Once upon a time, in a pre-Windows era, back when people were starting to discover email, Genni Gunn was asked to write an original libretto by composer John Oliver for the Vancouver Opera. Gunn penned a high-tech opera about two young professionals, Alex and Valerie, who meet on-line, become fascinated with each other, but remain safely faceless-until they finally meet for real.

That was futuristic stuff in 1992. "There was no internet dating,"; Gunn recalls, "so it was a kind of sci-fi glance into the future."; The future had to wait. Funding dissipated and the project called Alternate Visions was detoured into development hell until Pauline Vaillancourt, Creative Director of Chants Libres, fell in love with Gunn and Oliver's interdisciplinary opera about five years ago.

The opera Alternate Visions premiered in Montreal in May, coincidental with the release of Gunn's new book Faceless (Signature Editions $14.95), a poetry collection that simultaneously explores the growing dichotomy between intimacy and technology, between anonymity (facelessness) and contact (love).