The creators of The Trial of Spock—An Opera In Three Acts present concert performances of five scenes from an opera-in-progress at the UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall. 

Captain Christopher Pike is gravely injured. Lieutenant Spock is behaving strangely. Charged with protecting Pike in his state of extreme need,Vulcan Commodore T’or suspects that Lieutenant Spock—once Captain Pike’s science officer—is up to no good. Spock’s Captain, James T. Kirk, doesn’t see the trouble until far too late, and soon Spock holds all of them prisoner aboard a ship destined for the “forbidden planet” Talos IV. He refuses to say a word about their fate—not until his superiors agree to give him his trial. Under oath, and with strange evidence, Spock tells the story of Captain Pike’s first visit to Talos IV, where illusion and artificial experiences plunge Pike and fellow captive Vina into uncharted dimensions of their memories, and their concepts of self.

Join sopranos Nicole Koh, Sheila Willey, and Emily Sinclair; tenors Alex Boyer and Nicolas Vasquez-Gerst, baritones Joseph Calzada and Michael Kuo, and the Del Sol Quartet, as they distort the myth of Orpheus, in order to re-think our presumed relationships to freedom and reality, and its augmentations.

Music by Ben Leeds Carson; libretto by Perre DiCarlo & Ben Leeds Carson and Lincoln & Lee Taiz; with contributions from John de Lancie, based on teleplays by Gene Roddenberry.