Violince by Oppera

Her partner in life and music, Michael Mozart, hovered behind the scenes as a record producer and session musician; seasoned since age six through work with headliners ranging from The Ohio Players, through Leon Russell to Dave Mason and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

OPPERA is the name they've chosen for themselves. The label fits, with its implications of spectacle, sensation, and surprise. On OPPERA, their self-titled CD, they summon contradictory spirits: advanced instrumental and vocal techniques, sophisticated applications of technology...and intensity. They lean toward the latter: OPPERA is as polished as they come, but its raw, emotional urgency is what hits home.

OPPERA makes it clear that these two are masters of their craft. The new CD drives a more central point home: OPPERA comes as much if not more from the gut than the head. In a word, it rocks.

Some of this comes down to the focus of the collaboration between Mozart and Martika. Conceptually ambitious, they capture the excitement of having found their ideal match in each other. It's almost too good to be true, but they did in fact meet in a castle in the south of France, during an all-star songwriter summit. Mozart was in the area for several weeks, working on projects for Barenaked Ladies, Carole King and Hanson, among others. He happened to be around on the day that Martika arrived as a guest of the event.

"Specifically," Mozart recalls, "she walked in on May 17th, at 10:37 p.m." Martika adds, "I was reborn the moment Michael and I met."

Mozart was aware of Martika's history - her first success as a regular on Kids Incorporated, her hit records as a teen pop diva, including three Top Twenty hits and one, "Toy Soldiers," that topped the charts for two weeks and transported her to worldwide acclaim. She, on the other hand, recognized him from somewhere, knew he looked familiar and was trying to figure out where she'd seen this mysterious man before. As they were getting to know each other, he played her some of his songs and she was moved to tears. She could not understand why the world had not yet heard this. Their connection was undeniable.

"It was so instantaneous," Martika says. "We went from 'nice to meet you' and talking for a couple of hours to writing, recording and singing together for the entire next day and night. Then we were up all night again, talking. There was a spiritual connection that translated into the music in a way that everyone around us could hear. Almost immediately he asked me to marry him... and in the next breath asked if I wanted to make music with him as a duo."

Hearing "yes" twice, Mozart rushed back to New York, took a week to wrap up his sessions, vacate his flat, and fly out to join Martika in Los Angeles. On the night of his arrival they moved into a new home, set up a studio, and began recording.

Quickly the OPPERA concept took shape. The main thing was to be eclectic," Mozart remembers. "I wanted it to have as few boundaries as possible, so that from the variety of styles we could solidify a direction that would make the most sense for us and go from there. That's why there's so much to OPPERA; parts of it are very raw, very rock, very pop or very rhythm & blues, with a jazz and classical influence. We honed that down to a sound that won't get us pigeonholed but is defined."

The superficial impression is that OPPERA is aggressive, perhaps dark. Mozart acknowledges this, while cautioning that the picture is subtler than that. "You hear anger on OPPERA from the build-up of negative energies on the planet," he says. "We're harnessing that into what we're doing."

"We want to share the load, both live and in the studio," Mozart insists. "When you're a solo performer, as Martika was before we met, you don't have anybody to fall back on."

"It's extremely self-indulgent too," Martika says. "I always felt like something was missing, that there were only so many textures I could explore."

"And when I went on the road as a musical director for different artists," Mozart says, "I learned that you end up with three of the guys in the band wanting to go in one direction and the other two hating them for it. Being in a duo changes the landscape. She's an extension of me and I'm an extension of her."

"Everything in our music is integral," Martika sums up. "It's about our voices, Mozart's guitar, the melody, the drum sound...you can't take any of it away."

In fact, OPPERA is at least two circles completed - Martika's emergence as a unique performer and singer, and Mozart's as a virtuoso performer and producer. Their union into a single force can't help but change music as it's changed each of their lives.

More than gothic, more than classical, more than rock, more than mysterious, and unapologetically confrontational... more than all of its myriad parts, that force takes shape here as one unforgettable experience.

Call it OPPERA.

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