FireSongs is a new music performance work by Thomas Cabaniss that challenges the form of traditional operas and concerts as a multimedia, fully-staged version of this poetic tapestry. With texts taken from prose by Maya Angelou, W.H. Auden, Wendell Berry, Walt Hudgins, Douglas Langworthy, Evelyn Lowe, Josephine Pinckney, Tracy K. Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Strand, the piece explores the edges, limits of all things—ultimately telling the greater story of what it means to be alive. Acclaimed director and newly appointed Creative Director of Bare Opera, Malena Dayen, and music director David Rosenmeyer, guide this world premiere—that will also mark Bare Opera’s return to the “theater”—on June 18, 2022 at the Chelsea Factory as a part of the National Sawdust season programming.