Conversations swirl about opera’s demise. But just as death arias provide the emotional heart of classic opera, Joseph Keckler extols the enduring life and relevance of an artform purportedly in its death throes. With the style of a rock star, the three-plus-octave voice of a classically trained bass-baritone, and a keen comic sensibility, Keckler brings his rich voice and one-of-a-kind vision to an absurd yet affecting world premiere. Combining death sequences drawn from the canon of classic opera with original narratives and music, this ensemble performance collage is at once a festive meditation, a strange ritual, and a morbid medley of epic proportions.

Featuring full-length arias and snippets of music, Joseph Keckler’s Creative Capital Project Let Me Die also plays with the poetics of fragmentation; the title comes from “Lasciatemi morire,” the Monteverdi death song which is itself a fragment from a lost opera.