music and dance: christian ellis

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This short clip marks the first time Christian Ellis has sung in public since he was fifteen. This military veteran never thought his voice would re-emerge. Video courtesy of mountainfilm.org.

  • grant: $575,000 - Sun Valley Adaptive Sports Program

    To support programs that improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities through sports and recreation.

  • topic: behind the scenes

  • topic: veteran affairs

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music and dance: christian ellis

Fallujah: The First Opera on the Iraq War USMC Sergeant (ret) Christian Ellis was a machine gunner in Iraq whose platoon was ambushed, leaving him with a broken back and only one of a few survivors. He returned home to join millions of Americans who struggle with piecing their lives together in the shadows of post-traumatic stress. After four suicide attempts and with the help of a philanthropist, an acclaimed New York librettist of Iraqi descent, an accomplished composer and City Opera Vancouver, Christian helped turn the demons of war into Fallujah: the first opera on the Iraq war.

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Every week from July 2nd through Sept 11th explore.org will feature new episodes of Fallujah that feature interview and performance excerpts.

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The Making of Fallujah: The First Opera on The Iraq War will be a 22 minute documentary set to premiere on explore.org in the Fall of 2012. All Fallujah footage was produced, directed and edited by classical music filmmaker John Bolton for Opus 59 Films.

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The final workshop for Fallujah was completed in May 13th in a performance orchestrated by City Opera Vancouver and the final score and script was completed in June, 2012.

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The creators of Fallujah are now in talks with U.S. Opera houses for the grand premiere.

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The idea for Fallujah came from a conversation between explore.org founder Charlie Annenberg Weingarten and Christian Ellis after winning an award for Fish Out of Water, an original explore.org film on soldiers with PTSD.

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The Battle of Fallujah was a joint U.S., Iraqi, and British offensive in November and December 2004, considered the highest single point of conflict during the Iraq War. In total, 107 US, Iraqi, and British troops were killed and 613 were wounded in battle. A total of 1,200 insurgents were killed. (Source: US Department of Defense).

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More than 2.7 Million Iraqis are currently displaced because of the war (Source: The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, January 2012).

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Approximately 300,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – nearly 20% of the returning forces – are likely to suffer from either PTSD or major depression, and these numbers continue to climb. An additional 320,000 of the returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan may have experienced traumatic brain injuries during deployment (Source: National Center For PTSD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs).

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Symptoms of PTSD include depression, flashbacks, anxiety, anger, emotional numbness, violent outbursts, insomnia, avoiding things related to the experience of guilt, tenseness or feeling on “edge”, poor memory, and nightmares (Source: National Center for PTSD, United States Department of Veteran Affairs).

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The librettist is NYC-based, Heather Raffo. An accomplished playwright, Heather is of Iraqi descent and communicated with some of her 50 relatives in Iraq when writing the libretto for Fallujah.
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This short clip marks the first time Christian Ellis has sung in public since he was fifteen. This military veteran never thought his voice would re-emerge. Video courtesy of mountainfilm.org.

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