Baritone
Aldous Huxley
The visionary novelist of "Doors of Perception" and "Brave New World." At age 69, on his deathbed. Still curious, still reaching. The moral and spiritual center of the opera.
The Opera
A Journey to the Threshold of Light
LSD: Huxley's Last Trip is a one-act chamber opera that unfolds at the intersection of literary genius, scientific discovery, political intrigue, and the psychedelic experience, making it one of the most distinctive and timely operatic works available for staging today.
On November 22, 1963, the same day President Kennedy was assassinated, Aldous Huxley lay dying at his Hollywood Hills home and asked his wife Laura to inject him with LSD. That extraordinary final journey anchors a sweeping narrative that reveals connections among Huxley, Albert Hofmann, Francis Crick, Timothy Leary, Mary Pinchot Meyer, John F. Kennedy, and the CIA's clandestine MK-ULTRA program.
The opera engages directly with the culture of the emerging psychedelic renaissance. Its themes, including intelligence agency overreach, scientific revelation, political scandal, and the mysteries of consciousness, remain relevant to contemporary audiences.
A string quintet forms the bridge between the visceral microtonality of the Harry Partch instruments and the piano's equal-tempered tuning. Clarinet, percussion, and voices broaden the palette, opening the score into a kaleidoscopic world of unfamiliar colors, altered harmonies, and otherworldly sonorities.
Lucy Shelton, mezzo · Laura Bohn, soprano · Anna Schubert, coloratura
One-Page Overview
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One-Act Chamber Opera
9 scenes; duration: 90 minutes
10 Singers (23 roles)
Flexible casting for mixed voice types (double- and triple-cast)
Instrumentation
A chamber ensemble of strings, winds, and piano incorporating Harry Partch instruments
Workshops of Selected Scenes
Performed at REDCAT, The Wallis, Schindler House
The Story
Synopsis
Spanning two turbulent decades of discovery and paranoia, LSD: Huxley's Last Trip follows the extraordinary journey of a powerful chemical agent as it circulates among scientists, CIA operatives, and visionary thinkers, culminating in an intimate act of transcendence set against national tragedy. With a cast of ten singers portraying twenty-three roles, the opera moves fluidly between documented history and hallucinatory experience, guided by the LSD Trio—three sopranos who embody the drug as a seductive and transformative force.
The story begins on "Bicycle Day" in Basel in 1943, when chemist Albert Hofmann first discovers LSD and tests it on himself, triggering a disorienting bicycle ride that dissolves the boundaries of perception. A decade later, Aldous Huxley's experience, captured in "The Doors of Perception," opens a radically expanded awareness of time, beauty, and consciousness.
Running parallel to these personal revelations is a darker narrative. In "MK-ULTRA," CIA figures Allen Dulles and Sidney Gottlieb pursue clandestine experiments in mind control, leading to the death of scientist Frank Olson. This moral descent intensifies in "Operation Midnight Climax," where surveillance and manipulation converge in a grotesque theater of human experimentation.
Elsewhere, LSD's cultural and intellectual reverberations surface in unexpected ways. "Double Helix" juxtaposes the discovery of DNA with a slithery "Helix Dance," suggesting a charged connection between scientific insight and altered states of mind. In "Three Lunches," figures including Hofmann, Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Marshall McLuhan trace the rapid spread of psychedelic thought across continents.
The opera then turns to the political sphere. In "Millbrook / Georgetown" and "The White House," Mary Meyer emerges as a visionary who believes LSD could transform global consciousness. Her efforts to introduce it to figures within elite political circles, including John F. Kennedy, culminate in a psychologically intense encounter in which memory, desire, and public identity blur.
In "Huxley's Last Trip," the work reaches its emotional peak. As news of John F. Kennedy's assassination fills the air, Aldous Huxley, on his deathbed, asks his wife Laura for LSD. In a final act of compassion, she administers the drug and sings him 'into the light,' offering a moment of stillness amid national upheaval.
Scored for chamber ensemble and Harry Partch's microtonal instruments, the opera creates a vivid sonic landscape that embodies its central tensions: revelation and control, expansion and fragmentation, idealism and power. Rooted in history yet urgently present, LSD: Huxley's Last Trip invites audiences to reconsider an era whose contradictions continue to shape our own time.
The Characters
Principal Characters
The opera draws its cast from scientific laboratories, corridors of power, and the countercultural margins of mid-20th-century America. LSD materializes as an embodied protagonist in the form of a soprano trio: Love, Sex, and Death.
Mezzo-soprano
Laura Huxley
Aldous's wife, age 52. Musician, therapist, author. Her courage in honoring her husband's last wish drives the opera's emotional core.
Coloratura, Soprano, Mezzo
The LSD Trio
(Love, Sex, Death)
A single presence in three voices, they move as witnesses and catalysts across time. At once seductive, destabilizing, and transcendent, they give form to the shifting states of consciousness the opera explores.
Tenor
Albert Hofmann
The Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD in 1938 and accidentally discovered its effects in 1943. Thoughtful, scientific, awestruck.
Tenor
Allen Dulles
Director of the CIA and architect of MK-ULTRA, Dulles embodies the cold ruthlessness of institutional power. He weaponizes science in the name of national security.
Bass-baritone
Sid Gottlieb
The CIA's in-house chemist and operational mastermind of MK-ULTRA, Gottlieb pursues mind control with a chilling blend of bureaucratic efficiency and moral detachment.
Tenor
Timothy Leary
Harvard psychologist turned counterculture prophet; charismatic, provocative, and key to Mary Pinchot Meyer's Washington experiment.
Soprano
Mary Pinchot Meyer
Washington artist, socialite, peace activist, and Kennedy's intimate. Her idealism and bravery make her one of the opera's most compelling figures.
Instrumentation
The score is composed for a flexible chamber ensemble that can be adapted to available resources. The work uniquely incorporates instruments from the collection of American composer Harry Partch — including Cloud Chamber Bowls, Surrogate Kithara, and Diamond Marimba — creating a sound world that is genuinely unlike any other opera. (Similar instruments and synthesizers may be used instead of the Partch instruments, depending on production requirements.)
- Bb Clarinet
- Piano (doubling celesta)
- Harp
- Percussion
- Violins (2)
- Viola
- Cello
- Double Bass
8 microtonal instruments designed by Harry Partch (optional):
- Kithara; Surrogate Kithara
- Diamond Marimba; Bass Marimba
- Chromelodeon
- Castor & Pollux
- Cloud Chamber Bowls
- Adapted Guitar
Harry Partch Instruments
The score incorporates instruments from the legacy collection of maverick American composer Harry Partch (1901–1974), whose custom-built microtonal instruments — including the Cloud Chamber Bowls, Surrogate Kithara, Kithara, Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba, Chromelodeon, and Harmonic Canon — produce an entirely unique sonic palette. Their resonances define the opera's sonic identity.
Learn about the Partch instruments → Listen to the Partch instruments →Production History
Production Media
Five scenes from LSD: Huxley's Last Trip were performed on June 19–20, 2015, at REDCAT — the internationally recognized contemporary arts center at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA. The performances drew critical attention and established the work's theatrical viability at full professional standard. Four additional scenes were performed at REDCAT on June 14–15, 2024.
Bicycle Day
Albert Hofmann's first experience with LSD. Fraught at first, then revelatory.
Watch on YouTubeMK-ULTRA
CIA's secret program. The LSD Trio observes as the state weaponizes the molecule.
Watch on YouTubeThe Doors of Perception
Aldous Huxley's visionary experience opens a radically expanded awareness of consciousness.
Watch on YouTubeTim and Mary
Timothy Leary and Mary Pinchot Meyer: psychedelic idealism confronts the corridors of power.
Watch on YouTubeHuxley's Last Trip
November 22, 1963. Huxley's final, luminous journey. The opera's emotional center.
Watch on YouTubeREDCAT 2024
View the 2024 scenes performed at REDCAT: Huxley's Last Trip, part 1; Double Helix; Three Lunches; Mary Meyer and JFK.
Watch on YouTubeAdditional workshop performances and presentations:
2015
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Beverly Hills, Los Angeles
The Wallis, one of Southern California's premier presenting organizations, hosted workshop scenes as part of its commitment to new operatic work. The presentation was part of "First Take," an initiative by the experimental opera company The Industry, led by Yuval Sharon.
View Performance2015
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Schindler House, West Hollywood, Los Angeles
The legendary Schindler House, an icon of modernist architecture and the Los Angeles avant-garde, provided an intimate outdoor backdrop for scenes from the opera.
View Performance2025
The New Center for Psychoanalysis
Los Angeles
Presentation by Anne LeBaron of LSD: Huxley's Last Trip for the conference Manifest Mind III: The Decentered Self in Psychedelic States.
Critical Reception
Press & Reviews
"Work-in-progress 'LSD: The Opera' is powerful musical theater"
"Albert Hofmann's 'Bicycle Day' and Harry Partch's Carnegie Hall debut a year later, when he demonstrated his fantastical instruments and microtonal scale to the mainstream New York musical community, are two historic moments in experimental mind-bending. All that makes Anne LeBaron's 'LSD: The Opera,' which uses Partch instruments and naturally opens with Bicycle Day, a match made in psychedelia. Even this partial dose of 'LSD' is already powerful music theater."
"At times, the music is jarring; in other parts, it's melodic and ethereal. If you tune out the lyrics, it feels almost like a hallucination, full of unexpected noises and microtones that don't seem to exist in nature."
"LeBaron, a professor at California Institute of the Arts and, like Partch, a composer with a long California legacy, writes with compelling lyricism, which effectively showcased the evening's talented singers."
Download Selected Press (PDF) →
The Creative Team
Creators
Anne LeBaron
Composer and Librettist
Anne LeBaron composes music that explores transformation, myth, and identity through an experimental and theatrically charged musical language. Hailed by The New Yorker as an "unusually inventive composer" and "admired West Coast experimentalist," her compositions have been performed internationally and by major ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and National Symphony Orchestra, at venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Her seven operas explore figures ranging from Pope Joan to Aldous Huxley, and the Los Angeles Times has described her as a "composer as transformer" whose work is "provocative" and "always changing."
A Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts, LeBaron has created a wide-ranging body of work over more than five decades. Her music merges classical expansiveness with avant-garde dynamism, often engaging iconic figures and charged narratives. Current projects include The Heroine with a Thousand Faces, an ongoing series of musical portraits of women, with performances of her operas Sucktion, LSD: Huxley's Last Trip, and Blue Calls Set You Free in the U.S. and abroad.
An influential experimental harpist since her early work in the New York avant-garde, she continues to perform internationally. She taught composition at CalArts from 2001–2023 and was named Professor Emerita in 2024.
annelebaron.com →
Gerd Stern
Co-librettist
Gerd Stern (1928–2025) was a poet, media artist, and pioneer of intermedia art who co-founded USCO, one of the first multimedia art collectives in the United States. A figure at the heart of the 1960s counterculture, he had personal connections with many of the historical figures in the opera, including Timothy Leary and Marshall McLuhan, giving the libretto an unusual degree of lived authority.
His poetry is marked by linguistic experimentation, political engagement, and a playful spiritual dimension that infuses the opera's text throughout.
Edward Rosenfeld
Co-librettist
Ed Rosenfeld (1943–2020) was a prominent writer and editor who spent decades exploring the frontiers of human consciousness and machine intelligence. His career is a bridge between the psychedelic 1960s and the digital revolution of the 1980s and 90s. In 1973, he authored the cult classic The Book of Highs: 255 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness without Drugs, which remains a definitive guide to non-pharmacological altered states.
Rosenfeld was a founding editor of Omni magazine, where he helped shape the public discourse on science and the future. He later became a leading voice in the field of neural networks, publishing the influential newsletter Intelligence and co-editing Talking Nets: An Oral History of Neural Networks, which documented the pioneers of AI long before it became a household term. As a longtime friend and associate of Gerd Stern, he co-authored the libretto for the multimedia opera LSD: Huxley's Last Trip.
For Presenters & Producers
Why This Opera Matters Now
The opera revisits the colorful early days of psychedelics, how they were used and misused. A laboratory accident set in motion one of the 20th century's most consequential discoveries, opening frontiers in consciousness, psychiatry, and perception. On the flip side, abusive use of LSD led to intelligence agency overreach, surveillance, and the weaponization of science. Today, a new era of research into mental health, fueled by the clinical use of psychedelics, holds great promise for breakthrough therapies.
Scored for chamber ensemble and the Partch microtonal instruments, the opera unfolds in a textured, immersive sound world. Its musical language moves beyond conventional operatic modernism, opening space for disruptive lyricism, volatile instrumental color, and eruptions of improvisatory chaos, all deliberately shaped to serve the drama. LSD: Huxley's Last Trip speaks to opera-goers, new music audiences, Partch devotees, and curious first-time listeners, as well as to those drawn to history, culture, psychiatry, and evolving ideas of consciousness.
Get in Touch
Seeking Partners for a Fully Staged Production
Developed and refined through multiple workshop productions at major Los Angeles venues, LSD: Huxley's Last Trip is ready for a fully staged world premiere. The creative team invites partnerships with presenting organizations, opera companies, festivals, and academic institutions. The project speaks to contemporary audiences across opera, new music, and interdisciplinary contexts in the arts, sciences, and humanities.
A full production packet, including score excerpts, technical rider, production notes, and press materials, is available upon request.
To inquire about partnership, contact: alebaron@calarts.edu