Victorine

Contents

4 acts, 4 scenes per act

• What Can I Say to These Crazy Police?

Libretto: Art & Language

Music: Mayo Thompson

Background

Olympia by Edouard Manet, 1865

Writing

The song Café Twenty-One is a an early version of the opera's concept. It was first performed live in late 1982 and was released on the album Black Snakes in 1983.

The opera was described as the Red Crayola's next big project in December 1982

Das nächste große Projekt von Red Crayola ist eine Oper. Sie spielt 1860 in Paris und handelt von einer Serie von Morden an Frauen, die berühmten Malern Modell standen. Mit von der Partie sind Victorian Mireau, die zu dieser Zeit ein begehrtes Modell war und die Maler Corbet und Monet. Inspektor Dené und sein Assistent Chauvin versuchen diesen Fall aufzuklären, während die Polizei in Paris zu dieser Zeit vornehmlich nur Linke und Juden jagt. Lustig soll es werden. Geschrieben ist die Geschichte wieder von Art & Language, die Musik dazu kommt von Red Crayola ergänzt durch Geigen, Bläser und Sänger Nächstes Jahr wird sie in Hamburg in den städtischen Bühnen aufgeführt.

The libretto was written in Summer 1983.

The libretto was first published in March 1984, comprising the entirety of Art-Language Vol. 5 No. 2.

See also: Art & Language: Interview with Victorine Meurend

Performances

• Planned video-taped performance on television 1980s?
• Excerpts: P3 Art and Environment October 7, 1994
• Excerpts: Whitney Biennial 2012
• Excerpt: Mayo Thompson gallery opening 2016

Recording

• 1999: "One of his current projects, with sound artist Marina Rosenfeld, is the completion of the music for their "opera" Victorine"
  • Perhaps related to Rosenfeld's 1999 album subtitled 'music from Fragment opera' (recorded/mixed by Thompson)
• 2006: "Thompson is also confident that the opera Victorine will be ready for production in 2007, more than 20 years after its original libretto was published in Art-Language."
• 2016: "the opera is still in process but there has been some recording and I hope to say something concrete about it by the end of the year."

Libretto

Excerpt: Act 3 Scene 4 - Act 4 Scene 1

	Language	Publication	Notes
1984	English	Art-Language Vol. 5 No. 2
1993	French	Art & Language: Galerie Nationale de Jeu de Paume
2000	English	Art-Language Facsimile Edition
2018	English/French	Art & Language: Reality (Dark) Fragments (Light)
2020	French	Art & Language: Home From Home Kit D'exposition	Download