“We're really excited about Guerilla Opera's 4th Season lineup featuring a brand new staging of our inaugural work, Heart of a Dog, a retelling of Bulgakov's classic infused with thorny questions about the sexual machinations of ill conceived science experiments. The spring production will be a premiere by one of Boston's rising compositional stars, Nicholas Vines. Loose, Wet, Perforated is a mind and ear bending surrealist nightmare involving two dichotomous aspirants, a despotic overlord, the medieval caste system and a greased stripper pole.” 
                                                                                          – Rudolf Rojahn, Artistic Director

Heart of a Dog, by composer and Artistic Director Rudolf Rojahn was Guerilla Opera’s debut performance, premiered on September 21, 2007 to a sold out house in The Zack Box Theatre of The Boston Conservatory, subsequent performances also sold out, and the virtuosity of Guerilla Opera’s performances led to an invitation from the conservatory for Ensemble-in-Residence status. Now, three years later the company revisits Rojahn’s dark comedy.

Adapted from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel of the same name Rojahn’s Heart of a Dog tells the story of a scientist whose experiments of implanting human glands into the bodies of animals prove overly successful. After luring a dog into his apartment and performing a successful transplant the scientist, his assistant and the housekeeper have their hands full with their test subject. The grandeur of this scientific achievement is overshadowed by the misery of living with the half-dog/half-woman whose varied appetites and manipulations prove disastrous for all.

Loose, Wet, Perforated by Australian composer Nicholas Vines, whose works have been performed in Australia, the US, the UK and Europe by such interpreters as Alarm Will Sound, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, ChamberMade Opera, the Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, White Rabbit, the BT Scottish Ensemble, the Australian Voices, Eliot Gattegno and Liwei Qin, will make his Guerilla Opera debut with Loose, Wet, Perforated, a chamber opera for trombone, clarinet, saxophone, percussion and four voices.

Loose, Wet, Perforated, inspired by medieval morality plays, is a fable which tells of two characters that compete with each other, undergoing various tests called “ordeals” to rise in rank in their Guild system. One starts in a privileged position, and through good acts and intentions, descends into isolation and despair. The other begins in a lowly fashion and rises by way of ruthlessness and violence. 

                                                                                             About Guerilla Opera

Guerilla Opera is an official 501(c)3 organization founded in May 2007 by a group of Boston-based professional singers and instrumentalists lead by Artistic Directors Rudolf Rojahn (Composer) and Mike Williams (Percussion). The company’s mission is to foster a new repertoire of progressive and accessible operas written specifically for them and to be performed in intimate theatrical settings. Guerilla Opera performances are fully-staged, unconducted productions that require the highest level of virtuosity and musicianship. Guerilla Opera is an Ensemble-in-Residence at The Boston Conservatory where it performs in the Zack Box Theater.