Perfect Lives  Perfect Lives is a 1984 television opera in seven episodes (or acts) by American contemporary composer Robert Ashley, directed by John Sanborn. It was released on DVD in 2005, and a book of the libretto as well as an audio recording on CD and cassette have also existed. Among many varying descriptions of the work, Ashley once described "Perfect Lives" as a "comic opera about reincarnation". Ashley's biographer, Kyle Gann, meanwhile, has stated that it can be called a "performance novel", "if opera raises too many expectations". "Perfect Lives" has been described as consisting of "digressions about the US landscape and American lives, performed in American vernacular language". It audiovisually makes use of self-references, non-sequiturs, an eclectic, pop-based but minimalist approach to its musical structure (sculpted by "Blue" Gene Tyranny and Peter Gordon), and surreal and intertwined visual editing (often making use of overlays and captions), as well as subjects like "Midwestern ennui", social conflict and metaphysics. The seven episodes often refer to events that are either about to happen or have happened, in an order depending more on the actions of other main characters than linear time. In its libretto, interjections and declared propositions are highlighted in small italic type. The first and last episodes, "The Park" and "The Backyard", were originally presented on Ashley's 1977 album "Private Parts", albeit in a more stripped down form and with accompanying tabla playing. According to Ashley via Gann, its structure is based on the Bardo Thodol (the "Tibetan Book of the Dead"), although he intended to model it on Midwestern evangelism as well. The work's further extensions are "Atalanta (Acts of God)" and "Now Eleanor's Idea" (the opera followed by the tetralogy, the latter including "Improvement", "eL/Aficionado", "Now Eleanor's Idea" and "Foreign Experiences"), and they are also based on American religions. These are songs about the Corn Belt and some of the people in it ... or on it. The narrator, "R", is set in place as being Ashley himself. Raoul de Noget, an over-the-hill lounge singer of unknown age, and his companion Buddy, nicknamed "The World's Greatest Piano Player", have arrived in a small town in the American Midwest.