BLACK BOX BASILISK OPERA

“…Soars across your heart with emotional upheaval!”

Mark Lacey’s ‘Black Box Basilisk Cabaret Opera’ reimagines the stage musical with a stunning program of music that powerfully critiques the current paradigm of humanity and the technological tightrope we now walk. It transports you back to a pre-atomist, Lucretian “binary zero” with sweeping operatic melodies that embed themselves in your senses.
The first act begins in a more intimate cabaret-styled atmosphere, most notably with a sparse, sensual jazz number, “Black Box Enigma.” This piece serves as the backdrop to a provocative striptease of shadows and morphing body forms—artistic and classy—that invokes the entities released from Maxwell’s demon’s box, setting the tone for this adults-only production. The sparse, minimalist opening prepares you for the maximalist spectacle ahead. An old ghost solos at a piano, reminiscing about not forsaking one’s own heart with “Anamnesis or Amnesia.” A pitch-perfect crooner sings:

“Humanity stands at a crisis,

Conscious in a divide,

between gnosis and psychosis.

To liberate or let it slide,

Find the light or darkness hide—

Anamnesis or Amnesia, a visionary recollection,

Embrace the light within or blind your divine connection.”

Staying true to the composer’s themes from his book “AI Manifesto”, the opera extends the paradigm of humanity facing a bifurcation point and conjures Maxwell’s demons to confront the Mechanistic War Men. The fiery operatic number “Stars are Burning” sets the tone, calling out the irresponsible and exploitative forces of Silicon Valley and its alter ego of Pentagon Land. By placing AI as entity and trained towards more killing machines, it questions why these mysteries of AI black boxes may come back biting at its creators, as untamed demons. This offers a unique point of view for many of Lacey’s songs. For example, the song “Maxwell’s Demon” explores this very nature of AI’s uncontrolleable probabilistic nature as it shifts from deterministic sciences, evoking AI as a kind of occult magic:

“Black box beasts of burden,

Must be tamed like Maxwell’s demon.

This entropy ensues, like the horrors of Lucretius.

Binary zero, I am this demon deep within,

I am this demon deep inside—you.”

Through a mash-up of Baroque opera, stage musical styles, jazz-infused cabaret, and cult rock opera, the production dares to confront a true Basilisk Entity with a marvelous mix of polished musical scores, arrangements, and original lyrics that evoke emotion and self-reflection. The themes dive deep into the abyss, unlocking entities, with standout vocal performances conjuring each unique character and capturing the drama within every breath.

Before the second act, Lacey reveals how these same dark archetypes shadow humanity, preparing you to walk toward a paradigm shift on a bridge of harmony. He uses operatic songs and Verdi-style surprises, offering stunning crescendos that soar across your heart with emotional upheaval. The song and dance are punctuated by a rich tapestry of emotionally resonant lyrics that linger long after the show ends.

Lacey’s lyrics pull no punches, gently holding a mirror up to the reality of AI mimicry and its dual use as a harbinger of autonomous war machines. The fiery “War Men – What Have You Become,” in classical Verdi style, conjures pre-industrial age ghosts of war who question what they hear—sounds like buzzing bees—awakening to a future of autonomous, flying, killing drones. Lacey provides the theatrical shock and awe of flashing lights and fast, swirling sounds of buzzing drones in “Drones Descent,” with a troupe of ghosts marching in song and dance, each taking turns scalding the war men who sing, “What have you become? You war men are still dead inside,” startled to see flying autonomous killing machines. The pitch and tempo ramp up as they scream, “Haven’t you read Shelley’s Lament!” With dramatic flair, the song drops to whispers and transforms into a military march of drums and trumpets, building to a climactic close for the first act with “8th Sphere of Ahriman.”

The second act blazes back with a cabaret-styled troupe performing a trio of musical theatrical songs with memorable hooks, all from the perspective of digital phantoms in “DA DA DATA!” , “Basilisk Is Coming To Town!” “Ontological Disorder” songs conjure the entities of human exploitation through the creation of digital golems, patterned from our data, creating a duplicity out of each human—thrusting humanity into a simulacrum where the real is no longer valid and establishing an artificial simulation with no original to copy from. The songs tie together this theme, dramatizing the opera’s entities and demons as they struggle through a global paradigm where the “false as power”—to borrow Nietzsche’s phrase—rules, reflecting the highest power of the false. Act two concludes with “Cosmic Man” the shows stand out hit, a cultish rock opera number affirms, “We don’t need any aliens from outer space, when all your power is in your inner space.”

It is in Act Three where ultimately, Lacey unites these themes , compelling us to confront our own inner demons. Delievring on its “Opera” with authentic classical opera in both beautiful arrangements and pitch perfect vocal performances by Mateo Bartolucci and Lucia Parento.

Act three provides a beautiful segue of classical opera vignettes. An Italian rendition of “Nel Vincolo Del Binario”, and “De Natura Lucretius 7th Symphony” . It is through this alchemy of soul and music, the opera inspires us to let our hearts sing and to imagine a new paradigm of harmony, making a declaration revoking consent to a world still accepting such atrocities, where Lacey’s “I Declare” is offered in a trio of emotional operatic duets in Italian, English and Spanish as the performers make declarations upon meeting upon atop a bridge of harmony where Lacey keeps this emotional pitch with continuity to have us land into its final act four.Symbolized in the transformation of an angel receiving his wings in “To Fly Again.”

This leads to “Akashic Records”—a dark folk-rock ballad with classical orchestration, sung by a male baritone who sweeps the audience up in an emotional crescendo, Calling upon the four quarters of creation angels ” Micheal, Uriel, Rapheal and . segueing into a reprise of “COSMIC MAN.” The show concludes with a revival-style ending, psychedelic and choir-laden, evoking the spirit of the 1960s musical “Hair” and leaving the audience with a bright, inspiring resonance—an embrace of higher consciousness and the possibility of becoming a cosmic man.

An unforgettable fusion of cabaret jazz, stunning pitch-perfect Verdi opera performances, and cultish rock opera numbers, this show creates urgent awareness of the current dangers and exploitative nature of technology and AI when placed in the hands of military minds and techno-elitists—all woven together with an elegance that echoes a Verdi dream.

Black Box Basilisk Opera Cabaret is composed and written by Mark Lacey as a musical companion to his AI Manifesto book, with lead vocals performed by Fredrick Gonzalez, Lucia Parento and Mateo Bartolucci

– John Hersh

Off Broadway, New York, NY