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Last year’s presidential race may have been full of some high drama, but it may not have occurred to you that it would make a great opera, unless you happen to be composer Curtis Hughes.  Inspired by the musical qualities of the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, Hughes created “Say It Ain’t So, Joe”, which will premiere tomorrow night, performed by the Boston-based Guerilla Opera company.

As an opera singer myself, I would love to see the personalities of the election season take to the stage singing, and imagine the production to be a brilliant way to step back from the intensity of the race and see the politics in a new (spot)light.  Pulling together elements of comedy and drama and fantasy, Hughes explains some of the more abstract moments to The Boston Globe:

I remembered my own experience of the debate, which is that my attention drifted away at times and came back.  So I thought that it might be interesting to have the music do something similar: to kind of start with a realistic and straightforward presentation but eventually, all sorts of not-quite-realistic, surreal things happen.

If you happen to be in Boston over the next week, I recommend going to check out “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” and in the meantime you can watch a video preview below: