The Electronic Lover

The Electronic Lover concludes this spring with the radio premiere of our final episode, on-air at WTJU 91.1 Charlottesville, VA on Saturday, June 1 at 8pm EST. The program features an interview and Q&A with Mezzacappa before a live studio audience. On May 31, the full season – all 4+ hours –  will be released as nine separate catalog numbers on the nonprofit new music label lnnova Recordings and will be available for streaming and download via Bandcamp, Apple Music, and all streaming services. The release also includes a pdf download of the full libretto.

Please join us on Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 7pm PDT for a live-streamed Episode 3 & 4 release event with the cast and creators of The Electronic Lover, hosted by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). We will talk a little bit, then settle in to listen to the new episodes together, then open up the chat for Q&A with the audience, moderated by BAMPFA Program Manager Sean Carson.

The program is free and open to the public. To attend, click the “Watch Live” box on the BAMPFA event page – no RSVP is required.

Please join us on Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 7pm PST for a live-streamed Episode 2 release event with the cast and creators of The Electronic Lover. We will talk a little bit, then settle in to listen to Episode 2 together, then open up the chat for Q&A with the audience, moderated by composer and opera producer Paul Dresher.

The program is hosted by the Center for New Music in San Francisco in collaboration with the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and is free and open to the public.

To attend, RSVP HERE, and then you will be emailed a Zoom invite and password to join the event.

Please join us on Friday, August 14 at 7pm PDT for a live-streamed launch event with the cast and creators of The Electronic Lover. We will talk a little bit, then settle in to listen to Episode 1 together, then open up the chat for Q&A with the audience.

The program is hosted by the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and is free and open to the public. If you RSVP here, you will be emailed a Zoom invite and password to join the event.

The Electronic Lover is a serial audio opera created by San Francisco Bay Area composer Lisa Mezzacappa and New York writer Beth Lisick. The story is set in chatrooms at the dawn of the Internet, in the moment when we first invited computers into the most intimate aspects of our lives.

The 9-episode series was launched in 2020 and concluded in 2024 with a full-season release on Innova Recordings.

There are so many ways to listen! Listen to the full season on Vimeo and follow along with the libretto as animated video. Tune in via Apple Podcasts. Stream via Apple Music or Spotify, or purchase and download the full 4+-hour opera with the full libretto as glorious high fidelity audio via Bandcamp.

*****

“Relatable and gripping.” — KQED

“A beguiling mix…an ambitious, innovative work… Mezzacappa’s tight, stylistically wide-ranging score and excellent band prove agile in supporting a cast who pitch their roles just right – helped by a whipsmart libretto and narration from writer-actor Beth Lisick which combines the super-banal and the surreal with pinpoint human observation to blackly witty, deadly serious effect.”

— BBC Music

“Superb, vocally and dramatically… The libretto is wry, clever, and funny…Mezzacappa’s endlessly inventive score includes bits of polyphony, drones, sound effects, sprechstimme, ballads, horror movie music, operatic arias, and more.”

— San Francisco Classical Voice

*****