Bass Vocals – Kevin Bell (2) (tracks: 1-1)
Choir – Long Beach Opera (tracks: 1-1)
Directed By – Andrew Culver
Directed By [Choir] – Michael Milenski
Mezzo-soprano Vocals – Patricia McAfee (tracks: 1-1), Ruby Hinds (tracks: 1-1)
Performer [Record-player] – Jerry Wheeler (tracks: 2)
Performer [Record-players] – Clarice Ross (tracks: 1-1), Dren McDonald (tracks: 1-1), Hannes Geiger* (tracks: 1-1), Joseph Giri (tracks: 1-1), Ronda Rindone (tracks: 1-1), William Houston (tracks: 1-1)
Performer [Truckera Tape] – Scott Fraser (tracks: 1-1, 2)
Piano – Brian Pezzone* (tracks: 2)
Piano [Left] – Vicky Ray* (tracks: 1-1)
Piano [Right] – Brian Pezzone* (tracks: 1-1)
Soprano Vocals – Anne-Marie Ketchum (tracks: 2), Daisetta Kim (tracks: 2), Suzan Hanson (tracks: 1-1)

Tenor Vocals – Michael Lyon (tracks: 1-1), Richard Powell (3) (tracks: 1-1)
Cage's EUROPERAS 3 & 4 (1990) receive their first recording from 1993 performances by the Long Beach Opera (California). This authoritative production was directed by Andrew Culver, who worked with Cage for eleven years and assisted the composer with the preparation of these works.

EUROPERAS 3 & 4 are Cage's "middle operas", flanked by the large-scale orchestral EUROPERAS 1 & 2 written for the Frankfurt Opera and the miniature tourable EUROPERA 5 written especially for pianist Yvar Mikhashoff.

EUROPERA 3 is a dense, tumultuous work and a true celebration of opera. It is scored for six singers singing their favorite arias, six record-players playing classic 78-rpm opera recordings, 2 pianos playing excerpts from opera transcriptions, and the occasional intrusion of the Truckera tape (a collage of over 100 superimposed operas that virtually obliterates the live action) -- a multi-layered and multi-textured 70 minute collage of sound, sometimes almost transparent, sometimes almost opaque, but always joyous.

EUROPERA 4 is just the opposite: scored for two sopranos (again singing their favorite arias), a 78-rpm victrola, one piano (also playing opera transcriptions) and this time a distant Truckera. EUROPERA 4 is a sublimely intimate experience of opera -- spare, whole and at rest.

Cage insisted that these two EUROPERAS must be performed together and never separately -- two contradictory presentations of the same history coexisting in a single performance. And, a unique listening experience.

This deluxe 2-CD set comes with an 80-page book containing notes by Cage scholar James Pritchett and dozens of photos from the production.

"Europeras 3 & 4: Bliss!" -- Allan Rich, L.A. Weekly

Notice:
Due to Bandcamp filesize restrictions, "Europera 3" has been downsampled to FLAC.