Many of Opperman’s scores and parts can be found here, for free, for both study and performance. In return, we ask is that you let us know if you are planning a performance of one or more of Opperman’s works so we can add it to the Events calendar.

Tales from the Bizarro World (2013)

for a capella chamber choir or small choral ensemble, approx. 6 min.

World premiere performance by Ekmeles at Rutgers University - October 26th, 2013

Score

Loosely based on the early 60’s Tales from the Bizarro World comics created by Jerry Siegel and John Forte (and owned by DC Comics), this opera-in-miniature explores a music lesson far out in space in the square-shaped Bizarro World. “Us hate beuaty! Us love ugliness!” they declare as Bizarro-Lana learns to become the worst, and therefore the best, singer in the whole school, for which she is awarded the coveted Blue Kryptonite. Along the way are plenty of jokes that will have 20th century music history buffs laughing in their seats!

According to Opperman, “Of all the jokes in the piece, the absolute funniest is the idea that two different vocal ensembles have given incredible performances of this work. First, Ekmeles, and then C4: the Choral Composer Collective. Apparently, as off-the-wall and challenging as it is, it is also very fun to put together and sing.”

Of Him I Love Day and Night (2009)

for soprano and piano

Commissioned by Andrea Covais

World premiere performance by Andrea Covais and Dimitri Korneev at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ - February 2009

Score

"Of Him I Love Day and Night" composed by Chris Opperman based on the poem by Walt Whitman Composed at the request of Ms. Andrea Covais to whom it is respectfully dedicated. Special thanks also to Dr. Robert Aldrige, Matthew Sturges, and the memory of Franz Schubert.

The first of a planned cycle of art songs for soprano and piano based on the poetry of Walt Whitman.

OF him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead;
And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that place;
And I dream’d I wander’d, searching among burial-places, to find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;

The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta,
were as full of the dead as of the living.
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living;

—And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to ev’ry person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d;
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them;

And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied;
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly render’d to powder, and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied;
Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.