Sarah Palin Opera

This current-events trend in opera is all John Adams' fault. Once he demonstrated what great material current-events provides, with "Nixon In China", then the flood gates were open:

“Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” a presentation by Guerilla Opera, opens Saturday at Boston Conservatory’s Zack Box Theater. The work is composer Curtis Hughes’ musical take on America’s favorite moose-hunting winker, you betcha. It focuses on that contentious - and sometimes comical - debate from October 2008 between Palin and Joe Biden, though the show also includes cameos from Hillary Clinton, Gwen Ifill, Diane Sawyer and, of course, the right-wing’s favorite Everyman, Joe the Plumber.

“My primary interest was the music,” Hughes said. “I was struck by the contrast of the two styles - Biden’s and Palin’s - and the music in their voices. Of course I have strong political sentiments, but this is not about my sentiments.”

...“I didn’t have much time,” Hughes said by phone. “But some years ago I had sketched out ideas after the Kerry-Bush debates. I couldn’t get a handle on the contrasts between those two voices, and I ended up rejecting that project. But here, not only is there enormous subject matter in the debates, but the different styles are interesting.”

...“It is a tragedy about Palin,” he said. “Both characters view themselves as saviors of America. And even though I’m not trying to hammer people on the head with a single interpretation, you know that Biden will triumph in the end. But the central figure certainly is Sarah Palin. I found myself having this odd pathos for her, a pathos I would not have felt if I were not writing music for her.”