Album Notes

It’s a dark and stormy night. The cabaret swirls smoke, euphoria, danger. A burlesque beauty sings a swooping, eerie song and suddenly sprouts a full beard. An itinerant tenor and a melancholic balloonist croon to apocalyptic waltzers. The drums ba-da-boom, the cellos duel, the gitarrón’s been drinking.

It’s Vagabond Opera—you’d better Sing for Your Lives!

Like surrealist Marcel Duchamp packing an entire life’s work into a suitcase, the Portland, Oregon troupe tucks the high drama of opera into the tight squeeze of the sexy cabaret and the vintage vaudeville stage. By turns sinister and seedy, sweet and nostalgic, the brainy, sultry band mashes up Eastern European folk theater and classical grandeur, hot club act and avant-garde klezmer jams, perky musicals and edgy absurdism.