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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boston, MA (December 28, 2022) - The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), MIT Music and Theater Arts, and Guerilla Opera present the world premiere of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage a comedic new opera that features Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, the true-life unsung inventors of the first computer, using their brilliant new invention to "fight crime" in alternative universes. The world premiere chamber opera features music composed by the dynamic Elena Ruehr, libretto by the Pulitzer-prize winning Royce Vavrek, is adapted from the New York Times best-selling graphic novel by Sydney Padua, and is the Guerilla Opera debut of stage director Giselle Ty.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage plays for four performances from Friday and Saturday, February 3 and February 4, 2023 at 7:30PM to Saturday and Sunday, February 4 and February 5, 2023 at 3:00PM in the MIT Theater Arts Building W97 Black Box Theater, Cambridge, MA. The opera is approximately 70 minutes in duration and sung in English. Tickets are $0-$55 and are on sale now at arts.mit.edu/lovelace-and-babbage.

Ruehr’s composition includes sounds from a real Difference Engine, which she recorded in Seattle. From the machine’s clicks, clacks, and thunks Ruehr created a digital percussion section, which she programmed onto an electronic marimba—a synthesizer played with mallets by percussionist Mike Williams—to incorporate the actual sounds as part of the opera.

“So much contemporary opera, and in fact much contemporary art, has such dark themes. Indeed, we live in dark times. But I do think it’s important to step back and remind ourselves of how wonderful we are.”

- Elena Ruehr

Ada Lovelace was a mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory. Charles Babbage was the eccentric inventor of the “Difference Engine”, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.

Ada Lovelace was the first great genius to develop a programming language, and who is still not generally known. By bringing this historical figure to light, this opera demonstrates that there is a history of great scientists that are women.

“Operas on mathematical subjects remain sadly rare, despite the close affinity of music and mathematics; comic operas about computing even rarer despite the fact that computers are extremely funny. MIT is the perfect partner for this production and I hope newbies to both computing and opera enjoy the show.”

- Sydney Padua

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage features Aliana de la Guardia as Ada Lovelace, Aaron Engebreth as Charles Babbage, with Omar Najimi as Lord Byron, Erin Matthews as the Queen of England, Rane Moore (clarinet), Lilit Hartunian (violin), Stephen Marotto (cello), Mike Williams (percussion), Rebecca Shannon Butler (Costume Designer), Keithlyn B Parkman (Lighting and Scenic Designer), and Nuozhou Wang (Video Projections Designer).

The world premiere opera is set to travel as a concert performance to the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Hancock, MI in June 2023, and the full theatrical production to Michigan Technological University in October 2023.

The world premiere of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is supported by a grant from the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), which connects the worlds of art, science, and technology by collaborating with departments, labs, and centers across the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

ACCESSIBILITY & OTHER EVENTS

In addition to the scheduled performance on Saturday, February 4, 2023, CAST and Guerilla Opera welcome members of the blind and visually impaired community to experience a tactile tour of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage production at 2:00pm directly preceding the 3:00pm matinee performance. We also welcome all audiences to stay for a post-show discussion directly after that same performance.

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ABOUT GUERILLA OPERA

Guerilla Opera is a BIPOC and feminist organization, Boston's only experimental chamber opera ensemble, and one of only a few in the world who exclusively present new works. One of Boston’s most exciting companies creating brave new works and founded in 2007, the ensemble has accumulated a repertoire of over 40 new works by the most exciting composers of our generation. In daring performances, they have garnered a national reputation for innovative contemporary opera, with The Boston Globe raving that “radical exploration remains the cornerstone of everything it does.”

This artist-led ensemble wields a mission to present new experimental works of opera theater, which are custom-tailored to their ensemble of artists. With the goal to confront, examine, and question stereotypical traditions of the art form of opera they champion cutting-edge music, immerse audiences in profound experiences, and are a model for creative authenticity and inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in order to inspire and influence emerging generations of artists. Their vision is to generate a unique body of work that ferociously confronts the status quo, examines stories through culturally focused and contemporary lenses, and to bring new music to new audiences. (guerillaopera.org)

ABOUT MIT’S CENTER FOR ART, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge, and discovery. MIT CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures, and publications. The visiting artists program is a cornerstone of CAST’s activities, which encourages cross-fertilization among disciplines and intensive interaction with MIT’s faculty, students, and researchers. (arts.mit.edu/cast)

About MIT MUSIC AND THEATER ARTS

MIT Music and Theater Arts invites students to explore these disciplines as artistic practices and as cultural, intellectual and personal avenues of inquiry and discovery. Students may pursue concentrations, minors or majors in either Music or Theater, as well as joint majors with Engineering or Science. Classes are tailored to the prior experiences of students who take them, from introductory classes assuming no previous background to advanced seminars, private lessons and performance opportunities for musicians ready to work at near professional levels. The program integrates and deepens connections between music and technology, science, society and other humanities disciplines, creating an experience that is intensely rich and uniquely MIT. Music and Theater Arts serves nearly half the undergraduate population at MIT with some 2000 students enrolled each semester. (mta.mit.edu/music/about)

ABOUT THE CREATIVES

**Elena Ruehr** says of her music “the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex.” She has a major list of recordings including her orchestral works (O’Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound) as well as the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (Arsis Records), her cantatas Averno (the Trinity Choir Avie), and her Six String Quartets (the Cypress String Quartet, Borromeo Quartet and Stephen Salters, Avie). Her other recordings include Icarus (Avie), Jane Wang considers the Dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie), Shimmer (Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble on Albany) and Shadow Light (The New Orchestra of Washington with Marcus Thompson, Acis), as well as many others.
Her works have been commissioned and performed by numerous string quartets, including the Arneis, Biava, Borromeo, Cypress, Delgani, Lark, Quartet Nouveau, Roco and Shanghai string quartets. An award winning faculty member at MIT, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Known for her vocal music and collaboration with poets, she has written five operas, four cantatas and a number of songs. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, and has also written extensively for chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, instrumental solo, opera, dance and silent film.
Her work has been described as “sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies” (The New York Times), and “unspeakably gorgeous” (Gramophone).
Dr. Ruehr lives in Boston with her husband and daughter. (elenaruehr.org)

Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio). His opera “Angel’s Bone” with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

With composer Missy Mazzoli he wrote “Song from the Uproar,” premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in 2012, and subsequently seen in multiple presentations around the country. Their second opera, an adaptation of Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves,” premiered at Opera Philadelphia, co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by James Darrah to critical acclaim in September of 2016. The work won the 2017 Music Critics Association of North America award for Best New Opera and was nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2017 International Opera Awards. A new production premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in the summer of 2019, produced by Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures, helmed by Tony Award-winning director Tom Morris and earned star Sydney Mancasola a coveted Herald Angel Award for her performance. Their next opera, an adaptation of Karen Russell’s short story “Proving Up,” was commissioned and presented by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and The Miller Theatre in 2018, was a finalist for the MCANA Best New Opera Award of that year. They are currently developing a grand opera for Opera Philadelphia and the Norwegian National Opera based on an original story by two-time Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Jordan Tannahill, as well as an adaptation of George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” for The Metropolitan Opera. (roycevavrek.com)

**Sydney Padua** is a graphic novelist, animator, and filmmaker. She grew up partly in Mexico City, partly on the Canadian prairie, and partly in Narnia. She studied theatre at the University of Alberta and animation at Sheridan College in Toronto. Her visual effects work includes both hand-drawn and computer-generated animation and appears in such films as The Iron Giant, The Jungle Book, and The Lion King; she is currently a lead animator on Mufasa: The Lion King. She started drawing her cult webcomic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by accident in 2009 when a joke blog post took on a life of its own. It eventually became a bestselling graphic novel, winner of the British Society for the History of Mathematics Neumann Prize and nominated for two Eisner Awards.
Sydney lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband.
She is beside herself with joy that The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is now an opera, and considers this the greatest thing that could possibly happen to anybody. (sydneypadua.com)

Giselle Ty is a London-based stage director who specializes in experimental, interdisciplinary and site-specific work. She has directed productions for Boston Lyric Opera, Center for Contemporary Opera at National Sawdust, New York University Tisch School of Drama, Harvard University Early Music Society, Simpson College, and Houston Grand Opera (HGOco). Engagements as associate and assistant director include collaborations with the American Repertory Theatre, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Festival, Opera Boston, Gotham Chamber Opera, Icelandic Opera, L’Opéra de Bordeaux, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

In addition to directing theater and opera productions, Ty creates original work that sits at the intersection of live performance and installation. In 2015, she conceived and directed All at Once Upon A Time (Or Variations on a Theme of Disappearing) for the Peabody Essex Museum’s Gardner-Pingree House. She also was granted a residency with New Georges’ Theatre to develop Invitation to an Empty Room, an unplugged happening for total strangers.

She began her theatrical life by studying with and assisting former resident directors and company members at the American Repertory Theatre. She later trained in Suzuki/Viewpoints with Anne Bogart and SITI Company, as well as in clown/movement at L’École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Before diving into the theater field, Ty studied art history and orchestral trumpet at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL.

In 2023, she will be collaborating with the London-based music collective, Tangram, as stage director for a program at LSO St. Luke’s, and as a writer and text deviser for Alex Ho’s anti-opera, Untold, which will be performed this spring at Muziektheater Transparant in Ghent and at the O. Festival in Rotterdam. (giselle-ty.com)