OPERA
Eric has written extensively for the human voice, including opera, art songs and choral works. This page includes select demos and live recordings. Please view his CV for a list of his works for voice, recordings, and score samples.
The Suitcase Opera
Music by Eric Reda | Libretto by David Kodeski (2012)
"People tell me in 10 years I will be in the gutter. I'm almost looking forward to the prospect," Jimmy writes to his friend Howard in 1948. Jimmy is eighteen, gay, dishonorably discharged from the Marines, and living in New York. Documenting his artist's life, Jimmy cruises the bars and streets, parties with his friends Gore Vidal, Anais Nin, and Truman Capote, while rhapsodizing on art, love, and sexuality. Sixty years later, monologist David Kodeski wins a "curious box of letters" in an online auction and discovers Jimmy's lost world.
THE SUITCASE OPERA PROJECT, a new non-fiction opera by David Kodeski and composer Eric Reda, excavates Jimmy's 49 letters, revealing a history of post-Kinsey/pre-Stonewall queer America and creating a moving portrait of a hungry, young soul.
Recorded at the Pritzker Pavilion Nov. 8-10, 2012. Produced by Chicago Opera Vanguard and the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events
Reagan's Children
Music and Libretto by Eric Reda (2008)
Reagan’s Children: An Opera-Oratorio, is a music theatre peice in the tradition of Orff, Stravinsky, and Britten's parables. It sets to music the eulogies presented at Ronald Reagan’s June 10, 2004 interment ceremony by his three living children, along with sections of the requiem text, patriotic standards, and Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar".
Reagan’s Children: An Opera-Oratorio is scored for an ensemble of four soloists, one treble, 16-voice male choir, three pianos, and string quartet.
Recorded during the concert premere of REAGAN'S CHIDREN at Martyrs' Pub on Presidents Day 2008, Monday February 18 .
The Passion of Joseph Smith
Demo tracks from the work-in-progress "The Passion of Joseph Smith". Music by Eric Reda. Libretto by Philip Dawkins. Performed by Justin Neil Adair, baritone, Rebecca Prescott, soprano, students of Loyola University, and Christopher Owen, music director. 2013 Pivot Arts workshop.