Unlike many people who profess to having read Proust, Peter Wing-Healey actually has—in fact, he’s a voracious reader of cultural theory, novels, poetry, and literature from and about ancient cultures. Yet he is equally well-versed in the original Star Trek series and each of these influences finds its way into his operas.
     I remember one time we went up to stay at the summer home of one of the board members of the Mesopotamian Opera. It was a tiny, sturdy shack perched atop a dune near Provincetown, far away from what Peter referred to as “the grid” (later referred to as “The Matrix”). There was no electricity, no bathroom, no outhouse, and running water had to be pumped. The house was situated so that it was impossible to see the sea or the nearby birch woods and it was easy to have the illusion that one was truly in the midst of a vast, contoured desert. We could have been on a film director’s set— Bertolucci or Kurosawa, or even Pasolini—something epic and expansive, with lots of costumes and graceful movement as in Peter’s ecological operas. This was the kind of place and experience that Peter loves as much as holding court at a table in Marion’s restaurant, entertaining all with the astonishing wit and expressive gestures that always hold his audiences spellbound.
     At night in the shack, I felt a bit out of sorts—after all there were no TV sets or radios or light bulbs and the crashing waves and the buzz of insects in the nearby woods created a cacophony that, to me at least, needed a conductor. Peter, however, felt entirely at peace in this simplest of dwellings, dressed in a sarong and wearing a makeshift turban that protected his head from the sun. He looked fabulous, but he wore his garments like they were his native costume (which I think in fact they are). When it came time for this group of wound-up New Yorkers, which included two dogs (one of them a verbose, needy Jack Russell), to go to sleep, Peter calmed all of us down. Sitting cross-legged near a gas lantern, he read to us. This was at least fifteen years ago, but I think he read from Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.