[On Rick On Theater, I’ve written about movicals (20 September 2013, with a supplemental post, “More on Movicals,” on 21 February 2014), the adaptations of films to stage musicals such as Carnival! (1961), 42nd Street (1980), Moulin Rouge! (2019), and Mrs. Doubtfire (2020).
“A LETTER FROM THE
EDITOR”
by Alexis Gargagliano
Collaboration makes
theater possible. There is a special electricity that emerges when a multitude of
artists, and ideas, come together to tell a story. They create a whole world
that the audience can see, hear, and believe. The opera of Intimate Apparel embodies that collaborative magic. Even its conception
was the result of bridge-building—the opera bloomed out of the Metropolitan
Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, a groundbreaking enterprise
between two constituents here at Lincoln Center Plaza. It champions the creation
of new operas by pairing playwrights and composers. The first flower of this
collaboration, Nico Muhly’s Two Boys,
with a libretto by the playwright Craig Lucas, premiered at the Met in 2011.
[This appears to be an error; the opera premièred at London’s English National
Opera in 2011, but débuted at the Met on Monday, 21 October 2013.] The next
collaboration will be seen at Lincoln Center Theater. Intimate Apparel [began previews on 27 February 2020 and was
scheduled to open on 23 March], like the earlier Two Boys, is directed by Bartlett Sher, Lincoln Center Theater’s
resident director, and features music by the celebrated composer Ricky Ian
Gordon and a libretto by Lynn Nottage, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright [twice:
in 2009 for Ruined and 2017 for Sweat] whose acclaimed play has been transformed
into a mesmerizing opera.
All the characters of Intimate Apparel experience desire and longing, and each of them has dreams much bigger than the world around them can sustain. In this edition [of LCTR], we sought to explore their longings, their limitations, and the world they must navigate. Lynn Nottage sat down with the writer and historian Paula Giddings to discuss the creation of the opera and the necessity of telling the stories of people who would otherwise remain anonymous [“Remember Me”; articles in Issue 75 on LCTR can be read at https://issuu.com/lctheater/docs/lctr_intimateapparel_singlepages_022420]. Ricky Ian Gordon shared stories about his unusual childhood and his creative process [“Lush Sounds”]. A poem by the poet laureate Natasha Trethewey takes us inside the dreams of an elevator operator, a working-class African-American woman like the heroine of Intimate Apparel [“2. Speculation, 1939”]. The historian Annelise Orleck paints a picture of the Lower East Side and the many communities that called it home in the early 1900s [“The Young Immigrants”]. The fashion writer Constance White illuminates the work of black female designers [“Stepping Into the Spotlight”]. André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater; Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager; and Paul Cremo, its dramaturg, spoke to us about starting the program, their passion for fostering new work, the germination of Intimate Apparel as opera, and the extraordinary collaboration and vision that bring opera and theater to life [“Something New”; see below]. Finally, this issue also features the art of Ellen Gallagher, Sanford Biggers, and Titus Kaphar, which invites us to see the world and our history anew.
“SOMETHING NEW”
An Interview with
André Bishop, Paul Cremo, and Peter Gelb
Our editor, Alexis Gargagliano, spoke with André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater [since 2013; artistic director since 1992]; Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager [since 2006]; and Paul Cremo, its dramaturg and the director of the opera-commissioning program [since 2007]. In Gelb’s handsomely appointed office, they discussed the creation of the opera Intimate Apparel, the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, and the burgeoning of contemporary operas in the United States.
ALEXIS GARGAGLIANO How was the New Works Program started?
ANDRÉ BISHOP It was Peter’s idea. He was interested in developing new work—the Met could bring many musical forces to the table, and Lincoln Center Theater could bring accomplished playwrights. That was the beginning.
PETER GELB Shortly after I was appointed as head of the Metropolitan Opera, we met for the first time to discuss this idea. I wanted to develop a whole program of ways to reenergize the Met. One avenue was to create new work. We were intrigued by the idea of developing work with librettists from the world of theater and bringing stage directors into the development process from the onset. André and I both felt that we could help improve the odds for success with new works by nurturing these collaborations at a very early stage.
AG Had you seen something at Lincoln Center Theater that sparked this idea?
PG Seeing things like Contact [a “dance play” developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman which ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in 1999 and then moved to the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 2000; in 2000, it won the Tony Award for Best Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical, the Drama League Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical] made me realize that André was encouraging the creation of work outside traditional bounds.
AB We had done a couple of sung-through musicals [e.g.: Hello Again (1994), A New Brain (1998), Falsettos (2016)]. So doing something sung through with no dialogue, or hardly any dialogue, was not new to us or to our audience
AG Had there been much crosspollination among the institutions at Lincoln Center?
[Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, houses 12 resident arts organizations. In addition to the Lincoln Center Theater (Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Broadway house; Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the Off-Broadway theater; Claire Tow Theater, for experimental productions) and the Metropolitan Opera, these include the New York Philharmonic (David Geffen Hall) and the New York City Ballet (David H. Koch Theater), among other, smaller performing arts organizations and facilities. The Juilliard School and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts are also part of Lincoln Center.]
AB There has been very little collaboration, and certainly not like this. We wanted to show that companies on this campus could actually work together and learn from one another.
PG The key ingredient in the collaboration was the arrival of Paul Cremo, our dramaturg. He’s been the field general of this whole project.
PAUL CREMO I think your initial conversations happened in 2005, and I came on board in 2007. You decided not to give commissions with a guaranteed premiere date; instead, it was a more theatrical model, where the end result of the program is the workshop. This allows the pieces to develop freely, without the pressures of a production looming.
AG How did you begin?
AB Once we had raised the money, we matched ten composers with librettists. Some fell away and we added a few more. The other rule we created was not to decide whether a work was appropriate for Lincoln Center Theater or for the Metropolitan Opera until after the workshop.
PG At the
workshop, each piece is performed with a piano and singers. If we’re going to
do a full production, we collectively decide whether it’s a chamber-sized work
or a grand opera-sized work. One of the challenges that we face all the time,
when I talk to directors who are working here, is how do you connect the
audience to the stage? That problem doesn’t exist with the Mitzi. The audience
and the stage are one. [The Newhouse is a small amphitheater. It seats 299 theatergoers in seven
semicircular rows.]
AB It’s because it’s small—there are only 290 seats—and it has a thrust stage, which means the last row is only seven rows back. If a director and a designer know how to use that configuration, it’s a wonderful thing. On a larger scale, this is true in the Beaumont as well. That’s why I think these musicals we’ve done in the Beaumont seem so refreshed. Part of it is that the productions, if I can say this, are good productions, but part of it is that the audience is suddenly seeing South Pacific [2008-10] or My Fair Lady [2018-19] on a stage, in a pattern of movement and scenery they’ve never seen before—and the last seat is only thirteen rows back. [The Beaumont, a larger amphitheater, seats 1200 patrons in 13 rows, including a loge.]
PG André is too modest to say it himself, but if not for him the Beaumont would never have been successfully harnessed theatrically. It wasn’t until you took over that the possibility of its really being successfully utilized was achieved.
AB When Jerry Zaks was resident director [1986-90], he did some very good shows there before my time. But when I arrived we put in the orchestra pit, because I very badly wanted to do musicals.
PG The directors who staged these wonderfully successful musicals, particularly someone like Bartlett Sher, have become masters of moving action around in a way that the audience can appreciate from all sides.
When Bart made his debut at the Met with The Barber of Seville [2006] we didn’t have a thrust stage to offer him, so he did the next best thing—he created a passerelle [a semicircular ramp or catwalk that extends from the stage of a theater around the orchestra pit], which brought the action of the stage around and beyond the orchestra pit and literally into the audience.
AG Were there writers creating new works, too, or was it all adaptation, like Intimate Apparel?
PG It varied. The young composer Matthew Aucoin wanted to write an opera based on the Orpheus myth. André suggested that we pair him with Sarah Ruhl, who had written one of the great plays based on the Orpheus legend, Eurydice [2003]. Matt and Sarah hit it off amazingly well. The opera [also entitled Eurydice] will have its premiere this season at the L.A. Opera [premièred 1 February]. They joined us as a commissioning partner once we went beyond the workshop stage, and it will play at the Met two seasons from now. On the other hand, the opera Two Boys, which Nico Muhly composed, had an original libretto by Craig Lucas, and Bart Sher directed.
AB Craig had written the book to The Light in the Piazza [2003 in Seattle], which was the first show Bart did at the Beaumont [2005].
AG How did the Intimate Apparel conversation start?
PC I had been speaking with Ricky Ian Gordon about possible writers to work with. I suggested Lynn, and Ricky said, “I’ll read her stuff.” We initially planned to have Lynn write something original, but after Ricky read Intimate Apparel he fell in love with it, and Lynn agreed to adapt it.
AG André, what
did Lynn tell you about her original conception of Intimate Apparel?
AB My memory is of her telling me that she had originally thought of Intimate Apparel as a musical or an opera, but that she was unknown then and it would have been a bigger, more expensive production and she was afraid that nobody would produce it. So she wrote it as a play.
PC Her father had loved opera. In Lynn’s play Ruined [2008; 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama], there are monologues that are like arias. We talked about ways to sort of expand the play a bit, adding a chorus, ensembles. Lynn’s an avid student, and read a bunch of librettos. Ricky talked her through what he needed. He started writing the first notes in April 2012.
PG The development of an opera or a musical is much longer than that of a play. There are more moving parts and it requires more development, more workshops—Intimate Apparel had four. The first workshop was in 2015.
AG How did it change?
PG It got better. (Laughter)
PC The basic bones and the structure were always there because the play existed. But Bart, for instance, after the first workshop said that the boundaries between scenes could blur a little and be more fluid. The opening of the piece also changed. We were trying to get the main character, the seamstress Esther, and her situation clearly established up front. And, in terms of the music, there has been some tightening, shortening, making things more efficient. In the third workshop, Ricky discovered the possibilities of the chorus and started using them in different ways, almost like underscoring.
PG When a composer hears his or her work performed, it’s different from just looking at the notes. It inspires him or her to do more.
AG Does that also change the conversation between the librettist and the composer?
PC They work hand in hand. Their collaboration is the key to it all.
AB Some of the better pieces that have come out of our program so far have been good not only because the composer is good—and it is a world of the composer, really, the opera world—but because the libretto was so strong. In the case of Eurydice and Intimate Apparel, they’re both extremely powerful pieces of writing, adapted by the playwrights from their own plays.
AG What
challenges do the playwrights face?
PC Playwrights have a learning curve adapting an existing piece. They first have to throw out nearly half of their text, and that’s challenging (it takes longer to sing something than to say it). This play was very close to Lynn’s heart. She wrote it after her mother died, and she felt that it was a way of communing with her ancestors. She found it really difficult to cut out so much of the great detail that was in the play, but we worked together to isolate the most important text. Then Ricky could show Lynn how the music could tell that story to fill in some of the colors and details that were cut from the text. It’s hard, I think, for any writer. In the theater world, the playwright rules; in the opera world, the composer rules. So the playwright has to step back a bit and hand it over and let the composer run with it.
PG There’s also a technical aspect of a playwright’s learning to write a libretto, of writing words that can be sung. Not only does there have to be fewer of them; they also have to be fit, in the right way, into a singer’s voice.
AG I marveled at the libretto—how Lynn could write such a complex play and then distill it into essentially a poem that can be sung.
PC That’s something else that changed. Hearing the workshops, Ricky got to see where singers were struggling with certain things—like particular words on high notes—and he could lower them or change the emphasis in a line to make it sound more natural.
PG Sometimes even experienced composers forget the capabilities of a human voice, and the workshop will remind them of what’s possible and what isn’t.
AG Was there a
moment in one of the first workshops where you felt a particular electricity?
PG I thought it had great potential and was excited by it from the very first workshop—I think we all felt it. We knew it was something special.
AG How did you decide that it was going to be at the Mitzi?
AB I had assumed this would be for the Beaumont, with a full orchestra. It wasn’t until the third workshop that Bart said, “I think we should do it in the Mitzi Newhouse with two pianos.” He was right. In the Mitzi, the words and the music are just right there. You don’t have to strain. We have these incredible singers in this relatively small theater. It’s going to blow the roof off it.
AG How often are new operas produced?
PC Well, during the thirteen years that this program has been in existence there’s been an explosion of contemporary opera in the U.S. Back then, maybe between two and five new operas premiered in a year. At the Met, prior to this program, there would be years between the premieres of original operas. But in 2018 over forty new operas premiered in the U.S.
Opera was seen as this sort of far-off, grand thing, and too conservative. But younger composers have seen what’s possible. They don’t have to compromise their musical style or values, and they see that new dramatic subjects can be embraced. And opera companies have been inspired by the idea that new operas can bring in new audiences.
AG What are your hopes for the program in the future?
PG There are a couple of projects still in the pipeline that are coming along really nicely. And André and I have been in discussion on adding composers, and Paul’s been vetting them.
*
* * *
“SAID & SUNG”
There is a long
history of plays being adapted into operas. Plays by Pierre Beaumarchais were adapted
by Mozart (Le Nozze di Figaro) and by
Gioachino Rossini (Il Barbiere di
Siviglia). Friedrich Schiller [plays were adapted] by [Gioachino] Rossini (Guillaume Tell), Gaetano Donizetti (Maria Stuarda), and Giuseppe Verdi (Don Carlos)—who also adapted plays by Victor
Hugo (Ernani, Rigoletto) and others. Notable operas were based on plays by
Victorien Sardou ([Giacomo] Puccini’s Tosca),
Eugéne Scribe and Ernest Legouvé ([Francesco] Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur); and Pierre Corneille’s Pertharite, roi des Lombards formed the basis for George Frideric
Handel’s Rodelinda. Other notable adaptations
include plays by David Belasco (Puccini’s Madama
Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West),
Alexandre Soumet ([Vincenzo] Bellini’s Norma),
and Oscar Wilde ([Richard] Strauss’s Salome).
Shakespeare has been the most frequent theatrical source, with his plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Macbeth, Falstaff [The Merry
Wives of Windsor and Henry IV], Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet among those adapted as operas by [Henry] Purcell,
Verdi, [Charles] Gounod, Bellini, [Ambroise] Thomas, and others. In the past
century alone, there has been a wide variety of operatic adaptations of
well-known plays.
*
* * *
“A SELECTION OF
OPERAS FROM THE PAST HUNDRED YEARS BASED ON PLAYS”
[LCTR provided the list below, but I can’t duplicate the format on Rick On Theater, so I’ve had to devise a different presentation for the same information. I’m afraid it’s not as easy to read, for which I apologize to ROTters. I’ve added the dates of the source plays in brackets and an occasional additional detail.]
PLAY: Woyzeck by Georg Büchner [1836] – OPERA: Wozzeck by Alban Berg – DATE OF PREMIERE: 1925
Porgy
by Dorothy & DuBose Heyward [1927] – Porgy
and Bess by George Gershwin – 1935
Lulu by Frank Wedekind [Earth Spirit (1895) & Pandora’s Box (1904)] – Lulu by Alban Berg – 1937
(incomplete); 1979 (complete)
Le
Viol de Lucrèce by André Obey [1931] – The
Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten – 1946
The
Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman [1939] – Regina by Marc Blitzstein – 1949
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William
Shakespeare [1595/96] – A Midsummer
Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten – 1960
The Crucible by Arthur Miller [1953] – The Crucible by Robert Ward – 1961
A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
[1955] – Uno sguardo dal ponte by
Renzo Rossellini – 1961
Antony and Cleopatra by William
Shakespeare [c. 1607] – Antony and
Cleopatra by Samuel Barber – 1966
Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams [1948]
– Summer and Smoke by Lee Hoiby –
1971
La Balade du Grand Macabre by Michel De
Ghelderode [1934] – Le Grand Macabre
by György Ligeti – 1978
The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg [1907]
– Die Gespenstersonate by Aribert
Reimann – 1984
Greek by Steven Berkoff (based on Oedipus Rex by Sophocles) [1980]
– Greek by Mark-Anthony Turnage –
1988
La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother) by Pierre Beaumarchais [1792] – The Ghosts of Versailles by John
Corigliano – 1991
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee
Williams [1947] – A Streetcar Named
Desire by André Previn – 1995
A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
[1955] – A View from the Bridge by
William Bolcom – 1999
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
[1610-11] – The Tempest by Thomas
Adès – 2004
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe [1589-92]
– Faustus, the Last Night by Pascal
Dusapin – 2006
Caligula by Albert Camus [1938] – Caligula by Detlev Glanert – 2006
Our Town by Thornton Wilder [1938] – Our Town by Ned Rorem – 2006
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar
Wilde [1895] – The Importance of Being
Earnest by Gerald Barry – 2011
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley [2004] – Doubt by Douglas J. Cuomo – 2013
4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane [2000] – 4.48 Psychosis by Philip Venables – 2016
Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey
Hatcher [1999] – Prince of Players by
Carlisle Floyd – 2016
Angels in America by Tony Kushner [1991 (Part 1);
1992 (Part
2)] – Angels in America by Peter
Eötvös & Mari Mezei – 2017
Hamlet by William Shakespeare [1599-1601]
– Hamlet by Brett Deane – 2017
Endgame by Samuel Beckett [1957] – Fin de Partie by György Kurtág – 2018
[In the name of completeness, I think it’d be nice to identify the plays from which the opera adaptations in “Said & Sung” were derived. So, following my format for the list above, here they are:
La folle
journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (1784) by
Pierre Beaumarchais – Le Nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – 1786
Le Barbier
de Séville (1775) by Pierre Beaumarchais –
Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino
Rossini – 1816
Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich
Schiller (1804) – Guillaume Tell by Gioachino
Rossini – 1829
Maria Stuart by Friedrich Schiller (1800) – Maria
Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti – 1835
Don Karlos,
Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller (1783-87)
– Don Carlos Giuseppe Verdi – 1867
Hernani by Victor Hugo (1830) – Ernani by Giuseppe Verdi – 1844
Le roi
s'amuse (The King Amuses Himself) by
Victor Hugo (1832) – Rigoletto by
Giuseppe Verdi – 1851
La Tosca by Victorien Sardou (1887) – Tosca by Giacomo Puccini – 1900
Adrienne
Lecouvreur by Eugéne Scribe & Ernest
Legouvé (1849) – Adriana Lecouvreur by
Francesco Cilea – 1902
Pertharite,
roi des Lombards (Pertharites, King
of the Lombards) by Pierre Corneille (1651)
– Rodelinda , regina de' Longobardi
by George Frideric Handel –.1725
Madame
Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan (from the 1898 short story "Madame
Butterfly" by John Luther Long) by David Belasco (1900) – Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini – 1904
The Girl of
the Golden West by David Belasco (1900) –
La Fanciulla del West by Giacomo
Puccini – 1910
Norma, ou
L'infanticide (Norma, or The
Infanticide) by Alexandre Soumet (1831) –
Norma by Vincenzo Bellini – 1831
Salome by Oscar Wilde (1891) – Salome by Richard
Strauss – 1905.
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (1595/96)
– The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell – 1692
Othello by William Shakespeare (1603) – Otello by Giuseppe Verdi – 1887
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606) – Macbeth
by Giuseppe Verdi – 1847
The Merry
Wives of Windsor (1597) and Henry IV (1596-99) by William Shakespeare – Falstaff
by Giuseppe Verdi – 1893
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599-1601) – Hamlet by
Ambroise Thomas – 1868
Romeo and
Juliet by William Shakespeare (1591-95) –
Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod –
1867
Romeo and
Juliet by William Shakespeare (1591-95) –I
Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets
and the Montagues) by Vincenzo Bellini – 1830
[Some opera libretti are entirely original, the complete invention of the librettist. Most operatic plots, however, are based on some source material such as a myth, a work of literature, a historical event, or some other inspiration. The same was true for decades for the musical play.
[Like the stage musical, the favorite source for most opera librettists was and is the straight (that is, non-musical) play. As we can see from the lists above, Shakespeare has been by far the most popular foundation for an opera plot; some of the Bard’s plays formed the basis for multiple operas, from the classic period right up to contemporary operas.
[Even some strikingly modern (and post-modern) scripts have been adapted into operas—not just Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, but Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett. If the Met/LTC New Works Program succeeds, there may be even more operas based on experimental dramas.
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