The operatic rise and fall of Milli Vanilli

But rewind a few years – 24 years to be exact – when Milli Vanilli won a Grammy in 1990 for best new artist.

The German duo Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus brought into the new decade an electronic MIDI beat, the success of which can be debated.

Milli Vanilli’s success crashed and burned that year when the world found out the two men didn’t actually sing their songs, and their Grammy was taken away.

Now that rise and fall is being chronicled in a new opera called “Wow (Work in Progress)” at BRIC Arts in Brooklyn, and poet Christian Hawkey, who wrote the lyrics to that opera, spoke to KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis.