Companionship with Extra Ketchup
Three cheers for the season of the year when I feel most alive. I’d say the opening of the first fully orchestrated production Companionship, courtesy of Virginia Arts Festival and the American Opera Project, is as good a reason as any for that. I am so proud of what this team has accomplished. The design is beautiful, the orchestra sounds fantastic, and I’m especially proud of our leading ladies, whose performances have only become more nuanced and enjoyable since our first time around in Fort Worth. And of course our new singers comprising the rest of the cast deserve a loud shout out—digesting the style and content of this piece so quickly is, I believe, a lot. This ain’t Rossini, after all. Plus, some of them were doing double duty in the wildly contrasting Briar Patch, the other half of the program written by Nkeiru Okoye and Carman Moore. Best of all, Arthur Phillips, author of the original source material, was able to join us in Norfolk for opening night! He has been rooting for me since the first sketches in 2011, and I’m so glad he remains enthusiastic and impressed by what we’ve all managed to accomplish since then. What a relief to bring this work to a real live audience as it needs to be properly seen and heard after two years of postponements and many more years of tinkering beforehand. Worldwide calamities notwithstanding, the extra time was ultimately better for the work itself, as the orchestrations did need some pruning (and were even further pruned in rehearsal). I am already back in NYC racing to meet another deadline, but I am sure the second performance was even better than the first. I have to imagine that the late, great John Duffy, who took a chance on this wacky idea from an unknown composer when very few others were willing to do so and invited me to Norfolk in 2013 for the first of many times, would be pleased to see what we have wrought. Perhaps most satisfying of all, though, was showing our Loaves chorus of girls from the Governor’s School from the Arts that women writing operas and having them produced is just…normal. A favorite rehearsal moment: one student exclaimed, "We fully get to actually sing this? Aw, WORD!" If any one of them (or more, I hope!) goes on to be a composer or librettist, I will happily take full credit for that choice, warranted or not.
Professional photos and archival video will be available before too long. In the meantime, here are some photos our design team took during tech, followed by some extremely unflattering candids…Who ever said making an opera was glamorous?! Not I! Credits where credits are due: Adapted from the short story by Arthur Phillips; Directed by Bob McGrath; Conducted by Alan Johnson; Lighting: Jason Amato; Projections: Laurie Olinder; Costumes: Summer Lee Jack
EXTRA KETCHUP SECTION
Here’s most of what else is going on at the moment:
I’m frantically writing Sketchbook for Ollie, which is the official title of my children’s opera for Lyric Opera for Kansas City. Stylistically, so far it’s everything from Debussy to “Rapper’s Delight” and back again. I’m excited to unleash it on LOKC’s resident artists, including Staggerwing’s own Luke Harnish playing Dad! We’re having a Zoom workshop of some musical excerpts extremely soon, and I’ll be onsite later this summer for another second session to put the whole thing together. Performances begin in early October.
I’ve been tapped to write a little ditty as a trailer for a new project related to the craft and business of writing for opera. I can’t say much about this just now, but I will once details are a bit more solid.
Next month I’ll be headed back to Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a workshop of excerpts from Welcome to the Madness, Opera Steamboat’s commission by Leanna Kirchoff and me. (See previous blog post for details.) Leanna is finishing up music for that presentation now.
As previously mentioned, Lesson Plan comes to Caramoor under the auspices of On Site Opera on July 22nd for one night only!
Kevin Townley is toiling away on the libretto for Nothing Except My Genius in anticipation of our first reading session in the winter, and I’ll be following suit setting his text before we know it.
More anon,
RP