Robert Ashley

Robert Ashley (1930–2014) was an American composer central to the development of American music theatre, electronic music, and opera. Co-founder of the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor in the 1960s alongside Gordon Mumma and others, he later became associated with the Mills College scene and the experimental opera movement. His television opera Perfect Lives (1984), a seven-episode work for television that combined ambient keyboards, Ashley's spoken-sung text, and a deliberately everyday American setting, remains among the most radical works of operatic theatre. Subsequent long-form operas including Atalanta (Acts of God) and Now Eleanor's Idea extended this approach across decades of activity.