The Leopard by Sean McCann

Sean McCann presents The Leopard, an opera.

Dialog, music, and elaborate sound design fold into a narrative fantasy about self-cannibalization and transformation. Written and recorded over five years, this is McCann’s first album since 2019’s Puck (Recital) and his first opera. The opera is voiced by composer Martin Bresnick, artist Nour Mobarak, musician Max Eilbacher [Horse Lords], and voice actors David George and Krystel Abimeri. McCann performed and recorded most of the music himself, meticulously editing every sound.

The opera opens with an ornate musical overture before plunging into a surreal tableau: characters on a sailboat cooking and consuming themselves over a makeshift stove. Over the course of eight scenes, the plot continually dissolves and recombines, inducing a narcotic dreamstate. The opera is overseen by Copy, a chimerical figure who both guides and distorts the plot. Four wordless interludes feature Copy in a greenhouse, playing old Victrola records while pruning floral incarnations of each persona. One hears screaming silverware, sprays of watering cans, a thunderstorm, and the baking of each character into a loaf of bread. Musical flourishes appear, such as Barbara Strozzi’s devastating Lagrime mie (1659) which is performed in an empty library alongside a Gertrude Stein-esque spoken incantation read by Nour Mobarak. The opera closes with a grand coda; a haunting, elegiac work for violins and choir.

The opera is accompanied by a book that contains the libretto along with unspoken texts and artwork. Each scene in the book contains a “Copy path,” a kind of plot betrayal or text smear that beckons the listener to fall inside plot holes and uncover flickers of meaning for themselves.

The Leopard navigates a new form that lays somewhere between radio-play, experimental opera, and dioramic film. Available from Recital as a double-CD edition or a limited triple-vinyl LP box set (edition of 100).

Founded in 2012 by Sean McCann.
Focusing on abstract and beautiful music.
Sometimes just one of those things and sometimes both of those things.

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