Coda | BLO | Spring 2017

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | SPRING 2017

ESTHER NELSON, STANFORD CALDERWOOD GENERAL & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | DAVID ANGUS, MUSIC DIRECTOR | JOHN CONKLIN, ARTISTIC ADVISOR

EDITORIAL STAFF Cathy Emmons Julia Propp Lacey Upton Eileen Williston CONTRIBUTORS John Conklin Brian Kellow Laura Stanfield Prichard Harlow Robinson Lacey Upton MISSION The mission of Boston Lyric Opera is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera by creating musically and theatrically compelling productions, events, and educational resources for our community and beyond. We produce opera in all forms, large to small, popular to lesser known, from early music to newly-commissioned works.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE Boston Lyric Opera 11 Avenue de Lafayette Boston, MA 02111-1736 P: 617.542.4912 | F: 617.542.4913 AUDIENCE SERVICES AND GROUP TICKETS 617.542.6772 | boxoffice@blo.org VIP TICKETING Bailey Kerr 617.542.4912 x2450 | bkerr@blo.org COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Lacey Upton 617.542.4912 x2420 | education@blo.org EVENTS Sara O’Brien 617.542.4912 x2900 | sobrien@blo.org For a full listing of BLO staff, please visit blo.org/about.

GET SOCIAL WITH OPERA #RAKESBLO | #FIGAROBLO BLO’s programs are funded, in part, by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Coda Magazine is underwritten with the support of Jane and Jeffrey Marshall.

Playbill of an actress dressing in breeches by John Colley, 1779.

BRAVO! BRAVA! GENDER, OPERA, AND THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Wednesday, March 29, 2017 | 6:30pm Boston Athenæum | 10 1/2 Beacon Street

The opera stage is a place of play and possibility, especially when it comes to the rules of gender, delighting audiences with transformations that titillate, amuse, and often illuminate greater truths. Dr. Laurence Senelick—professor, actor, director, and author of the leading study of stage cross-dressing— delves into the rich tradition of gender-bending on the operatic stage, illustrated through musical examples performed by Boston Lyric Opera artists.

This evening event surveys the men and women of the operatic stage from the 18th century through the 20th—in all states of dress.

TICKET SALES OPEN MARCH 1 at BLO.org and BostonAthenaeum.org $20 for BLO subscribers and Athenæum members $30 for general public About the Presenter: Laurence Senelick is the Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Senelick is the author or editor of more than ​25 books, including The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre (Routledge).

WELCOME TO THE SPRING ISSUE OF CODA! One of the great joys of my work as General & Artistic Director of BLO is finding meaningful and sometimes unexpected connections between the various works that we present onstage, across history and time, across culture, across geography, and to engage, along with our audiences, in a centuries-long conversation about music, theater, art, and literature by some of the greatest creative minds the world has known.

There are many of these connections at play with the second half of our 40th Anniversary Season. In March, we have our own new production of Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical 20th-century triumph, The Rake’s Progress, echoing the sound world of the 18th-century Mozart, and based on a sequence of satirical paintings of the same period by the British artist William Hogarth. They illustrate young Tom Rakewell’s losing battle to worldly pleasures and depravity, and many of the social ills of Hogarth and Mozart’s time. The filmmaker Alan Parker described the series as the “ancestor to story boards.” Those social and moral concerns still resonate with us today, and come alive brilliantly in the opera through the text by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. Many of our patrons have asked us for years to bring this wonderful opera to Boston.

Next, you will hear from Mozart himself, with our new production of The Marriage of Figaro. Perhaps his greatest triumph, the opera perfectly blends social critique with a deeply emotional and insightful view of the relationships that bind us together. How do these two works inform one another, as we travel simultaneously backwards and forwards in time? What will we continue to learn, and feel, as we consider them now, in the dawn of the 21st century?

Looking ahead, BLO is proud to announce two major upcoming World Premieres and new works: The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare, with music by Julian Grant and a libretto by Mark Campbell; and Schoenberg in Hollywood,

by Cambridge-based composer, Tod Machover, with libretto by Simon Robson. As BLO expands our commitment to new works, we are excited to share with you a first glimpse of these operas of tomorrow, on page 14.

As we prepare our next Season we also continue to work on the best future venue options for opera and for our patrons in Boston. One of the possibilities we are currently exploring is the Colonial Theatre. We will keep you posted. We are also interested to hear your ideas about what you envision as your optimal opera venue experience in Boston. Please email those thoughts and comments to boxoffice@blo.org.

Thank you for joining us on our opera journey. We look forward to many more to come.

Esther Nelson

Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director

Igor and Arnold in LA-LA-Land............................................................................... 2 High Five: Get to Know The Rake’s Progress in 5 Minutes or Less....................... 4 Three Figaros in Search of an Opera....................................................................... 5 High Five: Get to Know The Marriage of Figaro in 5 Minutes or Less................. 7 Auden’s Search for Fulfillment: The Rake’s Progress............................................... 8 The Marriage of Figaro: New Production Sneak Peek.......................................... 10 Writing Vows: Creating The Marriage of Figaro.....................................................12 On our cover: Three views of The Marriage of Figaro throughout BLO’s history: Sari Gruber, Alfred Walker, D’Anna Fortunato, and Spiro Malas in 1999, photo by Richard Feldman; Ailyn Pérez and Kyle Ketelsen in 2007, photo by Jeffrey Dunn; and Emily Birsan, singing Susanna in the upcoming 2017 production, photo by Liza Voll.

Opera Anew: BLO Announces Two Upcoming New Works...............................14 Stravinsky and the Rake: Forging a New Path........................................................16 Spotlight On: The BLO Production Department.................................................18 Contributors..............................................................................................................20 Curtains.......................................................................................................................21

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 1

IGOR AND ARNOLD IN LA-LA LAND M

any composers have called southern California home.

Drawn by the mild climate and the creative opportunities in the film business, the universities and the beach, composers found a supportive environment there that also encouraged experimentation and a certain un-New York informality.

This surprisingly eclectic group has included luminaries ranging from cliché-wrecker John Cage to film composers like Bernard Herrmann (of Psycho fame) to the grand-daddy of the serialist movement, Arnold Schoenberg, who found refuge from the Nazis in Los Angeles from 1934 (after briefly living in Boston and New York) until his death in 1951.

And, of course, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971). Even today, it is often forgotten that Stravinsky—born in Russia and associated in the popular imagination with the Slavic subjects of his early ballets, Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring—actually lived in Los Angeles longer than he resided in any other place in his entire nomadic career. Like so many other prominent artists, Stravinsky landed in the United States in 1939, seeking refuge from growing political turmoil in pre-war Europe. (After arriving in New York, his first stop was Boston, to give the Norton Lectures at Harvard.) The 2 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

next year, Stravinsky settled in Los Angeles, and eventually took up permanent residence in West Hollywood, where he remained for nearly 30 years until moving to New York in 1969, shortly before his death. It was in LA that he wrote all of his opera, The Rake’s Progress, from 1948 to 1951.

“If there ever was a home for Stravinsky, it was the house in West Hollywood,” Esa-Pekka Salonen, former music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and another LA composer himself, observed recently. “And Stravinsky is maybe the most important figure in the world of the classical arts ever to have lived in Los Angeles, even though there’s still very little appreciation of this fact, even in Los Angeles.”

It was there, in late 1947, that Stravinsky first began working with the poet W.H. Auden on the libretto for The Rake’s Progress. According to Stravinsky’s biographer Stephen Walsh, when Auden came for a visit, his sloppy personal habits and dirty fingernails “struck a discordant note in the somewhat bourgeois environment that Igor and Vera had created for themselves in trim North Wetherly Drive.” Allowances were made, however, for the beloved household

pets, including a cat and some birds. In his studio, Stravinsky “writes slowly, meticulously, every day at regular hours, with the cold determination and control of an engineer,” wrote a visitor, the Polish composer and conductor René Leibowitz.

During this period, another visitor began appearing with increasing frequency in the Stravinskys’ home: Robert Craft. This young American conductor would become the most important artistic advisor, friend, editor and gatekeeper to Stravinsky for the next 20 years. Craft later remembered how difficult for Stravinsky was the composition process of The Rake’s Progress, that he was frequently in a foul mood and extremely sensitive to any distractions: “He notices noises heard by no one else.” So as to insulate himself from the inevitable urban background din, Stravinsky “always composed with his studio windows shut, even in the hottest July weather.”

Craft also helped to expose Stravinsky to a wider range of music and musical styles. Like many conductors and musicians of his generation, Craft had carefully studied and appreciated the music

of Stravinsky’s Los Angeles neighbor, Arnold Schoenberg, the leader of the twelve-tone school of composition. Stravinsky’s own relationship with Schoenberg (who lived in nearby Brentwood near UCLA, where he taught) was strained and distant. Although for more than a decade they lived in the same city, worked in intersecting musical circles, and shared some acquaintances, the two men never apparently formally met in Los Angeles. (Their one brief encounter was many years before, in 1912 in Berlin, at a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.) On numerous occasions, they attended the same public events and concerts, but shunned the opportunity to engage in conversation, “whether out of fear, or simple shyness, or some awkwardness engendered by old hostilities or the polemics of their various acolytes,” writes Walsh.

When Schoenberg died on July 13, 1951, Stravinsky did find the time to send Schoenberg’s widow a telegram of condolence, calling his death a “terrible blow inflicted to all [the] musical world.”

In his book Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey, Allen Shaw muses on the ironies of the “habit of mutual antipathy” between these two giants of modernism, given that “their paths would indeed converge in a remarkable way in Stravinsky’s last works. Like two trains running

BLO is proud to announce an upcoming commission from renowned, Cambridge-based composer Tod Machover and librettist Simon Robson, entitled Schoenberg in Hollywood.

Learn more on page 14.

parallel to each other on different tracks, at slightly different speeds and with different itineraries, the two composers had actually been alongside each other during their periods of experiment and innovation, as well as during their moments of greatest rationality and ‘classicism’.”

And indeed, soon after completing The Rake’s Progress in early April, 1951, and only months after Schoenberg’s death, Stravinsky began incorporating elements of serialist technique into his new compositions, such as Cantata and Septet. In part this seems to have been a logical stage in Stravinsky’s artistic evolution, for he was ever searching for something new, and had a terror of repeating himself. And he realized that his style of neoclassicism, which

reaches its superb peak in The Rake’s Progress, was now regarded as passé by the musical avant-garde in the United States and Europe.

Stravinsky hated nothing more than to be considered old-fashioned or irrelevant, so he began to adopt many of Schoenberg’s ideas without, of course, admitting that he was doing so.

As Sabine Feisst concludes in her book Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years, “Stravinsky’s turn to serialism had a substantial impact on the American contemporary music scene, blurring the dichotomy of the Stravinsky and Schoenberg camps.” Imitation is, after all, the highest form of flattery, so Arnold would no doubt have been pleased by the posthumous respect he received from his neighbor, Igor.

BY HARLOW ROBINSON From left: Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, ca. 1920s-30s, George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress; Arnold Schönberg, ca. 1933, Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien; Stravinsky, pictured at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966, Los Angeles Times; Arnold Schönberg (seated, front left) with family and friends in front of his Brentwood, CA home; The Stravinsky home in Los Angeles on N. Wetherly Drive, John Freedman, Russian Culture in Landmarks.

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WHO’S WHO ANYA MATANOVIC AS ANNE TRULOVE BEN BLISS AS TOM RAKEWELL Conducted by David Angus and directed by Allegra Libonati.

Scenic Design by Julia Noulin-Mérat, Costume Design by John Conklin & Neil Fortin, and Lighting Design by Mark Stanley

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know The Rake’s Progress in Five Minutes or Less THE RAKE’S PROGRESS MARCH 12 – 19 Music by Igor Stravinsky Libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman Based on A Rake’s Progress by William Hogarth Length: Approximately 2 hours, 45 minutes | 1 intermission

SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS In the countryside, Anne Trulove and Tom Rakewell celebrate their love. Nick Shadow appears with news that Tom has inherited a fortune; the two depart for London.

In the wicked city, Shadow introduces Tom to Mother Goose’s brothel. Back in the country, Anne decides that she must rescue Tom. Meanwhile, Shadow suggests visiting the amazing bearded woman, Baba the Turk. When Anne arrives, she finds Tom and Baba married. Tom quickly tires of her, so Shadow next proposes a miraculous machine that turns stones into bread. Anne again appears to save Tom, but he and Shadow have disappeared. A year and a day from their first meeting, in a graveyard, Shadow demands his payment—Tom’s soul. But Tom hears Anne’s voice in the distance and his love is reawakened.

Shadow, defeated, disappears into the ground. Tom survives, mad, and is shut up in Bedlam. Anne arrives to comfort him, but there is little to be done. Adapted from the synopsis by Boosey & Hawkes.

THE INSPIRATION In 1947, Stravinsky visited the Art Institute of Chicago and viewed a series of etchings by the 18th-century artist William Hogarth, entitled A Rake’s Progress. These eight scenes, which trace the descent of Tom Rakewell from respectability to debauchery and 4 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

madness, struck him immediately with their dramatic potential.

Stravinsky had, since moving to the United States in 1939, been seeking inspiration for an opera to be written in English.

AN OPERA ABOUT … OPERA? Stravinsky spent the majority of his career writing in a neoclassical style, and in the duo of W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, Stravinsky found librettists who shared his affinity for the past— as well as his ability to recreate it with a 20th-century outlook.

Few operas harken so deliberately to various operatic forms and conventions. Its characters are broad archetypes, indicated by even their names (Tom Rakewell, Anne Trulove, Nick Shadow).

The score and story include nods and explicit references to Mozart (especially Così Fan Tutte and Don Giovanni), Monteverdi’s Orfeo, bel canto opera, the Faust story and its operatic adaptations, the myth of Venus and Adonis, and more.

THE BLO PRODUCTION After this triumph of neoclassicism, Stravinsky abruptly changed compositional course, subsequently writing in the style of musical serialism (closely associated with that other 20th-century titan of composition, Arnold Schoenberg). The upcoming BLO production will use The Rake’s Progress to explore this pivotal moment in Stravinsky’s career: the creative team has secured permission from the Stravinsky estate to add the non-singing role of Stravinsky to the opera. The audience will see the character of Stravinsky struggle with his own hunger for fame and acclaim through the story of Tom, who is seduced by worldly riches and loses his way, until Stravinsky can finally set himself free from his past and boldly explore musical experimentation for the rest of his career. For more on Stravinsky’s life and works, see “Igor and Arnold in LA-LA-Land” on page 2, as well as “Stravinsky and the Rake” on page 16.

FUN FACTS • Opera was in Stravinsky’s blood—his father was the principal bass at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.

• S travinsky was introduced to his librettist, the poet W.H. Auden, by his neighbor in California, Aldous Huxley—who you might know through his seminal dystopian novel, Brave New World.

Left: The third panel in A Rake’s Progress series by William Hogarth, depicting a wild night at the Rose Tavern, a famous London brothel in Covent Garden.

THREE FIGAROS IN SEARCH OF AN OPERA O

BY JOHN CONKLIN

f the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy of plays, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro live on both in their own right and through the operas that mark cornerstones of the repertory, while the third play, The Guilty Mother, has provided the foundation for a fascinating, challenging 20th-century work. The enduring character of the wily Figaro, and the other personalities drawn into his orbit by Beaumarchais, have appealed to numerous composers beyond the untouchable Rossini and Mozart. Yet in those two supreme musical examples, the works largely retain their original qualities of wit, spirit and humanity, attesting to their dramaturgical strength and continual theatricality.

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Neatly anticipating its Rossinian apotheosis 43 years later, the Beaumarchais piece began as a libretto for a comic opera, but was rejected as such by the Comédie-Italienne theater. Beaumarchais revised his idea in 1773, but due to legal and political problems (seemingly endemic in his career), Barber was not performed until 1775 at the Comédie-Française. Poorly received at first, Beaumarchais, a master of theatrical strategy, went back to work and after some fast editing (three days), its return was a roaring success. It is said that Marie Antoinette acted (apparently skillfully) the part of Rosine in a court production.

There were several operatic versions, but Giovanni Paisiello’s popular Barber (1782) was the one to beat. A hit all over Europe, Paisiello’s Barber apparently prompted Mozart and Da Ponte to create their Figaro. But then along came Rossini, and in 1816 (and in only three weeks) he penned his Barber of Seville, an exuberant masterpiece which eclipsed poor Paisiello’s worthy work and remains one of the most often-performed works in the operatic canon today.

SELECTED BY JOHN CONKLIN Photo collage: Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt. Sophocles bust, Pushkin Museum.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO The Marriage of Figaro’s perceived revolutionary content and the consequent involvement with the censor is immediately apparent in the difficulty of getting it to the stage. After the great success of Barber, a sequel seemed a no-fail idea; w BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 5

Beaumarchais had completed a version by 1778. Initially, the text was approved with minor changes by the official censor, but a private reading before the French court so shocked King Louis XVI that he forbade public presentation. Beaumarchais completed revisions, and the new version was played to the Royal Family in September 1783. The King, seemingly now unthreatened, allowed a license for performance. It opened in April 1784 and was the single greatest success in the history of French 18th-century theater.

Upon his initial viewing of the work, King Louis XVI had remarked, “the Bastille would need to be pulled down before such a play could be staged.” Eight years later, the Bastille indeed fell, followed in short order by his own head. The revolutionary firebrand Georges Danton said the play “killed off the nobility;” Napoleon called it “the Revolution already put into action” (before he himself killed off the Revolution). Its subversive power continued into the 20th century: during the occupation of Paris, the Nazis allowed Barber to be revived but refused to allow Marriage to be staged.

Even though the play had been banned in Vienna, Mozart asked Da Ponte to create a libretto from it, which he did with great skill, at the same time prudently muting its political content, “omitting anything that might offend good taste or public decency.” The opera premiered in May 1786 with considerable success, and the rest is history.

THE GUILTY MOTHER, OR THE OTHER TARTUFFE In 1791 Beaumarchais completed the next sequel, The Guilty Mother. It was to have been staged at the Comédie-Française, but the author (typically) fell out with management, and it was premiered at another theater a year later, running for 15 performances. By the time it was finally presented at the Comédie-Française in 1797, concessions to the prevailing orthodoxy of the Revolution had to be made; for instance, the aristocratic titles of the Almavivas were repressed. Thereafter the work fell out of the general repertory. Its sentiments seemed to belong to the ancient regime rather than the new political and social realities.

Set 20 years after Marriage, The Guilty Mother is a somewhat odd conclusion to the Figaro trilogy. The Countess, after a one-night stand with Chérubin (which she immediately deeply regrets), had a son, who has been brought up as an heir of the Count. Chérubin, wracked with guilt, allowed himself to be mortally wounded in battle. The Count has also fathered a illegitimate daughter, and the two offspring are in love.

Incest, guilt, thwarted love affairs, lost letters, contested wills, a melodramatic villain, and the intrigues of the now-older married couple, Suzanne and Figaro, are all ingredients in this mix.

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THE GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES: A PERSONAL VIEW FROM JOHN CONKLIN I was hired by the Metropolitan Opera to work with the director Colin Graham, composer John Corigliano, librettist and Bill Hoffmann, and conductor James Levine to design the sets and costumes for the world premiere production of The Ghosts of Versailles.

The creators conceived a work that would utilize the extensive resources of the Met; set mainly in a dreamlike, haunted Palace of Versailles, it featured scenes in the teeming streets of revolutionary Paris, a tribunal, a prison, the gardens of Versailles, and a reception at the Turkish embassy. To give an idea of the scale of the production, at the end of the first act there were 175 people onstage.

The work was exciting to design and entertaining to watch, but for me, it was also unfocused. Subsequent productions, with different directors and designers and with chamber orchestras, have showcased the opera in a more favorable light —all potent examples of how a piece can evolve and, over time, reveal core strengths that were not immediately apparent.

Composer Darius Milhaud’s operatic version was performed in 1966 (and rarely seen again). John Corigliano, working with playwright William Hoffman, took a broader, meta-opera approach in The Ghosts of Versailles, which had a Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1991. In that work, the ghost of Beaumarchais now enters the story himself and uses the familiar figures in an attempt to change history and to save Marie Antoinette.

Corigliano writes his bravura fantasia in a number of styles and quotes Rossini and Mozart.

Beaumarchais lives on in his Figaro plays as well as in the enduring fascination of his extraordinary life. The plays are masterpieces of comic technique, invention and, above all, tolerant, civilizing values. As noted by David Coward, “Beaumarchais does not mock with the corrosive comedy of derision but with a ’gaiety’ rooted in the exhilarating spirit of joyful reconciliation which crowns The Marriage”…and leads to its highest expression in Mozart.

Previous: Statue of Beaumarchais by Louis Clausade, 1895, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris; Inset: James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met: The Ghosts of Versailles, conducted by James Levine, featuring Teresa Stratas, Håkan Hagegård, Gino Quilico, Marilyn Horne, Graham Clark, and Renée Fleming; DVD, 1992.

WHO’S WHO EVAN HUGHES AS FIGARO EMILY BIRSAN AS SUSANNA Conducted by David Angus and directed by Rosetta Cucchi.

Scenic Design by John Conklin, Costume Design by Gail Astrid Buckley, and Lighting Design by D.M. Wood.

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know The Marriage of Figaro in 5 Minutes or Less THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO APRIL 28 – MAY 7 Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte Based on La Folle Journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro

by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais Sung in Italian, with English surtitles Length: Approximately 3 hours | 1 intermission

SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS A villa in Italy during the 1950s. The servants Figaro and Susanna are about to be married, but their employer, the Count Almaviva, has also cast his roving eye on the bride-to-be. Figaro vows to outwit his master. And there’s another problem: the much-older Marcellina, housekeeper to Dr. Bartolo, wants to marry Figaro herself—and he owes her a tidy sum of money. The servants scheme with the Countess, who misses her husband’s devotion, as well as the teenage Cherubino, about how to entrap the Count. Along the way, it is revealed that Figaro is the long-lost son of Marcellina and Dr. Bartolo. Susanna sets the servants’ plot in motion by promising the Count a tryst in the garden at night.

She and the Countess dress in one another’s clothes for the rendezvous, leading to confusion and anger from Figaro and the Count. Finally, the real Countess reveals herself, and her husband realizes his folly and begs her forgiveness. She grants it, and all of the couples enjoy a happy ending.

A LIBRETTIST—AND A POET, A PRIEST, A TEACHER, A GROCER …

The three operas that Lorenzo Da Ponte penned with Mozart— The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così Fan Tutte (1790)—are rightly hailed as masterpieces. But the life of Da Ponte was operatic far beyond the stage. Born to a Jewish family in 1749, he converted to Catholicism and later took orders as a priest.

But after fathering two children and allegedly living in a brothel, he was banished from Venice. He traveled to Vienna and established

himself as a court poet, leading to his connection with Mozart. His travels took him next to England, where he did a stint as a grocer before finding his footing again as a man of the theater, then fled to New York City to escape bankruptcy. He eventually became the first professor of Italian Literature at Columbia College and encouraged opera in the city, producing a performance of Don Giovanni and introducing the music of Rossini to New York through a concert tour by the composer’s niece.

THE PERFECT OPERA? For many, The Marriage of Figaro represents the “perfect” opera—that elusive, ideal blend of sublime music and drama, humane comedy and human foible, social satire and compassionate resolution. As music critic Tom Service wrote, “…the whole score becomes the engine of the operatic drama … what’s happening in the orchestra defines the emotional and expressive universe in which Mozart and Da Ponte’s characters, and the audience, will spend the next few hours of their lives.” Virtually every piece from the opera is beloved, but just a few of the highlights include: the bubbling overture that sets the mood for the follies of the crazy day to come; the Countess’ entrance aria, the achingly bittersweet “Porgi amor”; the Act II finale, a 20-minute, uninterrupted span of music, comedy, and dramatic confusion, all perfectly timed; and the Count’s final plea to the Countess for her forgiveness, often cited as one of the most expressive and beautiful moments in all of opera.

FUN FACT • Da Ponte was reportedly buried in Manhattan originally, but that cemetery was dug up and all the remains moved to Queens.

Though his exact final resting place is not known, a memorial to him was erected in Calvary Cemetery in 1987.

Portrait of Mozart, c. 1780, by Johann Nepomuk della Croce.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 7

AUDEN’S SEARCH FOR FULFIL

I

’ve lost count of all the people I know who have difficulty warming up to The Rake’s Progress.

Even Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf Bing, who presented the opera’s U.S. premiere in 1953, dismissed it in his memoir: “I must admit I absolutely hated the work, both the words and the music. I do not consider myself a prude, but a woman with a beard I think goes too far.” Partly because of a complex and somewhat problematic second act, The Rake’s Progress is a challenging work to pull off onstage. At the end, when we see beleaguered Tom Rakewell reduced to a pitiable state in a madhouse, we may be surprised to find ourselves so deeply moved, since its creators so often seem determined to keep us at a steady emotional distance. At the time Rake was composed, it had been years since Stravinsky had written overtly expressive music. He had mostly been writing in the neoclassical idiom— Romanticism be damned. And with The Rake’s Progress, he found the ideal collaborator in W.H. Auden.

The inspired suggestion of Auden as librettist came from Stravinsky’s neighbor, Aldous Huxley. Auden had been an opera lover for years, a passion he shared with his devoted-yet-fickle lover Chester Kallman, whom Auden brought on as co-librettist.

Kallman’s contribution was sprung on Stravinsky when Auden delivered the first act of the libretto in January 1948, and despite some initial misgivings, Stravinsky admired Kallman’s contributions and grew to like the man himself. Rake was, for the most part, a very happy collaboration.

Nevill Coghill, the poet’s onetime tutor, recalled that Auden once explained that “to ‘understand’ a poem was not a logical process, but a receiving, as a unity, a pattern of coordinated images that had sprung from a free association of sub-conscious ideas, private to himself.” And The Rake’s Progress seems, in its elusive, freewheeling way, a brilliant illustration of that principle.

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Auden was celebrated as a poet in both England and the U.S., where he immigrated in 1939, just as Britain was on the brink of war—a decision that brought him and his close friend Christopher Isherwood under critical attack in the U.K. But Auden responded to the violent upheaval of the world with such sublime contributions to poetry that public animosity toward him was mostly assuaged. In his poems, Auden plumbed highly complex moral and social issues—but reason and a rigorous intellect adroitly contained his passion. By temperament, he was not inclined to melt the heart with the same rhapsodic magic of fellow modernist W.B. Yeats. Take the final lines of Yeats’ devastating 1902 poem “Adam’s Curse,” which describes a very particular failure of love:

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears; That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the old high way of love; That it had all seemed happy, and yet, we’d grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

This theme of ideals disappointed, of an imbalance in the relationship, comes up in what is perhaps Auden’s best-known poem, “Lay your sleeping head, my love,” in which the narrator laments that:

Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral.

But here, and in so much of his work, Auden’s restraint carries the day. The sense of regret is held in check, and the poet delivers a sense of hope, quite unlike Yeats’ wistful melancholy.

Perhaps it was Auden’s own wanderlust that allowed him to breathe life into the character of Tom Rakewell. While Auden’s Christian

JOE MABEL

From left: Auden and Kallman in Venice, 1951; Title page of Auden’s The Age of Anxiety, 1947; Plaque at Auden’s former home in Brooklyn Heights.

LMENT: THE RAKE’S PROGRESS faith gave him an anchor in his life that poor Tom could never hope to find, the poet did lead quite a peripatetic life. Although he was gay, he had a serious romance with at least one woman, Rhoda Jaffe. He volunteered for the Spanish Civil War, where he wound up broadcasting radio propaganda; visited Japaneseinvaded China in 1937; left England at the outbreak of World War II to come to the U.S. in 1939, settling into an intoxicating Brooklyn household that at various points included Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, Gypsy Rose Lee, Carson McCullers and Paul and Jane Bowles. At the end of the war in Europe, he served in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany. It was a remarkably packed-in existence by any standards.

One of the most powerful themes in The Rake’s Progress— although Auden never states it directly—is the pitiless march of time. We watch Tom squander each of his opportunities, consistently making the wrong choices. We know the day is coming when he will have to face the bitter consequences of his bargain with Nick Shadow. This failure to conquer the advances of time is a potent recurring theme throughout Auden’s canon.

In his 1937 poem, “As I walked out one evening,” the narrator sings jubilantly and confidently of a never-ending love. In his meticulously dispassionate way, Auden tell us that such suspended moments of the perfect illusion of happiness do not last:

But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: “O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.

“In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss.”

The most famous excerpt of The Rake’s Progress is Anne’s first-act aria, “No word from Tom.” But as she hits the glorious high C that concludes the aria, confidently singing of “an ever loving heart,” we begin to understand that Tom is not the only character in the opera grappling with delusions. “No word from Tom” brings to mind Auden’s brilliant meditation on the condition of humanity at the dawn of World War II, “September 1, 1939,” in which he observes:

For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.

As we follow Tom’s persistently elusive search for fulfillment in The Rake’s Progress, we may recall that some of Auden’s poems portray the dangers of such a quest, which may yield “gradual ruin spreading like a stain.” For in Auden’s work, time and the world are almost always implacable forces, ready to render our most frantic and inchoate yearnings hopeless. Take the last stanza of “As I walked out one evening”:

It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming And the deep river ran on.

In Auden’s work, the deep river is always running on. Or, as he writes in “If I Could Tell You”:

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow, There must be reasons why the leaves decay; Time will say nothing but I told you so.

BY BRIAN KELLOW BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 9

10 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO RETURNS TO BLO THIS SPRING IN AN ALL-NEW PRODUCTION—BUT YOU CAN GET YOUR FIRST LOOK HERE! Reuniting Rosetta Cucchi, stage director, and John Conklin, BLO Artistic Advisor and scenic designer—the dramaturgical minds behind our 2015/16 Season La Bohème—this upcoming production of Mozart’s classic sets the action in an imaginary Italian villa in the 1950s, a world of luxury and cinematic style.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO APRIL 28 – MAY 9 | 2017 JOHN HANCOCK HALL AT THE BACK BAY EVENTS CENTER

Partly inspired by the visual world of the 1954 Billy Wilder film, Sabrina, Conklin says that the production stresses the work’s theatricality, wit, and playfulness. Audiences can expect to see glimpses of the backstage workings of the production, such as lighting instruments and stagehands; instead of a realistic set, the floor plan of the Almaviva villa will be drawn on the stage floor, with mirrors above so the audience can navigate the intrigues along with the characters. Italian sports cars and an indoor tennis court harken back to the Hamptons setting of Sabrina, while numbered doors on wheels keep the farcical elements of Mozart’s Marriage rolling along. With sumptuous costumes designed by Gail Astrid Buckley, 1950s glamour comes to life.

Left: Sabrina film poster, 1954; Scene from film Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn; Costume sketch for Susanna, Act I, by designer Gail Astrid Buckley; Set model, Act II, by designer John Conklin.

Above: Studio publicity portrait for film Sabrina with William Holden and Audrey Hepburn; Costume sketch for the Countess, Act IV, by designer Gail Astrid Buckley; Set model, Act IV, by designer John Conklin.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 11

W

hen Mozart and his new librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, put together their Italian version of Pierre Beaumarchais’ 1778 play, The Marriage of Figaro, revolution was in the air. The story follows traditional commedia dell’arte structures, with many characters adapted from stock characters; for instance, Figaro is inspired by the zanni (servant) character Brighella, smart and vindictive, who can be in turns both moral and unscrupulous, a clever liar, good humored, and brave.

Since The Marriage of Figaro was originally conceived as a sequel (to the first play in the Beaumarchais trilogy, The Barber of Seville), in the play, Figaro and his former master Count Almaviva are reunited in order to foil Dr. Bartolo (the long-lost father of the title character). Beaumarchais wrote detailed notes on the characters, suggesting that Figaro must be played without any suggestion of rude caricature; the Count with great dignity and affability; the Countess with restrained tenderness; Suzanne as intelligent and lively but without brazen gaiety; and Chérubin as a charming caricature of youth, played even in the original play as a trouser role for a woman, due to a lack of boys “who could understand the subtleties of the role.”

Like Frederick the Great and other German princes, Joseph II (1765–1790, and the brother of Marie Antoinette) admired the language, enlightened materialism, and pragmatism of the French court. He reformed church music, encouraged the dramatic arts, founded theatrical companies, set up colleges for sons of the lower aristocracy, and inaugurated state primary schools. Baron Gottfried van Swieten, one of Mozart’s strongest supporters,

WRITING VOWS:

CREATING THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO 12 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

to deserve such advantages?” The Figaro of the opera, instead, indirectly challenges the Count to dance in his aria, “Se vuol ballare.” Enlightened thinking à la Rousseau, which denounced aristocratic privilege was—at least in the Austrian Empire—still a relatively new phenomenon.

Figaro was a controversial, fresh work to Mozart, since the play finally had its public premiere in Paris in 1784 (Mozart had completed his opera by 1786).

was Joseph’s minister for education and censorship. Both Mozart and Da Ponte owned copies of his Catalogue of Forbidden Books (which sarcastically listed itself in its own register), and used it as a way to discover new and exciting dramatic works.

Mozart pursued Lorenzo Da Ponte as a librettist in hopes of creating a largely buffa-style comic opera with an opera seria female part for contrast. Da Ponte’s own life “in disguise” enabled him to infuse the operatic cliché of disguise with irony.

He put a lot of himself into the work: born a Jewish Venetian in 1749, he changed his name and converted to Catholicism as a result of his father’s remarriage. Both ordained as a priest and employed as a professor of literature, he led a colorful—by some accounts, dissolute—life (living in a brothel, organizing the entertainments there, and having children with a mistress). After he was banished from Venice, Da Ponte’s fellow Venetian Antonio Salieri had introduced him to Viennese society and helped to find him work as an adaptive librettist for the Italian Theatre. Da Ponte collaborated three times with Mozart (Figaro, 1786; Don Giovanni, 1787; and Così Fan Tutte, 1790). He worked closely with composers and remarked that he avoided direct translation, preferring to study the style of a play and imitate it, reducing the number of characters, greatly shortening and restructuring texts to encourage musical variety, and aiming “to paint faithfully and in full color the diverse passions that are aroused.” Alan Tyson’s 1988 study Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores shows evidence of Da Ponte’s collaborative style.

King Louis XVI had been shocked by the title character’s long speeches directly challenging the Count during the first (private) reading of the play, and French censors fought to restrict it from public performance. To avoid clashing with their own censors in the Viennese court, Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera focuses and disarms these speeches. The defining moments of the original French text included lines such as, “Nobility, fortune, rank, position! How proud they make a man feel! What have you done

Conflict between the sexes is a common trope in opera buffa, and Da Ponte worked carefully with Mozart to create final couplings that could be musically and dramatically sensible: Figaro’s true parents, Marcellina and Bartolo, are reunited, the youths Barbarina and Cherubino end up together, the Count and Countess reaffirm their commitment, and Figaro and Susanna present the model of optimistic, sustained love. In the opera’s opening scene, Mozart’s juxtapositions between major and minor modes contrast Figaro and Susanna’s perceptions of the proximity of their new marital room to the Count’s—Figaro exclaims, “so close!” in major; Susanna echoes skeptically in minor with, “too close...”. In Act IV, Susanna (in disguise) needles the Figaro who doubts her honor with the teasing, lilting aria, “Deh vieni, non tardar” (“Oh come, don’t delay”); Figaro, when he realizes the ruse, responds in kind by pretending to proposition the Countess. But by the end of the opera, their intrigues, too, give way to a joyful truce and understanding.

But more than any other scene, Mozart and Da Ponte revised and polished the conclusion of Act II, creating their most elaborate finale, which begins with two voices and ends with seven distinct, overlapping themes. Although the style of the time was to write set pieces, each one coming to a conclusion and separated by recitative, this scene is a masterpiece of plot development and musical continuity: 87 pages of score lasting almost 20 minutes, admired by Antonio Salieri as “a miniature opera in itself.”

The Marriage of Figaro is a masterful blend of comedic and tragic elements, playing with operatic conventions and introducing innovative musical elements. In the words of Johannes Brahms, “…each number in Figaro is a miracle; it is totally beyond me how anyone could create anything so perfect; nothing like it was ever done again….”

BY LAURA STANFIELD PRICHARD Left: Portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte, by Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791–1872); Above: The score title page of Le Nozze di Figaro; Scene from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Cherubino hides behind Susanna’s chair as the Count arrives, anonymous, 19th century.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 13

OPERA ANEW: Boston Lyric Opera is committed to the opera of tomorrow—and the Company is proud to do our part to give the composers and writers of today a stage to help those works find a voice.

BLO has a long history of commissioning new works, with steadily increasing robustness in the past five years. In 1987, for its first commission, BLO ventured into the then-high tech world of opera: it produced Countdown, the first opera written entirely through computer assistance, after winning an OPERA America “Opera for the Eighties and Beyond” grant. Written during an intensive 12-day collaboration period, the score of Countdown was written using an Apple Macintosh computer, a Kurzweil 250 Digital Music Workstation, and software created by Christopher Yavelow.

In recent Seasons, BLO has reaffirmed its commitment to new works and has built relationships with today’s leading composers and librettists, often in conjunction with the Company’s acclaimed Opera Annex series. “Commissioning new works and bringing them to Boston audiences first is one of my highest priorities for Boston Lyric Opera’s next decade,” says Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson. New works like these push the boundaries of the operatic art form forward, challenge audiences to listen and experience opera anew, and provide opportunities for artists at every level, from singers to composers, writers to designers, from Boston and from around the world.

14 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UPCOMING OPERAS! THE NEFARIOUS, IMMORAL BUT HIGHLY PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE OF MR. BURKE & MR. HARE

By Julian Grant and Mark Campbell Commissioned by Music-Theatre Group with additional support from BLO—coming in Fall 2017.

In 19th-century Edinburgh, the public anatomy dissections of the renowned Dr. Robert Knox were popular and prosperous—but fresh bodies were scarce. The Nefarious, GRANT CAMPBELL Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare follows the gruesome, true tale of two ordinary men who discovered they could turn a pretty penny through murder, and of the good doctor who looked the other way. All told, Burke and Hare smothered more than a dozen victims, selling the bodies to Dr. Knox’s school, before they were caught and convicted in a trial that riveted the United Kingdom.

Composer Julian Grant says he was intrigued by the challenges of making Burke and Hare sing, and felt the story lent itself to being told with deathly humor—and a touch of vaudeville, while librettist Mark Campbell notes that the themes of the opera resonate

ERIC ANTONIOU

BLO ANNOUNCES TWO UPCOMING NEW WORKS

TIMELINE OF BLO COMMISSIONS: deeply today. “[The story] occurs in a morally upended world— not unlike our own—where profit is pitted against science, and greed against good. Adding a good deal of mordant humor to a potentially grim tale helps engage the audience with the story.”

1987: BLO produced the first entirely computer-assisted opera ever, entitled Countdown.

1988: A second OPERA America “Eighties and Beyond”

grant funded BLO’s development of Roger Ames and Laura Harrington’s work, The Wife of Martin Guerre. Portions of the work were presented at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the work went on to develop further and eventually premiered as a musical at the Hartford Stage in CT.

Campbell wrote the libretto for Silent Night (2012), which won the Pulitzer Prize that year for composer Kevin Puts, and recently completed Minnesota Opera’s world premiere of The Shining, based on Stephen King’s horror novel. Grant is the composer of more than 18 operas, including works for English National Opera, the Royal Opera and others.

1992: BLO and Boston Music Theatre Project

THOMAS WOLF

SAM OGDON

SCHOENBERG IN HOLLYWOOD

By Tod Machover and Simon Robson Based on a Scenario by Braham Murray Coming in the 2018/19 Season.

In the glamour and glitz of 1930s Los Angeles, the experimental Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg arrived in Hollywood to escape Hitler’s rise. Amidst MACHOVER ROBSON a world of sunshine and lightness, Schoenberg befriended celebrities, toyed with the lure of scoring Hollywood films—and pushed the boundaries of what music could be.

Currently in the early stages of composition, composer Tod Machover envisions that the opera will explore the humor, heroism and pathos of Schoenberg’s struggle, “providing a glimpse of what may have happened if Schoenberg had reconciled all these opposites.”

Machover is recognized as one of the most significant, innovative composers of his generation, celebrated for his music and for inventing new technology for music. He has been the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge since it was founded in 1985, and is Director of the Lab’s Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future groups.

Simon Robson is a respected British actor and playwright, who has written short stories and novels. His first play, The Ghost Train Tattoo premiered at the Royal Exchange and his book of short stories, The Separate Heart, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize in 2007.

collaborated to present scenes from the partiallycompleted opera Elmer Gantry, by Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein. The work eventually premiered in full at Nashville Opera in 2007.

2011: Richard Beaudoin’s prologue The After Image was created in response to—and staged in conjunction with— Viktor Ullmann and Peter Kein’s The Emperor of Atlantis.

2013: James MacMillan’s acclaimed work Clemency,

co-commissioned along with The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Scottish Opera, and Britten Sinfonia, premiered at BLO, and was later released commercially on CD through Naxos America.

2013: BLO’s Opera Annex presentation was its

commission of the official reduced version of Jack Beeson’s 1965 opera, Lizzie Borden.

2016: BLO commissioned a new book of The Merry

Widow from director, playwright, and actor Lillian Groag.

2017: BLO will present the World Premiere of The

Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare by Julian Grant and Mark Campbell.

2018: World Premiere of the BLO-commissioned

opera Schoenberg in Hollywood by Tod Machover and Simon Robson.

Explore BLO’s upcoming commissions over the course of the spring and beyond at BLO.org/new-works, including: • Information about the creators • The real-life stories behind the operas • Photos, musical clips, and videos • Sneak peeks at the compositional and production process

Left: Christine Abraham and David Kravitz in Clemency, 2013.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 15

“ The pattern of innovation is remarkable and unprecedented.”

- JOSEPH STRAUS

STRAVINSKY AND THE RAKE: FORGING A NEW PATH

BY JOHN CONKLIN

The Rake’s Progress was written when Stravinsky was almost 70—and probably the most famous living classical composer in the world. This was an era when serious music and its creators were a part of mainstream culture (they were even considered celebrities—think Toscanini’s fame), photographed in magazines (Stravinsky made the cover of TIME in 1948), appeared on TV, were interviewed, profiled, quoted, and gossiped about. Stravinsky, in turn, enthusiastically (and with more than a touch of mandarin irony) embraced pop culture, composing, for instance, a piece for dancing elephants for the Barnum & Bailey Circus. His Rite of Spring was used in Walt Disney’s film Fantasia. The premiere of The Rake’s Progress in Venice, in September of 1951, therefore was a event of international importance and fashionable celebrity focus, as well as an important cultural and musical statement. After all, Stravinsky had happily spent years living in Hollywood—attending glamorous dinner parties with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn, living the sybaritic Californian lifestyle while all the while working ceaselessly on his musical craft.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His journey to that premiere night in Venice had been long, arduous and extraordinary in its range and importance. To go from the sharply-colorful edginess of Petrushka and the violent, shocking musical brutality of The Rite of Spring—which, in 1913, was perceived almost at once as perhaps the most important and influential composition of the 20th century—through the evolution and mastery of a wide range of musical genres and styles, culminating in that evening at La Fenice with The Rake’s Progress, a piece that harkened back to the sophisticated elegancies and formal structures of the classical world of Mozart, was unprecedented.

But there were more twists and turns to come. In the last decades of his life (he died in 1971), Stravinsky seemed to turn his back on all that his career had been before, and moved into a totally 16 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

new compositional world. It was almost that the Rake served as his farewell to one kind of aesthetic, a necessary cleansing of the palate prefiguring a brave decision to be a new artist. He had been acclaimed as a young genius in the days of The Rite of Spring; then hailed as crucial force in music (and self-promoted as such); and later sharply criticized as overly conservative and out-of-step with the zeitgeist of the 20th century, as embodied by the serialism and musical experimentation of Arnold Schoenberg. And yet, after the premiere of the Rake and after the death (also in 1951) of Schoenberg, his acknowledged rival as “the most important composer of the century,” Stravinsky recreated himself, shedding the neoclassical style that had built his career and experimenting with the serialism and twelve-tone style he had once shunned.

Joseph Straus writes, “Stravinsky’s late works differ from his earlier ones in striking and profound ways … The pattern of innovation is remarkable and unprecedented. I can think of no other composer at a comparably advanced age and pinnacle of recognition and success, who so thoroughly altered his compositional approach.”

T

he upcoming BLO production of The Rake’s Progress will feature a new character—the non-singing role of Stravinsky himself. While we, with him, watch an opera that he composed (or, perhaps, is in the very act of composing) Stravinsky uses the fable of the journey of a young man from nothing, to money and success, and ultimately to hell (or perhaps a kind of redemption) to meditate and ponder his own ambiguous and complex relationship to artistic conscience, celebrity, money and sex.

Above: Igor Stravinsky’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (received 1960); Stravinsky on the cover of TIME, 1948. Below: Early costume sketch for the character of Stravinsky in the BLO production, by co-designer Neil Fortin. Right: Vera de Bosset, Russian-born dancer and artist, who became Stravinsky’s second wife in 1940; Stravinsky in front of La Fenice, 1951, before the premiere of The Rake’s Progress.

Venice, September 11, 1951. A night of Panamanian heat, and a sirocco that blows like a bellows. The alleys near the theater have been rope d off to keep the Fourth Estate at bay duri ng the procession of arrivals, though the “Higher Estates” come not as pedestrians, but are dep osit ed by gondolas and motor launches from a strongly and (as it seem s in some cases) rather appropriately redolent canal. Our own (pedestrian) party consists of Nadia Boulanger (who carries Igor’s valises), Wystan Auden and Chester Kallman (both nervous in spite of liqu id fortification—a moat of martinis, in fact), Stephen Spender (shy, deferential) and Louis MacNeice (handsome, arrogantly silent but perh aps pickled). …

La Fenice, the most beautiful theater in the world, has never glittered as it does tonight, in honor of the debut. As an extra garnishing, bouque ts of roses, like debutantes’ corsages, have been pinned to each loge. Unfortunately, though, the beauty of these stalls from the inside is even less than “skin deep.”

The plush seems to have chicken- or, rather, moth-pox, and it and everythi ng else is in urgent need of deodorizing. (A Canovan Venus used to stand in the foyer, her arm raised and head inclined as though she were sniffing her axilla for the edifi cation of local “society.”) …

The audience glitters, too; everyone, that is, except a new York newspaperm an who with unbruised assurance is probably already preparin g a jobbery on the event consistent with his apparel and lifeling devotion to the commonplace. (Note: Air travel was not yet the rule at that time and, therefore, neither were blue jeans and Beethoven sweater s.) …

At 9:35 Igor walks to the pit, bows to the audience which, though ultra mon daine, applauds him with (I think) a core of genuine appreciatio n. He then turns quickly to the orch estra so that we see only his extraordinary occipital bumps and small, vital beat. The singers are Rob ert Rounseville who has only recently emerged, or not quite fully emerged, from a film career and man ner, but who is well cast as Tom Rakewell; Elisabeth Sch warzkopf, who is the perfect Anne; Hug hes Cuénod, who is a subtle Sellem, and Jennie Tourel, who as the diva, Baba, could perform her grand exit on an elephant without risking a snicker. At first-act intermission we drink caffè espresso in the Campo San Fantin, mercifully rescued from impertinent judgments by the unforgettable effect on the whole audience of Frl. Schwarzkopf ’s high “C.” …

The inevitable post-mortem party brea ks up only in the very bleary dawn.

Excerpted from “La Prima Assoluta ”

By Vera Stravinsky Berlin, 17/9/64

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 17

B THE BLO SPOTLIGHT

ON

PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT

The production department at an opera company is a crucial force behind each and every performance on stage, taking on the mammoth task of mounting the production and running it smoothly.

A long-standing axiom holds that while the artistic team is in charge of providing everything with a heartbeat onstage (singers and actors, orchestra members, even animals!), the production department is in charge of everything without one—the set, costumes, property elements, lighting instruments, and more, plus the designers and technicians who create and make them all function correctly and efficiently.

18 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

LO’s Production Department, headed by Technical and Production Director Anna Labykina, is a high-achieving group of professionals who move mountains (or sometimes build them, if the opera demands) to create magical operatic experiences—and who are all women. Whether an accident of timing or fate, it’s a fact that was not lost on them over the course of two group interviews this fall. “It’s becoming a lot less unusual to have a female technical director, or a female assistant technical director…but everyone at the same time? That’s the unusual thing,” says Ms. Labykina.

The backstage and production side of opera (and theater) have historically been a male-dominated sphere of technicians, carpenters, painters, engineers, designers and more. One study of 22 New York theaters’ seasons over the course of five years (2010–2015), Women Count, found that female set designers for productions ranged from a low of 22% to a high of 36%; lighting designers were overwhelming male, with women reaching a peak of only 16%. Locally, gender disparities in performing arts production are not quite as pronounced, though they persist. “Especially in the Boston community, there are a ton of really strong women freelancing in theater production, in all departments, so of course there’s an all-female production department in this city,” notes Katy Clanton, Production Coordinator.

From the demands of intense days at the theater to overseeing a crew of more than 40 members (on average) during peak times, the BLO Production Department has developed a culture of hard work and pride, as well as a keen awareness of the needs of the team and adapting to each member’s strengths. “I’ve rewritten my job description every year I’ve been here,” says Jessica Johnson Brock, Production Operations Manager. “…It goes back to the structure of our department and the fact that we have prioritized remaining flexible.” And with the myriad changes that BLO’s move from the Shubert Theatre has brought, this adaptability has been key. The Company now operates in a model that is closer to a hybrid of a touring opera company—moving from venue

to venue with each show, with all the attendant complications and logistics—and a presenting opera company, bringing new productions from conception to performance.

The Production Department has grown accustomed to being geographically spread from BLO’s administrative office downtown, to its warehouse in Avon, MA, to the multiple rehearsal venues and the four performance theaters of the 2016/17 Season. “We essentially shift our entire functionality to mobile when we’re in production,” says Ms. Johnson Brock.

Communication is key, as is a strong team rapport. The department goes on staff team-building retreats once or twice each Season, tackling sumo wrestling on the beach or ice skating as a way to learn things about themselves and each other, build trust, and create community.

Much of the team currently in place was assembled by Bradley Vernatter, Production Director, who recently moved on to Opera Omaha and continues to consult for BLO in a part-time capacity. With his departure, Ms. Labykina assumed the position of Production and Technical Director, a job that she says, “doesn’t exist,” laughing. “I know of only one other company (Houston Grand Opera) that has this [combined] position currently,” she says. But Ms. Labykina, who has been at BLO since 2014 in the capacity of Technical Director, knows firsthand the advantages of having one person in the role, balancing artistic concerns with technical demands. For instance, the task of making decisions on creative team members (such as set, costume, and lighting designers) traditionally fell to the Production Director. Those designers then work most closely with the Technical Director throughout the process of realizing their visions onstage. In her new position, Ms. Labykina is ideally suited to see the process, and many others, from both sides.

This hunger for constant challenges—and triumphing over them—drives most, if not all, of the group. Lighting Designer Bailey Costa describes her own satisfaction with her work: “[I’m] trying to maintain the vision of the design, maintain the integrity of the design, and solve practical problems at the same time. I find balancing that interesting, and endlessly so.” Others echo her sense that her position is an ideal fit. “What makes me tick is puzzles,” says Ms. Johnson Brock. “I love when I find a problem before it becomes a problem, and fix it ahead of time. That is one of the most gratifying things for me.”

And working on the all-female team? It has some advantages, they say. “There’s a benefit to having women in leadership roles and other women around them,” says Ms. Costa. “…A lot of times we interact with crews who are all men, and a lot of times, just because they haven’t seen it, they don’t trust that we are coming from a place of experience that is equal to theirs.” With the department’s focus on creating a robust team, developing clear processes, and building trust, each of the women has learned to

UCTION D O R P O L B THE CORE NT CONSISTS OF: DEPARTME Anna Labykina Technical and Production Director Jessica Johnson Brock Production Operations Manager Katy Clanton Production Coordinator Lindsay Conrad Production Administration Assistant Alix Strasnick Assistant Technical Director Julia Noulin-Mérat Associate Producer Bailey Costa Lighting Director Lisa Charlotte Berg Props Master

“I am really proud that when it comes to our department [at BLO], it happened naturally. We didn’t set out to be an all-female team, but having one is worth celebrating.”

- JULIA NOULIN-MÉRAT, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

respect the others’ skills and judgment. “We’re all strong women with strong personalities, but that’s good in that we are able to be up front and honest with each other,” adds Production Administration Assistant, Lindsay Conrad.

The team’s longest-standing member, with five years at BLO, Julia Noulin-Mérat is also a scenic designer and works with companies across the country, so she has a uniquely wide view of the field.

“Our industry has become more self-aware in terms of the lack of gender parity,” says Ms. Noulin-Mérat. “I am really proud that when it comes to our department [at BLO], it happened naturally.

We didn’t set out to be an all-female team, but having one is worth celebrating.”

At the end of the day, they all know this moment, too, will pass.

Opera productions close; staff members move on to the next leg in their careers. Then it will be time to welcome new team members (male or female), adapt again, and begin dreaming up—and engineering—the next show.

Left: Lisa Charlotte Berg, Anna Labykina, Alix Strasnick, and Bailey Costa take a look at set renderings at the BLO warehouse in Avon, MA; From left to right, Lindsay Conrad, Katy Clanton, and Jessica Johnson Brock at the BLO administrative office; Above: BLO Associate Producer Julia Noulin-Mérat at OBERON in Cambridge.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 19

Aligning with our commitment to new works, BLO recently announced two upcoming World Premieres: The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare and Schoenberg in Hollywood.

Join us on the journey of creating an opera. Your contribution supports not only the performance you’ll see on stage, but also the creation of a timeless work of art that has the power to unite communities.

JOIN US IN SUPPORTING NEW WORKS

Visit us at BLO.org/give today to contribute to this great endeavor. You’ll be one of the first to receive new information and receive some amazing themed benefits in return: • Sit in with the design team • Attend a rehearsal • Attend an exclusive workshop

JEFF REEDER PHOTOGRAPHY

• Meet composer, Julian Grant

• Attend a Final Dress Rehearsal • Receive up-to-date information on the progress of the productions • Also receive BLO donor benefits that align with your giving amount in addition to these themed benefits

Composer Julian Grant and librettist Mark Campbell, center stage, taking a bow at the performance of selections of The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare, part of the OPERA America New Opera Showcase, January 2017.

BLO’S CODA CONTRIBUTORS

NICK GRANITO

v John Conklin (pages 5, 16) is an internationally-recognized set designer and dramaturg. He has designed sets on and off -Broadway, at the Kennedy Center and for opera companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Bastille Opera in Paris, the Royal Opera and the opera houses of Munich, Amsterdam, and Bologna, among many others.

Mr. Conklin is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School and has served as the Artistic Advisor to BLO since 2009. v Brian Kellow (page 8) has contributed articles to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, BBC Music Magazine, Opera, Travel & Leisure, Publishers Weekly, and other publications.

His most recent book, Can I Go Now?: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s First Superagent, was a New York Times Culture Best Seller and was named one of the Top Ten Arts Books of 2015

by Booklist and one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Pop Culture Books of the Year. Kellow’s 2011 biography, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and appeared on the Best of the Year lists published by The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Booklist and Entertainment Weekly. Other works include Ethel Merman: A Life, The Bennetts: An Acting Family, and Can’t Help Singing: The Life of Eileen Farrell.

20 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017

v Laura Stanfield Prichard (page 12) is a Visiting Researcher in Music and Dance History at Harvard University and regular contributor to the Boston Musical Intelligencer. After teaching and performing in San Francisco for ten years, she is now a popular pre-concert speaker and university lecturer in the Boston (principal speaker for Boston Baroque and Berkshire Choral International). She was an Assistant Director for the SF Symphony Chorus under Vance George’s direction, and is a regular speaker/ writer for the Chicago Symphony, New World Symphony, SF Symphony, SF Opera, and Merola Program. v Harlow Robinson (page 2) is an author, lecturer and Matthews Distinguished Professor of History at Northeastern University.

His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. He has lectured for The Boston Symphony, The New York Philharmonic, Boston Lyric Opera, Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center, and has contributed essays and reviews to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Opera News, Symphony, Stagebill and other publications.

Treble Elinor Broadman as Kriltsov’s Daughter and mezzosoprano Christine Abraham as Katerina Maslova in the BLO presentation of Tod Machover’s Resurrection, November 2001 at the Shubert Theatre.

CURTAINS

A LOOK BACK AT BLO’S PAST PRODUCTIONS

RICHARD FELDMAN | BLO ARCHIVES © 2001

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA SPRING 2017 | 21

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Coda

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noun \ co·da \ ‘ko¯-d \ symbol O \ (1) a concluding musical section that is formally distinct from the main structure (2) something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize and usually has its own interest.

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