Unholy Wars

Conceived and performed by Karim Sulayman

Artistic Team

Lead Creator and Concept Karim Sulayman Stage Director Kevin Newbury Music Director Julie Andrijeski Visual Artist Kevork Mourad Interstitial Music Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian Choreographer Ebony Williams

Assistant Choreographer Coral Dolphin Costume Designer David C. Woolard Lighting Designer Jennifer Fok Projection Designer Michael Commendatore Sound Designer Rick Jacobsohn Creative Producer Jecca Barry Production Manager Brian Freeland Stage Manager Lindsey Turteltaub Developed By Up Until Now Collective

Cast Karim Sulayman, tenor Raha Mirzadegan, soprano John Taylor Ward, bass-baritone Coral Dolphin, dancer

Ensemble Julie Andrijeski, music director/violin Manami Mizumoto, violin Daniel Elyar, viola Katie Rietman, cello Tracy Mortimore, violone John Lenti, theorbo Adam Cockerham, theorbo Michael Sponseller, harpsichord

DOCK STREET THEATRE

May 29, 7:30pm; June 1, 7:30pm; June 3, 8:00pm; June 6, 8:00pm

1 hours, 10 minutes Performed without an intermission

Unholy Wars is commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, developed by Up Until Now Collective, and co-produced by Spoleto Festival USA and Up Until Now Collective.

Opera Programming is endowed by the Arthur and Holly Magil Foundation.

These performances are made possible in part through funds from the Spoleto Festival USA Endowment, generously supported by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

Prelude Gloria patri Mary Kouyoumdjian (b.1983)

Dalla porta d’oriente Giulio Caccini (1551 – 1618), arr. Julie Andrijeski

La mia turca, SV310 Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)

Interlude 1 Mary Kouyoumdjian

“Nigra sum” from Vespro della

Beata Vergine (1610), SV206 Claudio Monteverdi

Interlude 2 Mary Kouyoumdjian

Chi è costei Francesca Caccini (1587 – 1640)

Il combattimento di

Tancredi e Clorinda, SV153 Claudio Monteverdi

Interlude 3, Improvisation,

La mia turca (reprise) Mary Kouyoumdjian/Karim Sulayman/Claudio Monteverdi

Symphonia 2 à 4, Op. 3 Nicolaus a Kempis (1600 – 1676)

Interlude 4 Mary Kouyoumdjian

Giunto alla tomba Sigismondo D’India (1582 – 1629)

Interlude 5 Mary Kouyoumdjian

O dolcezze amarissime Salamone Rossi (1570 – 1630)

Interlude 6 Mary Kouyoumdjian

“Lascia ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759)

Postlude Mary Kouyoumdjian

Program Note

The Western musical canon is replete with material about faraway lands, and the Middle East is often a chosen subject. From Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail to the settings of Rimsky Korsakov and Ravel’s Sheherazade to Disney’s Aladdin, Arabs have long been represented, though mostly depicted as stereotypes based on limited to no firsthand knowledge by the creators.

The term “Middle East” itself is an invention of British colonialism, and no one can seem to agree where the Middle East begins or ends. We do have maps, however, and the arbitrary lines that were drawn in secret during the Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing Ottoman territories into European spheres of influence, helped set the borders of many modern Middle Eastern nation-states. These borders reflected European priorities, yet left many ethnic groups divided and dealing with more conflict. Unholy Wars stitches together a collection of baroque music centered around the Middle East and The Crusades. It examines the separation of the human race based on creed and color. At its heart is the story of Tancredi and Clorinda from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata set to music by Claudio Monteverdi as Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in 1624. The poem takes place during the First Crusade of 1096, when Christian armies set out to conquer Jerusalem from the Saracens. It tells of the Christian knight Tancredi who, in love with the Muslim warrior Clorinda, unwittingly kills the object of his affection in a battle because he does not recognize her in her armor and under the veil of night. At the time of its creation, and surely in the minds of its original audiences, this is a powerful story in which love could transcend cultural boundaries, while highlighting war as a dividing force.

Unholy Wars asks: What if we reframe it all? What happens to these works when they are embodied by the “other?” How are they

changed when the subjects are given the chance to reclaim their stories? What if marginalized people are invited into this space to reshape it, to lay new borders (or perhaps remove them altogether)? Can we lean into the discomfort of our collective history while forging a new path forward?

As a first generation American born to Lebanese immigrants who fled the escalating civil war in the 1970s, I have often had to answer the question: “Where are you from?” I always say I’m from Chicago, but that never seems to satisfy the person asking. My “otherness” in this country has come into full focus in a post-9/11 world, but it was something present throughout my childhood as well—and not just because I grew up in an immigrant household on the south side of Chicago. Many in my family are fair skinned with light eyes, some with blazing red hair. As a child, I would ask my mother and father why I looked so different from these relatives. My parents would talk about The Crusades and how a thousand years ago European Christians sought to conquer the “Holy Land” and its surrounding areas in the Levant. In offering a possible explanation of a mixed gene pool to a child, they left out terms like “rape” and “pillage”—violent forms of cultural erasure.

In Unholy Wars, when the “others’’ gaze back at the creators and their creations, the historical work of erasure comes into view. The musical masterpieces of this program bring into focus the idea that the “other” is fashioned in the image of the creator. The girl from the East in Caccini’s Dalla porta d’oriente is presented to us with the ideals of Western beauty, with her snow-white skin. Similarly, Clorinda is described as a beauty with white skin and blond hair, though she’s from Ethiopia, conveniently making the love story more palatable to its readers at the time. Nigra sum is a text that has suffered “de-blackification.” Originally recited in the Bible’s Song of Songs by the Queen of Sheba, it has been co-opted by Catholicism to be an allegory about the Virgin Mary. “I am Black but beautiful,” she states. She is Black, BUT beautiful…? Approaching these works in the present day, one can no longer ignore the conflict that exists in the material itself.

As we explore the aural and visual landscape of Unholy Wars, four characters are ultimately tasked with the labor of coexistence. The “Middle East” is and has always been a place of mixture—the borders, maps, and names that history has given us do not define our wholeness. “Where are you from?” becomes truly meaningless when we understand and embrace the layers of our past. I once heard David Attenborough’s beautiful voice narrate a segment about the Arabian desert. What I learned is that dust storms blow mineral-rich sands into the sea, feeding the microorganisms on which so much marine life thrives. This is the way of our natural world: the most unexpected entities are inextricably linked. It is the desert that enriches the sea. Unholy Wars asks us to imagine what is possible when we recognize and embrace that our histories are intertwined, and our collective survival is mutually dependent.

— Karim Sulayman KARIM SULAYMAN (creator/tenor) Lebanese American Karim Sulayman’s “lucid, velvety tenor, and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine) has propelled him to triumphs on the world’s great stages. That, paired with his consistently acclaimed original programming, also earned him the 2019 Grammy Award (Best Classical Solo Vocal) for his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus. His second solo album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us, was included on The New York Times Best Classical Music of 2020. Recent and future season highlights include PBS Great Performances, his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall, and engagements at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Aldeburgh Festival, Wigmore Hall, and Drottningholms Slottsteater.

KEVIN NEWBURY (director) Career highlights include three PBS Great Performances broadcasts: Bernstein’s MASS (Ravinia Festival) and the premieres of Bel Canto (Chicago Lyric Opera) and Doubt (Minnesota Opera). Other premieres include Kansas City Choir Boy starring Courtney Love (Prototype Festival, National Tour); Fellow Travelers (Cincinnati Opera, etc., New York Times: Best of Opera of 2016), and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2019 Grammy winner: Best Opera Recording; Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, upcoming: San Francisco Opera). Upcoming projects include the premiere of Castor & Patience (Cincinnati Opera). Kevin is Co-Founder of Up Until Now Collective.

JULIE ANDRIJESKI (music director/violin) is a performer, scholar, and teacher of early music and dance. Andrijeski performs with diverse early music groups, mainly Quicksilver (Co-Director), Atlanta Baroque Orchestra (Artistic Director/Concertmaster), Les Délices, and Apollo’s Fire (Principal Player). A full-time faculty member in the Case Western Reserve University Music Department, she leads classes in early music performance practices and directs the baroque music and dance ensembles. She also teaches baroque violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Special teaching engagements include a twice-yearly residency at The Juilliard School. She is concertmaster and soloist on the Grammy Award-winning Songs of Orpheus featuring tenor Karim Sulayman with Apollo’s Fire.

JECCA BARRY (creative producer) is an opera, theater, film, and music producer, as well as a nonprofit arts leader. She currently serves as Executive Director of the acclaimed production company Beth Morrison Projects and Co-Director of New York’s annual PROTOTYPE Festival. Barry has overseen the commissioning, development, production, and touring of over 30 new theater, music-theater, and opera works, and has toured those works to over 40 national and 15 international venues. Works produced

have won two Pulitzer Prizes for Music, a Total Theatre Award and Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Bessie, Helen Hayes, Theatre Bay Area, and Elliot Norton Awards in cities around the United States.

MICHAEL COMMENDATORE (projection designer) Originally from Rhode Island, Michael now lives in Chicago with his amazing wife, Katie, and sassy but sweet cat, Sebastian. Commendatore travels around the country designing and assisting projection designs for theater, opera, dance, installations, and more. He blends his love for film and theater by designing projections at places like The Public Theatre, Music Theatre Wichita, Yale Repertory Theatre, DePaul University, Colgate University, Williams College, SUNY Stonybrook, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Emerald City Theatre, Vancouver Fringe Festival, among others. He also has had the opportunity to work on shows at Juilliard, Carnegie Hall, Miami City Ballet, Houston Ballet, Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, and The Lincoln Center Theater. Michael holds an MFA in Design from Yale School of Drama.

CORAL DOLPHIN (dancer/assistant choreographer) New York-based artist Coral Dolphin grew up in California. She began training at age nine under mentor Debbie Allen. Since then, Dolphin moved to New York, began touring the world dancing, and has appeared on Broadway and in films and TV series. She’s also toured, choreographed, and performed with recording artists Janet Jackson, Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, Beyoncé, Lauren Jauregui, Cardi B, Miguel, and more. Dolphin made her directorial debut in 2020 with the short film, Moonglades. Through her work, Dolphin seeks to uncover and amplify truths, answering a call from within in hopes that her art becomes a reminder of the freedom we all possess that goes much deeper than flesh.

KEVORK MOURAD (visual artist) Born in Qamishli, Syria, and now based in New York City, award-winning artist and filmmaker Kevork Mourad received his MFA from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia. Employing a technique of live drawing and animation in concert with musicians, Mourad has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Kim Kashkashian, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Brooklyn Rider, among others. As a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, Mourad was featured in the 2016 film Music of Strangers. In 2019, Mourad was commissioned by the Aga Khan Foundation to create a 20-foot drawing-sculpture at London’s Ismili Center called Seeing Through Babel, which addressed the importance of diversity. His works are in the permanent collection of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. JENNIFER FOK (lighting designer) is a Chinese American designer based in New York City. Select designs have been seen at Theatreworks Colorado Springs, Beth Morrison Projects, Na-Ni Chen Dance, Gala Hispanic, Long Wharf, Lincoln Center Education, Syracuse Stage, Flint Repertory Theatre, Detroit Public Theatre, Kitchen Theatre, Brown / Trinity MFA, The Know Theater of Cincinnati, Brother(hood) Dance, NCPA Beijing, Ars Nova, and Theatre at Monmouth. Fok has a BFA in Theatre Production and Design from Ithaca College.

BRIAN FREELAND is a production manager, director, producer, writer, sound and media artist, and community builder. His work in the theatre is rooted in new and collaborative performance. Credits include works with Curious Theatre Company, HERE Arts Center, The Brick, Mind The Art Entertainment, Ping Chong & Co., Universes, The Public Theatre, Beth Morrison Projects, THEATREWORKS, About Face, Catamounts, Town Hall, Lone Tree Arts Center, Paragon Theatre, Su Teatro, and Shadow Theatre Company. He founded The LIDA Project, the regionally acclaimed performance art ensemble, where he served as artistic director for 20 seasons.

RICK JACOBSOHN (sound designer) New York-based engineer and producer Rick Jacobsohn has established a multifaceted career in the recording studio and live performance venues. Since 2007, Jacobsohn has been the producer and engineer for The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. As of the 2016 season, he has also produced and engineered a portion of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s weekly broadcasts on WRTI as well as their entire 2020 Digital Stage season. Other recording projects have found him working with notable classical, jazz, and pop artists and ensembles. He is the original sound designer for Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. Jaconsohn has mixed live sound on numerous productions for orchestras including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta symphonies as well as Opera Philadelphia, Sante Fe Opera, and Seattle Opera. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music from Ithaca College and a master’s degree in Sound Recording from McGill University.

MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN (interstitial music composer) is a composer/documentarian. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to blend the old with the new. She has received commissions from such organizations as the Kronos Quartet, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alarm Will Sound, OPERA America, Beth Morrison Projects, and Bang on a Can. Kouyoumdjian is on composition faculty at Boston Conservatory, co-founded New Music Gathering, and is published by Schott’s PSNY.

UP UNTIL NOW COLLECTIVE (producer) Formed in the summer of 2020, Up Until Now gathers artists together to make work that is joyful and challenging. Committed to inclusive, accessible, and equitable working environments, Up Until Now develops and produces new interdisciplinary work that explores empathy, intimacy, and community, and seeks to challenge the status quo by building new structures for artistic creation. Co-founded by Kevin Newbury, Brandon Kazen-Maddox, Jecca Barry, and Marcus Shields, Up Until Now has collaborated with over 200 artists from multiple disciplines since its inception.

LINDSEY TURTELTAUB (stage manager) is a production and stage manager for theater, opera, dance, and events. She served as the Director of Production at Williamstown Theatre Festival (2018 – 2021). Selected Broadway credits include The Realistic Joneses and Follies. Off-Broadway credits include Hadestown, Hundred Days, and What’s It All About? (NYTW). Regionally, Turteltaub has worked on The Closet, The Roommate, A Great Wilderness (Williamstown), and Bad Jews (Long Wharf). Work in opera and music include Book of Mountains & Seas (St. Ann’s Warehouse), p r i s m, Dog Days (LA Opera), Brooklyn Babylon, Real Enemies (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and events with Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Juilliard Vocal Arts. Turteltaub has an MFA from Yale School of Drama.

EBONY WILLIAMS (choreographer) A Boston native, Williams’s recent choreographic credits include Afterwords at the 5th Avenue Theatre, Alicia Keys One Night Only at the Apollo Theater, and Keys’s most recent Keys Promotional Tour. She also served as the associate choreographer for Warner Bros. musical film In the Heights. Additional credits include co-choreographer for Beyoncé’s My Power music video, choreographer/movement director for Beyoncé’s Black is King, associate choreographer for the Broadway Musical Jagged Little Pill, co-choreographer/dancer for Alanis Morissette’s Forgiven 2021 tour music video, head choreographer for the 2021 US Open promotional campaign, and head choreographer of Doja Cat’s 2021 VMA’s performance. Williams’s choreography will be seen in the Disney+ musical comedy film Sneakerella.

DAVIC C. WOOLARD (costume designer) Select Broadway credits include Dames at Sea, First Date, Lysistrata Jones, West Side Story, 33 Variations, Dividing the Estate, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Other projects include The Old Friends and Orphans’ Home Cycle (Signature Theatre). Regionally, Woolard has worked on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (La Jolla Playhouse) and The Donkey Show (A.R.T.). Woolard has designed for operas including Death and the Powers (Opera Monte Carlo) and Cold Mountain (Santa Fe Opera premiere). Awards include Drama Desk Award, Henry Hewes Design Award (Orphans’ Home Cycle), 2001 Tony nomination (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and 1993 Tony and Olivier Award nominations (The Who’s Tommy). RAHA MIRZADEGAN (soprano) is a Persian American soprano and musician based in New York. She is a lover of sacred music and collaboration—her repertoire spans the medieval chant of Hildegard von Bingen to premiering new works by living composers. Raha studied voice with Gran Wilson at the University of Maryland.

JOHN TAYLOR WARD (bass-baritone) John Taylor Ward’s performances have been praised for their “stylish abandon” by Alex Ross of The New Yorker and their “intense clarity and color” by The New York Times. Recent stage highlights include the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Heartbeat Opera, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress under the baton of Barbara Hannigan (recently released on DVD), and several roles in a world tour of Monteverdi’s operas with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Originally from southern Appalachia, he has an innate understanding of rural America, and as the founding artistic director of the Lakes Area Music Festival, Taylor has helped to nurture a thriving arts hub in rural Minnesota.

Ensemble

ADAM COCKERHAM (theorbo) is an early music artist specializing in theorbo, lute, and baroque guitar. Beginning his performance career as a classical guitarist, he then gravitated toward historical plucked strings, preferring the collaborative opportunities of chamber music from the 16th through 18th centuries. As an accompanist and continuo player, Cockerham has performed with numerous ensembles in New York and San Francisco. Beyond chamber music, Cockerham concentrates on 17th-century Italian opera and has been involved in numerous modern world premiere performances with companies such as Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik and Ars Minerva. Cockerham received his doctorate from the Juilliard School where he was awarded the Richard F. French Prize for best dissertation.

DANIEL ELYAR (viola) is an active performer and recording artist and has specialized in baroque performance practice in Europe and North America for thirty years. Elyar has performed and recorded with ensembles in North America and Europe such as Tafelmusik, the Utrecht Baroque Consort, Concerto d’Amsterdam, Teatro Lirico, Concerto Palatino, Les Arts Florissants, and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. Elyar is a founding member of the Franklin Quartet, the Delaware Valley’s only Period Instrument string quartet. Elyar has taught for twenty years at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and is full-time faculty staff.

JOHN LENTI (theorbo) specializes in music of the 17th century and has made basso continuo improvisation on lute, theorbo, and baroque guitar the cornerstone of a career that encompasses baroque and modern orchestras, chamber music, recitals, and opera. Recent highlights have included performances with the Metropolitan Opera, Oregon Symphony, and the Helicon Foundation. He has played at festivals in Boston, Vancouver, Utrecht, the Proms, Aldeburgh, and the San Juan Islands. Lenti was born in Greenwood, South Carolina. His parents were a touring piano duo, and he traveled with them as a kid as they performed around the Deep South, thereby gaining an appreciation of the role of classical musicians as bearers of comfort and truth.

MANAMI MIZUMOTO (violin) started her lifelong relationship with music at age three on the violin. She has a fascination with performing contemporary music and working with living composers. In recent years, this has manifested in being a founding member of the group Nuova Pratica, a collective of composer-performers working with centuries-old practices of improvisation in the modern day. Her driving curiosity is in exploring the dialogue between ancient and contemporary thoughts, and she is equally at home on the baroque violin, modern violin, and electro-acoustic setups with Ableton Live. Mizumoto is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she earned a bachelors with Catherine Cho and Joel Smirnoff, a masters in Historical Performance, and graduated with the Norman Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant. She is a Fellow of The English Concert in America, elected in 2021.

TRACY MORTIMORE (double bass) performs extensively on modern and historical double basses and violone. He has appeared with early music groups including Santa Fe Pro Musica, Musica Pro Rara, Tafelmusik, Opera Atelier, Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque, Bourbon Baroque, Chatham Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Clarion Music Society, Pegasus, and Aradia Ensemble with whom he has made over 50 recordings. Mortimore currently resides in Cleveland where in addition to his work in early music, he is the bassist for The Cleveland Chamber Symphony and is actively involved with contemporary classical and jazz movements as a performer, improviser, and composer.

KATIE RIETMAN (cello) has performed as a cellist on over 60 recordings and numerous concerts and radio broadcasts with notable baroque, classical, and romantic period instrument ensembles worldwide. Her performing career has taken her to 21 countries in Europe, North America, New Zealand, the Carribean, and South America. She is a prizewinner in the Bonporti competition (Rovereto, Italy) and a semi-finalist in the Van Wassenaer competition (Den Haag, Netherlands). Rierman studied baroque cello at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam and subsequently lived in Cologne, Germany, for 10 years, performing with countless European early music groups. Currently living in Santa Fe, Rietman has been the principal cellist of many New York period instrument ensembles.

MICHAEL SPONSELLER (harpsichord) is recognized as one of the outstanding American harpsichordists of his generation. A highly diversified career brings him to festivals and concert venues in recital, concerto soloist, and active continuo performer on both harpsichord and organ. He has garnered prizes at the International Harpsichord Competitions of Montréal (1999), the International Harpsichord Competition at Bruges (1998, 2001), as well as First Prizes at both the American Bach Soloists and Jurow International Harpsichord Competitions. Sponseller appears regularly as harpsichordist and continuo organist with several of American’s finest baroque orchestras and ensembles, such as Bach Collegium San Diego, Les Délices, Aston Magna, Tragicomedia, and Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. His various recordings include a diverse list of composers and have received excellent reviews. Referencing his performance of the J.S. Bach Concertos, Early Music America Magazine wrote: “His well-proportioned elegance carries the day quite stylishly.”