“Peters’ music grabs you by the collar and demands your attention...
Peters has lots to say and is not afraid to shift gears as she goes along. ”
— BROADWAYWORLD
WHAT I DO: THE STUFF OF MY STUFF
I write exclusively for voices and for the stage because text-based music is where I can ask most creatively: are you seeing what I’m seeing here? Stylistically omnivorous, my work lives along the highly permeable boundary between opera and musical theatre; my operas sound like musicals and my musicals sound like operas. I make salads from unlikely combinations of ingredients. In an artistic medium that takes itself extremely seriously, I don’t reinforce artificial distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow or light and dark. When I create new work for young people, I address the world they experience now, rather than compressing and grafting classic repertoire onto stories they already encounter everywhere else. I strive for an execution of humor beyond Opera Funny, playful without ever winking at the audience. Humanity—as experienced by humans or characters of other species--is a messy business, silly and harrowing things often happen in the same breath, and comedy can be a deceptively palatable articulation of deeply unfunny conditions.
Another question gnawing at me is, “Where are the women?” I strive to restore women’s stories (true and/or fanciful) to their rightful place: front and center. Furthermore, I investigate uniquely American-flavored related fixations: ignoring what is deeply broken while squandering resources on what isn’t; the consequences of renouncing gendered expectations; women annihilating each other for sport; and, the familiar operatic trope of madwomen self-destructing.
Ultimately, truth is simply stranger to me than everything, and I have receipts.
WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER
I am honored and always game to be a frequent first for visionary musical organizations and individuals eager to try something outside their regular offerings, such as:
Introducing audiences and performers of all ages to their very first opera
Providing university and conservatory students their first contact and collaboration with a living composer/librettist, introducing new avenues to explore their artistic capabilities
Dreaming up and realizing alternatives and/or companion pieces to standard repertoire for adventurous companies of all sizes
Creating new opportunities for non-operatic music groups (choruses, chamber ensembles, orchestras) to venture out from behind their music stands
Tailoring premieres for singers beyond Fach/typecasting expectations: my first question is always “What would you like to do that you never get to do?”
Bringing local history to life, gathering communities to celebrate their own unsung hometown heroes finally getting, well, sung.
Writing sneaky rhymes, weird jokes, and emotionally charged arias is what I do, but building these bridges is why I do it in the first place. Even if I’m not creating something for you, I’m happy to speak about navigating the practicalities of getting new work in front of the footlights (or outdoors or online or wherever!). See my Services Page for more information.
BIO
Composer/librettist Rachel J. Peters (she/her, b. 1977) writes all manner of works for the stage. Her operas include Lesson Plan (On Site Opera), Companionship (Virginia Arts Festival, Fort Worth Opera), Rootabaga Country (Sarasota Opera), Sketchbook for Ollie (Lyric Opera of Kansas City);The Wild Beast of the Bungalow (Oberlin Conservatory) and Three Amputators with Royce Vavrek (Arctic Chamber Music Festival); No Ladies in the Lady’s Book (Utah Opera), Staggerwing (Opera Kansas), and Men I’m Not Married To (Cleveland Opera Theater) with Lisa DeSpain; Steve (Boston Opera Collaborative), Everything Comes to a Head with Margi Preus and Jean Sramek (Decameron Opera Coalition), Pie, Pith, and Palette with Marvin J. Carlton (The Atlanta Opera), and Welcome to the Madness (complete with live horses) with Leanna Kirchoff (Opera Steamboat). She has the distinct honor of writing the only opera score (so far) containing a barfing cat ever performed at Caramoor. Coming soon: a new, expanded Staggerwing makes its way across the country.
Rachel’s musicals include Only Children with Michael R. Jackson (NYU Tisch, Lincoln Center Directors Lab), Tiny Feats of Cowardice with Susan Bernfield (NYC Fringe Festival), Write Left with John Walch (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), Tomato Red (UC Irvine), and Octopus Heart (NYU Steinhardt). Her score for Danielle Durchslag’s film musical, Good Shabbos, is currently in development. Scores for plays include the critically acclaimed Stretch (a fantasia) (New Georges) and Tania in the Getaway Van (Flea Theater) by Susan Bernfield, Transatlantic by John Walch (Arkansas Rep), The Bacchae (Asolo Rep Conservatory), and several works by Stan Richardson.
Her concert mini-monodrama, Ethel Smyth Plays Golf in Limbo was performed at Semperoper Dresden and several venues across the US. Other concert works include If You Can Prove That I Should Set You Free (Albany Symphony), Jack's Vocabulary (Hartt SPASM), I Live Here (Galapagos Art Space), Canon I (Two Sides Sounding), And Then (BayPath College), and Fronds: The Wisdom of Fanny Fern (Walt Whitman Project). Rachel’s extensive catalogue of songs has been performed at Lincoln Center, Second Stage, National Opera Center, Symphony Space, New York Festival of Song, National Sawdust, Ars Nova, Joe's Pub, and cabarets and theatres nationwide. Rachel is a contributor to the new generation of The AIDS Quilt Songbook and to Michael R. Jackson’s Dirty Laundry and Zachary James’s CALL OUT albums.
Rachel has held residencies as composer and/or librettist at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Yaddo, Brush Creek Arts, Millay Arts, and Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat. She has received Anna Sosenko Assist Trust and multiple ASCAPlus awards. OPERA America awarded her a Female Composers Discovery Grant to write Manor of Speaking with Kevin Thomas Townley, Jr., the first wholly original work for Stephanie Blythe’s alter ego, Blythely Oratonio; other such grants went to Sarasota Opera for Rootabaga Country and to collaborator Leanna Kirchoff for their opera Friday After Friday. Rachel is a proud alumna of New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, The American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice, and the John Duffy Institute for New Opera training programs. She holds a double B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University and an MFA from New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. She serves on committees for the Dramatists Guild and National Opera Association, and is a member of the inaugural Jewish Composers Working Group of Asylum Arts/The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life. She is currently Manager of Programs and Initatives for Composers Now.
Rachel originally hails from St. Louis, where she grew up singing in children’s choruses at the MUNY, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. She has settled in Brooklyn, a borough with an exceptionally high concentration of opera composers. Much to her continued bewilderment, she is often mistaken for this woman online. Complete CV available upon request.
