The Mile Long Opera Comes to NY's Highline

For six consecutive nights, October 3-7, 2018, 1,000 singers from across New York City will come together on the High Line for the first-ever performances of The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o'clock. Audience members will be active participants in this ambitious, collective, free choral work. As they move along the park, in and out of groups of singers, audience members will immerse themselves in hundreds of stories inspired by the accounts of a wide range of New Yorkers, about life in our rapidly changing city.

At the heart of The Mile-Long Opera is an extensive community engagement initiative, organized by Peoplmovr with the High Line, in collaboration with non-profit cultural organizations across all five boroughs: Abrons Arts Center, the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, and the High Line in Manhattan; ARTs East NY in Brooklyn; Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement in Queens; The POINT CDC in the Bronx; and Snug Harbor in Staten Island. Each of these partners has served as a hub for engaging local audiences-by recruiting singers, holding and welcoming the public for open rehearsals and workshops, and hosting social and cultural events in the lead-up to the performances.

To extend the reach to a broader audience, Target, the presenting sponsor, will create an interactive 360° experience that anyone can view digitally at milelongopera.com. Beginning on October 3, 2018, audiences can immerse themselves in the performances from their own digital device. Segments of the digital experience will be unveiled over the course of several days, from October 3-6, with new blocks of performance footage added every evening. The full performance will be available on October 6, providing audiences with a full interactive experience that allows them to go in-depth and discover sights, sounds, and stories straight from the High Line at milelongopera.com.

The Mile-Long Opera is conceived by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang. Acclaimed poets Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine have written the text, inspired by real-life stories, many of them gathered through first-hand interviews with residents throughout the city, asking what 7:00 pm means to them. While 7:00 pm almost universally represents a time of transition from day to night, when people shift from one activity to the next, these conversations reveal a vast spectrum of feelings and perspectives-and, by extension, represent the diverse character of the city's inhabitants and their individual experiences.

Lang has set Carson and Rankine's script to dynamic new music that the immense chorus, led by Music Director Donald Nally, will sing. Directors Elizabeth Diller and Lynsey Peisinger stage the performance along the entire length of the elevated park.

The Mile-Long Opera challenges conventions of what opera is and whom it is for. Set in a public space, The Mile-Long Opera invites all New Yorkers to join in and experience the performances at close range. All performances are free, but required advance tickets. On the day of each performance, the High Line will close early for general audiences, and only registered ticket holders will have access that evening. A standby line will open 30 minutes prior to the 7pm time slot on all performance dates.

The Mile-Long Opera is produced by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line, and The OFFICE performing arts + film. This project would not be possible without the generous support of Target, the presenting sponsor, or the partnership of the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.

Elizabeth Diller says, "After working on the design of the High Line for over a decade and witnessing the rapid transformation of the surrounding area, I thought a lot about the life cycle of the city-its decay and rebirth-full of opportunities and contradictions. This vantage presented an opportunity for creative reflection about the speed of change of the contemporary city and the stories of its inhabitants. The park will be a 30-block-long urban stage for this immersive performance in which the audience will be mobile, the performers will be distributed, and the city will be both protagonist and backdrop for a collective experience celebrating our diversity."

David Lang says, "What I love about the High Line is that it gives you a great vantage point on the life of the city-you see the backs of old buildings and the fronts of new buildings, you look down alleys, into windows, over old broken warehouses and new fancy stores. You walk up the High Line and you can see a bit of everything. I wanted the music to work the same way: 1000 singers each have their own solo stories to sing, and you walk by them. You might hear them all together, in a haze, as you walk by. Or you might lean in and hear each story."

Claudia Rankine says, "The Mile-Long Opera project on every level was a process of engagement. I stepped into the 7 o'clock world initiated by Anne Carson and reached out to a random array of people who described their dining tables. Writing into their descriptions brought them into relation with each other, myself, and Carson's text. Their lives are various and each table exists on a street I've walked or never been. The writing became a series of encounters-sites of personal theater. The tables formed landscapes that are invitations to eat, to gather, to work, to ponder, to rest, to wish, to share-or in other words, to live."

"Since we opened in 2009, we have presented thousands of programs on the High Line but never anything as ambitious and exciting as The Mile-Long Opera," said Robert Hammond, co-founder and executive director of the High Line. "By partnering with community centers in all five boroughs we are reaching audiences in their own communities, taking our commitment to make the High Line accessible to all to the next level."

"At Target, we're always seeking inventive ways to bring connection and inspiration to the communities we serve," said Todd Waterbury, Chief Creative Officer, Target. "As the sponsor of The Mile-Long Opera, we're proud to make this never-been-done-before performance free, to allow communities from all five boroughs to come together, to see and experience the High Line as it's transformed into an immersive, outdoor public stage."