Composers Recall How Their Operas Were Born

Opera is considered by many to be the ultimate performance art, as it combines all of the arts: music, singing, text, dance and the visual. Rarely is an audience able to glimpse the behind-the-scenes elements that go into such a complex undertaking as producing a fully staged piece of opera theater.

It is rarer still to glimpse the composition level of creation - the germinal stage when a composer hits upon an idea and starts to uncover ways of approaching it as a sung entity. The symposium on Nov. 12, "From Page to Stage: Bringing New Musical Works to the Stage" addressed these issues when an eminent panel, made up of working composers and librettists, addressed an appreciative audience at Hall auditorium. The panel charted the process of an opera's creation, from the inception of an idea to reading the reviews, all from the perspective of the people who write them.

The panel was made up of Henry Mollicone and Sheldon Harnick, currently in Oberlin to see the second production of their 1998 opera Coyote Tales; Robert Ward, winner of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for his operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible; Richard Wargo, composer-in-residence at Milwaukee's Skylight Opera Theater; and Anthony Davis, composer of X: The Life and Times Of Malcolm X, which premiered in 1985, and the recent Amistad, which had its inaugural production in 1997 at The Lyric Opera of Chicago. The evening was moderated by David Bamberger; general director of the Cleveland Opera.

Bamberger's opening questions addressed the composers' backgrounds and influences. The first question addressed Harnick's move to the opera world after years of working in musical theater on such projects as Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me.

"The reason why I'm working in opera right now? Because at its best, opera is the richest kind of stage expression I can imagine. My business manager sat me down one afternoon and said to me: 'Sheldon, you don't have to work anymore! [due to Fiddler's success]' But I've continued what I want to do which, right now, has been opera," Harnick said.

Bamberger asked Davis, "You've picked some very different topics to deal with than the rest of the panel, Mr. Davis. Could you please speak on that issue."

"I'm drawn to certain theatrical subjects," Davis responded. "The political landscape fascinates me. When you work on an opera with a contemporary story, the audience has a stake in the action."

Wargo, on the other hand, finds inspiration from other live performances he has seen. "It is the live performance experience. Something sticks with me. For example, an Abbey Theatre production of Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney I saw in Ireland really excited me. It is the basis for the piece I'm working on now. I find myself always writing away to acquire the rights to various plays!" he said.

Bamberger next asked the panel their views on the recent Norman LeBrecht book Who Killed Classical Music?

"I read half of it and it saddened me," Mollicone concluded. "So much money is poured into salaries for the jet-set level of performers in this business. We make opera into a mystic entity!"

Ward felt that the death of classical music dates back to the 1950s. "American schools began cutting away at arts programs," he said, "to the early mornings and the late afternoons. A whole generation or more were educated by recordings and films. Those people never had any more background than that."

"When I was growing up," Harnick broke in, "there were movies that featured people like Jascha Heifitz. If it's made now, it is Meryl Streep teaching in a school somewhere."

Much of the evening centered on how these five composers get works commissioned and performed more than once.

"I don't wait around for a commission," Wargo responded. "If I like a subject, I'll start to work on it. Let's say I'm writing something based on Ibsen; that's a hard sell. My idea is to write the pieces I'm passionate about, then to worry about who will perform it."

Davis took a very different view. "I had the idea for Amistad ten years ago. It was very murky and muddy; quite convoluted. It was originally commissioned for Baltimore, yet they didn't have the resources to produce it. Amistad ended up at the Lyric in Chicago; it did not come out of the Lyric. The problem of a second performance for contemporary operas is a serious one. There is not enough support and it is much more difficult these days. Many second productions are already set up as co-productions. The audience for these new works is not the same as for those who go to the other things.

"We have a real problem in New York and Chicago. It is mostly the subscribers who go to these works, when the people who would really appreciate them aren't able to get a ticket. A lot of times, opera companies give lip service to gaining a new audience," Davis said.

Ward agreed with Davis: "40 percent of a Broadway musical or Hollywood film's budget is set aside for promotion! Opera companies just don't have this ability to get across to an audience what they will be seeing."

Mollicone broke in, saying, "People have lost faith in new opera. What's interesting is you get no interest from the big opera companies. I'd like to see more opera companies do something like the Met did years ago; the mini-Met. It was a program which was devoted to more contemporary works in a smaller space."

The evening swung away from its decidedly glum tone when Bamberger asked the panel who they were writing their work for? Harnick cogitated on the answer and concluded, "You are writing that which an audience will be drawn to. What will draw an audience back for a second hearing? Audiences respond to beautiful voices singing effective melodies."

"First and foremost, you write for yourself," reflected Davis. "Otherwise you're a whore! After that, it is the visceral things - the melody and the entrance points; those things that get you into your composition. Also, the rhythm. It is very important to let the music be a part of one's body. That's a great way a composer can draw on the audience. Audiences can find entrance points into my music in many ways. That's why opera has a greater advantage than symphony orchestras. There are so many ways to get involved - through the singing, the music or the spectacle.

"In terms of the opera itself, I write for particular voices. I've developed close relationships with certain singers whose voices stick in my mind. Look at Mozart. Why is there a Queen of the Night? We now have to deal with her intricacies everytime we produce the opera because of the fact that Mozart probably wrote the part for a particular singer. It's an exciting thing to deal with," Davis said.

"You have to know what you want to say," Harnick said. "Then, you say it the best way you can, then you see how the audience responds."

On the role of the director in the performing arts, Harnick dropped a very famous name: "Jerome Robbins' brilliance was intimidating. But there are only a handful of directors that become collaborators. Most of the time you need a dispassionate director for editorial advice."

Mollicone, Harnick's collaborator on Coyote Tales, was as subjective about it as Harnick, chiming in with the old adage: "Writing opera, or any collaboration, is really like a marriage. You're going to be with the person for a really long time. There needs to be chemistry among you."

The future of contemporary opera is contingent on more people being interested in singing in them. Ward summed this important fact up nicely when he concluded: "The whole field of opera has been enriched since conservatories have been able to do contemporary opera."