ID, Please is an opera of interrogations. IT explores questions of nationalism and identity.

Soosan Lolavar and Daniel Hirsch initially conceived of ID, Please as a way to explore the frequently tense experience of crossing international borders and raise questions about identity and nationality. It features two singers representing travelers passing through the border of an unnamed country where a sometimes patronizing, sometimes bored, frequently menacing, border security agent interrogates them. These travelers could be anyone, from anywhere. When they answer the border guard’s questions they offer a variety of self-contradictory answers, as if they are many different people passing, or not, through the border. 

The collage-like nature of the libretto reflects the process in which is was constructed. While writing the libretto, Daniel Hirsch conducted a survey with a range of travelers about their experiences crossing international borders. These responses make up the construction of the libretto and suggests a mutability of identity. A passport identifies a traveler, it certifies their nationality, but there’s always more to the story.

Lolavar’s score, which draws on key practices of Iranian classical music, recreates this sense of instability in its listeners. Recurring phrases in the libretto are frequently met with shifting rhythmic setting. Words are set with unnatural stresses. Mixed meters create an uncertain sense of pulse. Microtonalities and low drones produce complex fluctuation of pitch. The combined effect is an environment with an overall feeling of instability, fear and mechanical, dehumanizing repetition.

The border too is a mutable, uncertain element. When you’re standing at the border between countries you’re some place specific but you’re also nowhere at all. With isolationist foreign policy threatening to tear apart treaties, seemingly stable borders are becoming less so. For all these reasons, the precise location of the opera remains vague. It’s everywhere, it’s nowhere, it’s changing all the time.