The Great Soviet Bucket
Opera Cabaret | NEW YORK PREMIERE
A.R.T./New York Theatres, Mezzanine Theatre | 502 W 53rd Street, New York, NY
Developed and Produced by Beth Morrison Projects
Fri, Jan 15 at 7:00 pm
Sat, Jan 16 at 7:00 pm
Sun, Jan 17 at 2:00 pm
Info & Tickets

Created by Timur and Sandra Powers
Starring Timur

The Great Soviet Bucket is a dark musical comedy that follows Timur, a dutiful Soviet citizen, and his unhinged “Mother Russia” puppet, Comrade Bucket. Like a true believer, Timur patiently tolerates the complexities of the USSR, certain that a better future is just around the corner. His local commander, Comrade Bucket — a puppet named after an enameled Soviet bucket — urges him to fully embrace the collective way of life. But as the Soviet empire begins to crumble, so too does Timur’s Soviet identity.

Backed by a cadre of brilliant musician-performers, Kazakh-American opera singer Timur, whose work was called a “punk operatic spectacle” by the LA Times, uses the Soviet songs of his childhood to explore the intertwined forces of identity, politics, history, and belonging.

The Great Soviet Bucket is co-commissioned by Miami Light Project and Beth Morrison Projects with support from the National Performance Network. It is developed and produced by Beth Morrison Projects. It premiered in 2024 at Miami Theater Center, in partnership with Miami Light Project.

TANYARADZWA TAWENGWA: MUTUPO/BLOODLINE
David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center | 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY
Co-Presented with globalFEST
January 17
Info & Free Tickets

Mutupo/Bloodline is a musical journey rooted in inheritance. The program traces the music passed down to Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa through her bloodline “Each piece reflects what they have taught me about music—and how it can be used as a tool for healing, from the inside out,” she says.

Drawing inspiration from Zimbabwe’s founding intellectual and spiritual philosophies, Indigenous Zimbabwean mbira traditions, and nineteenth-century hymnologies introduced by colonial-era Christian missionaries, Mutupo/Bloodline explores the layered inheritance that shapes the story of Tawengwa’s people. Through sound, image, and memory, the work honors their resilience and gives voice to their hard-won victories.

COMPLINE BY CANDLELIGHT: ARVO PÄRT
Trinity Church NYC | 89 Broadway, New York, NY
Co-Presented with Trinity Church Wall Street NYC
Sun Jan 17 at 7:00 pm
Sun Jan 24 at 7:00 pm
More Info (Free Admission)

Performed by the Trinity Choir
Music by Arvo Pärt
Curated by Melissa Baker and Beth Morrison

Compline (KOM-plin) is an ancient prayer service (Compline means “completion”) traditionally offered at the close of the day. In this special collaboration, PROTOTYPE features choral works by Arvo Pärt within Trinity Church’s weekly Compline service. The result is healing and contemplative: an end-of-day pause that creates space for reflection, calm, and presence before the start of a new week.

Pärt’s choral works, known for their spiritual depth, haunting beauty, and profound stillness, are performed in the extraordinary acoustics of Trinity Church, offering a welcome respite from the city’s chaos and the depths of winter. Pärt’s music blends radiant harmonies with simplicity, creating an immersive and transcendent experience. Audiences are invited to gather in community, each holding a candle, as the Trinity Choir gives voice to nighttime prayers in song.

VISIONS: A MEDITATION ON THE FEMALE MUSES OF GUSTAV KLIMT
Theatrical Song Cycle | WORLD PREMIERE
Joe’s Pub | 425 Lafayette Street, New York. NY
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects
Co-Presented with Joe’s Pub
Mon Jan 18 at 9:30 pm
Tue Jan 19 at 7:00 pm
Info & Tickets

Composed and Performed by Lacy Rose
Directed by Dara Malina

Lacy Rose is a lyric poet, vocalist, and composer who writes and performs contemporary art songs. Her imagistic storytelling blurs the lines between song cycle, surrealism, and incantation.

Long fascinated by the silent muses in Gustav Klimt’s paintings, through her new song cycle, VISIONS, Rose gives voice to the women depicted in Hope I, Hope II, Ria Munk, and Portrait of a Lady. Over four acts, each inspired by one of the paintings, Rose—backed by the Starling Ensemble—delves into the rich histories of the works themselves while exploring broader themes of birth, death, and rebirth, as well as identity, pregnancy, and new ways of seeing.

Presented in the intimate cabaret environment of Joe’s Pub, the work brings together Rose’s classically grounded vocal writing, lyric poetry, piano, and string quartet in an imaginative musical encounter with the inner lives of Klimt’s muses.

JANUARY 21-22, 2027
The Seen and the Unseen
An evening of two visionary chamber operas about women who listen for voices the world cannot yet hear
National Sawdust | 80 N. 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY
A National Sawdust production in collaboration with Yale School of Music and Yale School of Drama, presented as part of the PROTOTYPE Festival
Thu Jan 21 at 7:30 pm
Fri Jan 22 at 7:30 pm
Info & Tickets

PART I: The Red Thread
Work-in-Development Presentation
Music by Wang Lu
Libretto by Deborah Brevoort
Conducted by Anthony Cheung

The Red Thread, presented as a 30-minute piano-only work-in-development, follows an adopted Chinese-American woman who travels to rural China searching for the birth mother who left her in a market basket eighteen years earlier, a red thread tied around her ankle. Spare, intimate, and rooted in Chinese mythology, it asks what binds us across lifetimes.

PART II: Hilma
Fully Staged Chamber Opera | WORLD PREMIERE
Music and Libretto by Daniel Zlatkin
Directed by Juliana Morales Carreño
National Sawdust Ensemble, Jeffrey Zeigler - Music Director
Hilma: Catherine Martin, mezzo-soprano

Hilma is presented as a fully staged production of approximately 45 minutes. The opera is a portrait of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who channeled abstract visions from unseen spirits decades before the art world was ready to receive them. Haunting and luminous, the production brings Hilma’s visionary canvases to life through light, projection, and movement, performed by the National Sawdust Ensemble under the musical direction of Jeffrey Zeigler.

ART BATH
artXnyc | 409 West 14th Street, New York, NY
Produced and Presented by Art Bath
Fri Jan 22 at 8:00 pm
Sat Jan 23 at 8:00 pm
Info & Tickets

Curated by Mara Driscoll and Liz Yilmaz
Featuring: 
Vilma Jää — Finnish folk-pop singer, composer, and fiddler (pictured above)
The Beatbox House — international champion beatboxing crew
Lara Somogyi — harpist and composer
Justin Austin — baritone
Jarid Blue — visual artist
Plus more to be announced.

Now in its third year of partnership with PROTOTYPE, Art Bath continues to bring its signature eclectic programming to the festival, with a particular focus on genre-defying work in music and opera.

Art Bath reimagines the art salon as a live, multi-sensory gathering where adventurous artists and audiences meet in unexpected ways. From opera to beatboxing to Finnish folk-pop, boundary-pushing vocalists join forces with creatives across disciplines to transform a former downtown nightclub into a vibrant gathering place for artistic discovery, connection, and creative surprise.

Featured artists include baritone Justin Austin, folk-pop singer and fiddler Vilma Jää, harpist and composer Lara Somogyi, world-champion beatbox crew The Beatbox House, and light bath artist Jarid Blue.