fragments washed up on the dismal shores of Markshavn, a small remote island off the coast of Halifax. In these fragments they discover pieces of themselves, where they perhaps came from. Lost endeavors, antiquities, illustrating a new world which never came to be. Do they collect things as birds collect branches and twigs for a nest? This is all they know. Eroded by the waves and the sand of the Atlantic, they have been smoothed around the edges, in shambles like wet dust, and yet the Derut sisters chanced that there was a story to be told.
—Lula Asplund
Tableau Vivante
L’opéra Schizophrène
Peruse
Peruse
Under some law…
Lula won’t tell me precisely what is happening—she is merely the conduit of the script. I’ve found many stories in this opera. I see a mentoring love between The Green Lady and Her Reflection—memories portray her as a young student among her faculty. A twin taking credentials and love from her other, competitive pedagogies: the woman, a Derut. Something about being behind glass. I see scorn/sacrifice/sacredness of objects and inventions, and a particular and repetitive psychosis. I see the memories of a woman dying from love under the will of an older, horrifying yet inspiring idiot savant. Both enter Liebestod, shaped by a well, reemerge dead, malnourished, ghostly. Controversial, sure, but we must be vital, besides— A story for itself. Exist nowhere, allow the beautiful. It would be better for you to use your imagination— I have only illuminated mine.
–Allegra Harvard
SPECIAL THANKS
ANNA BROWN DILLON INGOLD
DANIEL CHAMPION CHARLIE THALL
ELASTIC ARTS EVERYTHING
DAKOTA NORMAN LISA ATKINS
BEN BILLINGTON FOLIE
MARCEY AMBROMOVITZ` PSN15
EMPTY BOTTLE SWAN DRAMA
CHRIS SUTTER EM DAVENPORT
SCHOOLHOUSE GODOFLAMB
CONNOR BREEN AVA HAZELMEYER
ANNA JOHNSON RUBY QUE
ERIN LYNCH ELS DEITZ
ZEENA PARKINS BEAU WANZER
ALEX YALAMOS EDEN JOLIE
GODSTAR MEGAMAX MILO CHRISTIE
HUNTING SCENE REQUISIT
21 MILLION KITES ENSEMBLE KEN RUSSELL
HUGO ZELEDA KENNETH ANGER
WHITNEY JOHNSON
INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF SURGICAL SCIENCE
CHOIR
MORGAN PETERSON
DORA HEWITT
RILEY MCPHERSON
HANNAH BERNHARDT
HAVADINE STONE
ORCHESTRA
CONDUCTOR LULA ASPLUND
ACCORDION AMY LANG
VIOLIN PEYTON RHODES
REBEC ANDREW SELLER
VIOLA WHITNEY JOHNSON
CELLO DOROTHY CARLOS
DOUBLE BASS ESTHER ESPINO
TENOR SAXOPHONE DON LYONS
TENOR AND SOPRANO SAXOPHONE GERRIT HATCHER
BASS CLARINET LEE JOHNSON
BASSOON LIZZ SMITH
PRODUCTION TEAM
STAGE MANAGER LISE IVANOVA
STAGE DIRECTION ALLEGRA HARVARD
COSTUMES EVERYTHING
DRAMATURGE DAKOTA NORMAN
COSTUMES BEN ZUMBRUN
COSTUMES CAROLINE CHLIPALA
LIGHTING HANNAH ELLIOTT
PROPS DESIGNER ALLEGRA HARVARD
Refining the Third Ear was a series of concerts exploring the third ear and other psychoacoustic phantasmagoria with Bill Dietz, Itsi Ramirez, Bret Schneider, and Mica Schippa.
Over four concerts artists premier third ear music — music which emphasizes the listening faculty as an active instrument. The late composer Maryanne Amacher appropriated the term third ear to describe a music that expands the latent perceptual capabilities of the ear, composing music that transforms the ear itself into a sound-producing, neurophonic instrument. Such music is a projection of new aesthetic forms, a virtuality that anticipates the augmentation of both the creative and listening process. If Amacher’s ambitious work was to make the third ear, we ask what it would mean to refine the third ear, to compose music for and with it. We aim to explore how we apperceive musical material, and the ways in which new harmonic experiences can cultivate new emotions and stimulate the imagination.
Performances followed by a discussion between musicians Bret Schneider, Itsï Ramirez, and Lula Asplund on the history of avant-garde art and music, and the unfinished task of creating and developing music for the Third Ear.
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Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare
– Keats
Further reading:
Groundwork for a Study of Maryanne Amacher
OPTION is an ongoing music salon curated by Chicago musicians Andrew Clinkman, Lily Finnegan, and Dorothy Carlos and presented by Experimental Sound Studio. Its programming explores contemporary perspectives on improvisation and composition in a ‘salon’ format, enabling local, national, and international artists to publicly discuss their practice and ideas as well as perform.
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Solo performance followed by an interview with Dorothy Carlos
“A human voice mediated/obliterated/resurrected by technological clutter.”
Selected Works
The Green Lady | Excerpt from A Silver Gilded Hand Mirror or Whispered Shell| Video by Anna Johnson
