Vera of Las Vegas is an opera by Daron Hagen with a libretto by Paul Muldoon based on a treatment co-written with the composer.
The Center for Contemporary Opera gave the staged premiere on 25 June 2003 at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre of Symphony Space in New York City.
The first act (in 2010 still awaiting adaptation by Hagen) was to be based on Muldoon's pre-existing play (originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre, Princeton) Six Honest Serving Men.
Hagen, at the Bard College Electronic Music Studio in April–May 1996, oversaw post-production mixing, editing and recording of extensive overdubs, performing many of them.
To this extent, the book hints at allegiance with Hunter S. Thompson's nightmare novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, another phantasmagoric journey to the heart of darkness.
Yet, the opera announces its origins in the nightmare of Northern Ireland's Troubles by repeated references to Ulster place names, horrid flashbacks to obscure scenes of murder.
"This 'nightmare cabaret opera' extends Six Honest Serving Men and implies a way, through conscience and 'something like a confession', to a point where things might begin to become more clear.
"[6] In the liner notes to the recording, Russell Platt describes the authors' creative chemistry: "When joined, each artist's singular complexity complements the other's.
The intentionally Technicolor, superficially-tawdry, seemingly raw, decadent musical eclecticism runs in febrile counterpoint to the libretto's verbal flights.
"[8] In the same preface, Muldoon responds, "What has made working with Daron Hagen such a pleasure is the extent to which he understands the possibilities for tripping the light fantastic on the coal-carriage of a runaway train.
"[8] European critics responded enthusiastically to Opera Theatre Company's premiere and Irish tour: "Hagen’s music ... blends idioms — neo-Gershwin, jazz, soft rock, Broadway — with soaring melodies that send the characters looping off in arias of self-revelation.
[10] American critics also responded positively to the off-Broadway premiere: “The eclecticism of the music is dazzling: sharply pointed jazz lines are overlaid with slippery atonal harmony; a plaintive nineteen-seventies folk-rock ballad melds into a Broadway power anthem.
[12] “You cannot deny the theatrical audacity of Vera of Las Vegas, which elicited many cheers from the packed house", admitted The New York Times.
[1] Charles Ward, in the Houston Chronicle, describes the central arias as "very handsome, large-scale versions of sophisticated songs in the Great American Songbook".
Altogether the opera is a musical tour de force.”[14] “From the Bernstein-like brashness of the opening bits to Doll's slow pop-ballad aria to Vera's eleventh-hour-save torch song, Hagen (rather self-consciously) goes for broke.
And his obvious affinity for Muldoon's wacky, all-over-the-map text, leads to a seamless marriage of words and music, even if the libretto, at times, is too poetically clever for its own good.”[15]