71: Voodoo, Vacuum Cleaners, Eurydice, and LSD – A Conversation with Anne LeBaron

Hailed by The New Yorker as an “unusually inventive composer” and “innovative [harpist],” Anne LeBaron has spent her long career pushing the boundaries of opera and pioneering new forms of collaborative, grassroots, comic, and electronic composition. Her work has garnered widespread critical acclaim and has been supported by the Fulbright, MacDowell, the Copland House, and many other foundations. In this episode, Anne shares her take on opera’s evolution across the last fifty years, and we discuss several of her works, including her latest project, LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, which earned her the Opera America Discovery Grant and takes a new look at the strange cast of characters behind the discovery, study, misuse, and institutional control of LSD.