Aliceheimer’s,

a chamber opera

Music by Erik Nielsen Libretto by Dana Walrath

Aliceheimer’s, a new chamber opera, charts a path to magic, healing, and laughter in the midst of the cognitive changes brought about by dementia. This single-singer, full-length opera lets Alice, a soprano, tell her own story of making it as a new American and of the vital work of forgiveness after a legacy of trauma. As audiences fall in love with Alice, an unexpected hero, it restores humanity to those living with dementia and other forms of neurodiversity. The opera also celebrates the heroic essential care work done, primarily by Black and Brown women, across the globe as it interrogates the systemic injustice at the root of health disparities.

“Dana Walrath’s funny and moving graphic memoir about her mother’s dementia journey translates to opera with shimmering power. By embracing the complicated losses of Alzheimer’s disease with love and rigorous curiosity, Erik Nielsen's music and her libretto combine to transform this story into a revelation about the self and the nature of reality that resonates with grace and passion”

— Alison Bechdel (New York Times best selling author of The Fun Home)

“Aliceheimer's, Erik Nielsen's new chamber opera with graphic novelist/poet Dana Walrath, takes a journey through Alzheimer's Disease that is as joyful as it is tragic. Walrath's poetry takes her mother Alice's difficult journey while Nielsen's evocative music delivers her deep and personal feelings. It is as delightful as it is poignant.”

— Jim Lowe (Music critic and arts editor, The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus/Rutland Herald )

“Walrath and Nielsen's opera Alice-heimers is not merely a meditation on dementia; it is a portrait of someone who has fallen outside of time and exists in her childhood, in her youth, and in a frighteningly fragmented present. It is therefore the portrait of a whole life, set to music as varied and polystylistic as our own lives are, from ballad to aria to playground song. It is not simply a spectacle of someone else's confusion we witness, but an investigation of our own memory and how we make sense and nonsense. . . (this) work is so important. The world doesn't need more operas about young people in love, doomed or otherwise. There's so much more of human life to be addressed.”

— M.T. Anderson (New York Times best selling author of Octavian Nothing and Symphony for the City of the Dead.)

“For caregivers and outsiders, Alzheimer's can be frustrating. But in Aliceheimer's, Erik Nielsen's music puts audiences directly into the topsy-turvy world of elderly Alice, who is navigating the disease. Dana Walrath, a medical anthropologist, wrote the unique graphic memoir of her mother's dementia on which the opera is based, and she worked with Nielsen to develop a libretto that captures her mother's singular voice. With a score that runs the emotional gamut -- as good opera does -- Aliceheimer's translates a common condition into unforgettable drama.”

— Amy Lily (Classical Music Critic, Seven Days Vermont)

“A deeply moving, informative, and funny memoir by a woman watching her mother's descent into Alzheimer's disease."