Elizabeth Clark had a nightmare. It was November 2016, the night before the election, and in her dream the world was cold, barren, post-apocalyptic. But even in the dream, something fragile pushed through the ash and fallout—seeds, green things, life. Clark, a composer, harpist, and Kingston resident, did what artists do when visited by vision: she made it into art. That dream became “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter: An Earth Opera,” an ever-evolving, multi-disciplinary spectacle that has unfolded across the Hudson Valley for the past five years. It will be performed on October 3 and 4 at 7:30pm at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston.
The “Earth Opera” is no tidy A-B-C narrative. It is closer to the way we dream—nonlinear, immersive, packed with imagery that feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic. Audiences are plunged into a world of sound and vision orchestrated for harp, strings, South American winds, horns (including a six-foot Carnyx dragon horn), piano, pipe organ, dulcimer, gongs, waterphones, and chimes. Choral voices rise, dancers move like spirits through smoke, Andean instruments echo alongside experimental electronics. The effect is ceremonial and uncanny, like stepping inside a collective unconscious where myth, politics, and poetry collide.
Since its 2021 debut at Rosendale’s Widow Jane Mine, “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter” has grown new roots each season. Past stagings have brought over 500 people underground into the mine’s echoing chambers; last year, Clark and her collaborators adapted the piece for the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, where the vaulted Gothic interior offered a different sort of resonance. The church becomes both sanctuary and stage, a space where light experiments, ritual movement, and ecstatic sound wash over the assembled.
This year marks a milestone: the release of the Earth Opera album, two years in the making. The record blends studio tracks laid down at ArtFarm in Accord with live recordings from the 2024 Old Dutch performances. The October shows will double as an album release celebration and, Clark says, the last Hudson Valley presentation of the piece for the foreseeable future.
Part of what makes the “Earth Opera” remarkable is its scale of collaboration. Over 30 artists will join Clark for the 2025 performances, a roster that reflects the Hudson Valley’s artistic abundance: Andes Manta, Melora Creager of Rasputina, jazz legend Juma Sultan, Jaguar Mary X, performance artist Linda Mary Montano, and a small army of musicians, dancers, and light experimenters. Together they form what Clark calls the “Earth Opera Dance Army,” a shifting collective that embodies the piece’s spirit of communal creation.
Though rooted in dream and myth, “Seeds Under Nuclear Winter” cannot help but brush against the world we’re living in. Scenes skewer televangelists and narcissist dictators; choruses mourn ecological collapse. The title alone conjures nuclear dread. And yet the performance insists on beauty, rebirth, and interconnection. Seeds sprout, even in the bleakest soil. It is a work of art made for dark times, a reminder that community and creativity are themselves forms of survival.
