Project for an Opera of the Twentieth Century: Something That Happened Once and It Is Very Interesting

Artists: Chris Butterfield and John Bentley Mays

Date: March 7 to April 6, 1996 

Vertical Gallery presented an installation and music by Christopher Butterfield with Libretto by John Bentley Mays.

The installation explored a work in progress that started in 1985 and concerned itself with the failure of revolutions, specifically the Bolshevik one in 1917 and the 1916 revolution at the Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada. 

The project compromised 13 scenes and ran for two hours. The music in this installation lasted for forty minutes and the singer told us of how the libretto came to be written and what the opera is about.