A vinyl release celebration for Roadkill!!! Greatest Hits! A Roadkill Opera will be held beginning at 2 pm Chicago time, Saturday, October 5, 2024, at Vintage Vinyl (925 Davis Street, Evanston, IL, 60201), the iconic vinyl record store immortalized in the film High Fidelity. 

Writer/producer/performer Stephan Alexander Parker, who worked as a light and sound man from 1979 to 1983 in Evanston’s rock and punk scene (The Front Lines, Group Gomez, Fat Lewy, Peer Group, The Bombastics) and Northwestern University’s theatre scene (The Mee-Ow Show (five seasons); Hot Rhythm; Diamonds and Dust; The Decameron; and Frank Galati‘s Blood of the Walsungs), will be on hand to sign copies of his double LP project.

Roadkill!!! Greatest Hits! A Roadkill Opera is being officially released Tuesday, October 1, 2024, to commemorate the North American premiere that evening of Ferdinando Paer’s 1804 opera Leonora at Chicago Opera Theatre. It is exclusively available as a Direct Metal Mastered, two-disc, 180 gram, gatefold LP. A Roadkill Opera is a new opera by Stephan Alexander Parker built on the music of the first act of Paer’s Leonora.

The 2024 vinyl release includes in its entirety the 2013 chamber orchestra studio recording of A Roadkill Opera on three sides. The fourth side is devoted to Chicago-style improv sketch comedy by the outfit whose true story is told in the new opera, the Roadkill On A Stick Frozen Foods Theatre Company (active 1988 to 1992 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming) recorded live at their 1992 show Roadkill!!! Greatest Hits! 

The Vintage Vinyl event will also include a new companion book: Hungry Men Don’t Swerve. That book details how Parker’s randomly recording  Leonora off a WFMT broadcast in 1979-1980 led to a 24-year search to identify the recording; a 2012 workshop and 2013 studio recording of Parker’s new opera; attending the 2015 GRAMMYs; and six fully staged performances of A Roadkill Opera in 2016, two with the full Symphony Orchestra of Northern Virginia.

In addition to the 2024 gatefold double LP and companion book, the opera libretto and books of sheet music for the singers and orchestra will also be available:

A Roadkill Opera: Silver Dollar Showroom Edition

A Roadkill Opera: Piano/Vocal

A Roadkill Opera: Conductor’s Score

A Roadkill Opera: Parts for Wind Instruments

A Roadkill Opera: Parts for Timpani and String Instruments

A Roadkill Opera Overture: Conductor’s Score & Parts

Those who cannot make it to the in-person event can order through Vintage Vinyl‘s mail order division at https://vvmo.com/ or mail@vvmo.com

A Roadkill Opera tells the story of the hour before the lights go up on opening night for a comedy improv troupe in Jackson Hole, Wyoming—the Roadkill On A Stick Frozen Foods Theatre Company. Based (loosely) on a true story from a fast-developing tourist town, this original English libretto by Parker is set to music by Ferdinando Paer (a direct competitor of Beethoven and Napoleon’s maître de chapelle).

In June 2012 A Roadkill Opera was workshopped in Crystal City, Virginia, by Jeffrey Dokken at Artomatic, the Washington DC area’s largest free creative arts event. Dokken, currently the music director for the National Football League’s Washington Commanders, served as music director and conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Northern Virginia from 2010 to 2023. Maestro Dokken reassembled most of the 2012 workshop’s chamber orchestra and singers in 2013 for a series of recording sessions in Maryland.

The cast for the studio opera recording includes Laura Wehrmeyer (Holly), soprano; Andrew Webster (Eddie), baritone; David Timpane (Stephan), baritone; Krista Monique McClellan (Debby), soprano; and Jeffrey Dokken (Dave), tenor.

The chamber orchestra for the opera recording includes Martine Micozzi, flute; Jeannine Altavilla, clarinet; Sarah Robinson, bassoon; Michael Thompson, trumpet; Jeffrey Dokken, timpani; Frank Peracchia, violin I; Ian Ross, violin II; Val Rauch, viola; Kathy Augustine and Natalie Spehar, cello; and Stephan Alexander Parker on hammer, 2×4, and cymbal.

A Roadkill Opera was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Blue House Productions by Jeff Gruber.

The cast for the live improv/comedy recording Roadkill!!! Greatest Hits! includes Christopher Dews (2016); Ed Bachtel (1988, 1992); Stephan Alexander Parker (1988, 1992); Louise Gignoux (1992); and Dave Rohrer (1988, 1992). Rohrer is also responsible for writing and performing the newly released studio recording “Jackson Hole,” which is the first track on the side Roadkill!!! Greatest Hits!

Ferdinando Paer (Composer) was active in Vienna, Dresden, and Paris. He was a regular participant in the thrice-monthly private concerts put on by (and for the personal amusement of) Marie Therese at the royal court of Vienna, Austria. The Empress would assemble talented amateur and professional singers and musicians (similar in size and make-up to the group that recorded A Roadkill Opera) to play mixed concerts of sacred and secular music from her vast collection of scores and parts. 

Paer wrote dozens of operas. Leonora, the first act from which the score for A Roadkill Opera was derived, was his 40th opera. It is the same story as Beethoven’s first and only opera, Fidelio. Chicago audiences have a rare opportunity to productions of both this season, as Lyric Opera of Chicago presents Fidelio September 26 & 29, as well as October 2, 5, and 10, while Chicago Opera Theater presents Leonora October 1, 4, and 6, 2024.

Go there: 

Vintage Vinyl (925 Davis Street, Evanston, IL, 60201), 2 pm, Saturday, October 5, 2024

Order online:

Vintage Vinyl mail order division https://vvmo.com/ or mail@vvmo.com