City Lyric Opera’s US Premiere of The Garden of Alice is an interactive journey down a digital rabbit hole, where the landscapes and characters of Wonderland become metaphors for the different virtual realities and identities we take in the internet, social media, and more. Alice, entranced by the illusion of the garden of hearts as an idyllic place where she can be a new person, jumps enthusiastically into Wonderland, only to discover it’s all fake and convoluted, and the garden is a dark trap for lost souls. She searches for truth inside this darker, internet version of Wonderland, and eventually realizes that it’s better to live with her questions and doubts, then try to have them answered by an imagined, comfortable place. What begins as a zany, quirky trip through Wonderland and its characters eventually turns into a dark, violent, and treacherous place, the seemingly idyllic Garden is nothing more than a façade for a darker twisted set of rules.