Sydney Opera House to Host Concert For Dogs

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Robert Wallace/Steve Parish Publishing/Corbis

The Sydney Opera House — perhaps the world’s most famous concert venue — is going to the dogs.

On June 5, famed performance artist Laurie Anderson and her rock legend partner, Lou Reed, will stage a high-frequency performance tailored to a canine audience. Though the dogs are required attend with their human companions, most of the recital will be totally imperceptible to the human ear. The event, part of a multi-day festival curated by the couple, is advertised as an “inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia.”

Anderson has said her rat terrier, Lolabelle, inspired the concert. Her dog, who recently survived a cancer scare, loves her music but is a discerning fan, enjoying smooth songs with a beat as well as “lots of complicated high-end stuff,” Anderson told the Sydney Morning Herald. The concert’s producer told Paw Nation that Lolabelle has no doubt heard the composition, making her the only mammal to have listened to the piece, since not even Anderson can hear it fully.

Even with her own dog’s approval, the avant-garde artist is a bit nervous as to how a canine crowd might react to their first ever experimental music concert, calling it her “secret nightmare” that her composition might lead to doggie mayhem. She doesn’t, however, want to stifle their enjoyment of concert, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that the dogs “can express themselves and make a little mosh pit if they feel like it.” The event will only last about 20 minutes since, says Anderson, “dogs don’t have a great attention span.”

Christopher Shay