Review of Constance: A Confession, a new multi-author opera created by the “Writers’ Room” of the Experiments in Opera company; viewed May 18, 2026, with further performances having run through May 22.
What would happen if you assembled four writer-and-composer teams, challenged them to write an episode each about the life of a charismatic charlatan, gave them a deadline, and fired the starting pistol?
You might get a comic-operatic morality tale such as Constance: A Confession, which just concluded its run at HERE Arts Center in New York City’s Soho district, the latest product to emerge from the cunningly conceived “Writers’ Room” program of Experiments in Opera (or “EiO”), an artists-led non-profit company founded in 2010.
Gotta Start Somewhere
Constructed as a sort of retrospective apologia for and re-enactment of a picaresque career of deceit and chicanery, Constance: A Confession might be viewed as a sort of feminist Rake’s Progress.
Sydney Anderson as Constance and Zen Wu as The Skeptic in CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen
Segment one introduces us to Constance as a fine arts conservatory student in, of all places, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She and two of her colleagues, Skylar and Mark, are bustling about a gallery space where they are shortly to offer for evaluation their final projects –a nerve-wracking prospect, as the conferral of their MFAs will depend on the approbation of the major Sheboygan arts critic expected to arrive at any moment.
Constance alone appears unfazed, even though at this eleventh hour she has yet to decide on what her project will be, let alone actually creating it.
Skylar (or “The Skeptic” throughout the opera) is outraged by Constance’s blithe insouciance, while Mark (an incarnation of “The Mark” throughout) idolizes Constance to the point of idolatry and declares her procrastination as tantamount to genius.
The critic arrives and summarily denounces both Skylar’s massive skyline painting and Mark’s taxidermy diorama. Only at this point does Constance pull off her masterstroke.
Nathaniel Sullivan as The Mark and and Sydney Anderson as Constance in CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen
[Spoiler alert.] Whispering in his ear, Constance persuades the adoring Mark to amputate his own middle finger which she then affixes to the gallery wall. The critic exults that Constance has successfully “given the middle finger to Moder Art!”
She’s Off and Running
Constance, now convinced of her inevitable rise as an artist, moves to New York City. Episodes ensue in which she becomes a mountebank tarot-card reader in Bushwick, Brooklyn; a popular online influencer and sketchy health supplement purveyor; and, finally, a massively successful “color therapy” guru and erotic messiah, claiming for her myriad adoring acolytes the power to defy death.
Disaster ensues.
Nathaniel Sullivan, Sydney Anderson and Sishel Claverie in CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen
Cometh the Fall
Constance: A Confession forms a veritable Jacob’s Ladder of fraudulence as she rises through ever-widening gyres of audacity to an obligatory climax of moral redress, psychological showdown, and psychotic break.
Constant, and Consummate, Collaborators
The performers were all impressive actor/sing/dancers with vocal strengths admirably bridging styles from the traditionally operatic to contemporary musical theatre.
Sydney Anderson embodied Constance with a winning spontaneity and engaging comic energy.
Zen Wu, as s variant of “The Skeptic” in each segment, pitched her function as Constance’s foil with focused precision.
Sishel Claverie as The Enabler in CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen
Sishel Claverie as “The Enabler,” was sycophantic perfection.
And Nathaniel Sullivan, as “The Mark,” evinced a powerful voice, physical agility and remarkably consistent earnestness in a role that could easily have been either cloying or camp.
The libretto of Constance was the work of Susan Bywaters, Lisa Clair, Sam Norman and Ed Valentine, who earn kudos for making seamless the evolving surprises of the plot and its transitioning tone from farce to black comedy verging on the tragic; while the composers involved – Jasmine Galante, Elizabeth Gartman, Mattie Levy, and Roger A. Martinez – impressively contrived to create a persuasively consistent sonic world around Constance’s cheeky and colorful exploits.
Director Shannon Sindelar and choreography Celia Krefter staged Constance with lively variety, while music director Dmitriy Glivinskiy led the musicians comprising the four-person “hypercube” chamber accompaniment with gamesome aplomb.
Bids of great appreciation go also to Silin Chen and Mary Ellen Stebbins as, respectively, the production’s scenic designer and lighting designer.
More information about Experiments in Opera, the “Writers’ Room” and future projects planned by the company is available at https://experimentsinopera.com.
Sydney Anderson as Constance in CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen
