PIONEERING A VISION

BY MARK TIARKS

IN THE EARLY 1960S, Robert L. Larsen faced an important decision. The Iowa native and Simpson College graduate had been offered an associate conductor job at the Metropolitan Opera, but he was also the chairman of Simpson’s music department, having just finished his doctorate in opera conducting and directing at Indiana University.

The department wasn’t large, but it had a growing opera program, thanks to his leadership, where he could emulate one of his mentors—Boris Goldovsky, who believed that opera should have dynamic theatrical values and often served as both conductor and stage director for his productions. The combination of teaching, which Larsen loved, and the possibility of founding an opera company in Iowa, where he could put his own artistic vision into play, won out over the lascivious charms of New York and the Met.

Larsen’s interest in opera began at age eight or nine, when he discovered the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts. “The music cast a mesmeric spell,” he later wrote, “but I was equally enamored by the creation of the scenes as they evolved in my mind. I dreamed of seeing it all on the stage.” His parents arranged for him to take piano lessons and, at age 10, took him to see his first live opera performance.

It was Carmen, given in Omaha on a tour by Fortune T. Gallo’s barnstorming, 100-member San Carlo Opera Company. Gallo was famous as the man who produced opera “for the masses and not the classes,” and his company included some first-rate talent, like Coe Glade as Carmen. “From the downbeat of the overture I was enthralled,” Larsen later recalled.

Having decided to stay in Iowa, Larsen’s first go at building a homegrown company was the Des Moines Civic Opera, a two-year, two-production effort during 1964 (La Traviata) and 1965 (La Bohème). He later wrote that the attempt taught him “everything about how not to organize a company and a board.”

During the mid-1960s Simpson College also developed plans for a new theater to serve its music and drama departments. It opened in 1971 and the theater’s size and unusual stage configuration gave Larsen the chance to rethink his concept for a professional company. It would now be a summer festival with a more wide-ranging repertory and a performance style based on acting that was believable from an “up close and personal” perspective.

The fledgling Des Moines Metropolitan Summer Festival of Opera, as it was first known, could rely on the Simpson College voice faculty for two very strong performers—soprano Carol Stuart and mezzo-soprano Anne Larson —and on a recent graduate, character tenor Douglas Duncan, then doing graduate work in Philadelphia, who was also interested in opera administration.

Over the fall and winter of 1972, Larsen and Duncan drew up plans for an eight-performance season the following summer, based on a $22,000 budget. It sounds laughably small now, but the budget still required a lot of fundraising, given the small seating capacity and the $3, $4, and $5 ticket prices.

Very little progress was made on fundraising until the spring of 1973, when Larsen and Duncan went to visit Doris and John Salsbury in Clear Lake. The Salsburys knew Duncan, who worked at a meat market they patronized when he was in high school, and Larsen, whose Simpson madrigal singers had performed at their family business. Larsen later recalled that John called the idea “pretty crazy” but left the decision to Doris, who agreed to contribute $5,000 to the venture.

“We thought we’d hung the moon,” Larsen wrote, and on the drive back to Indianola he and Duncan invested a small portion of their windfall in a round of beer for the local patrons in a tavern in Dows, Iowa, where they stopped to celebrate.

The company’s first season, in 1973, was its most iconoclastic, boasting four 20th century works, none of which would have been considered part of the core repertory at the time. The closest to it was Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, a one-act opera which had a 212-performance run on Broadway during 1947 and was frequently staged for several decades afterwards. The farthest away was undoubtedly Arthur Benjamin’s Prima Donna, a British one-act comedy from the same era that was paired with the Menotti. (It has since vanished from sight.)

Puccini’s near-operetta La Rondine was also part of the 1973 season and was very much a rarity at the time; Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring was a bit more familiar and more frequently performed, but still not exactly a meat-and-potatoes piece. The latter starred Duncan (pictured below) as Albert, repeating a role he had performed as a Simpson student in 1970. Everything was sung in English, a common practice at the time, especially with companies that emphasized theatrical values, since supertitles were a couple of decades away.

Larsen conducted and directed all the productions, as he was to do for the next 40 years. With large helpings of applied charm and persuasion, he and Duncan convinced 15 soloists, a 45-player orchestra, and 40 stalwarts who doubled as choristers and technical crew to work for very modest wages in getting the company off the ground. Almost all the other work was done by volunteers.

Intrigued by the rarity of the repertory and perhaps by the unusual-sounding

concept of opera in Iowa, the first season attracted widespread press attention, with coverage in Opera News and Opera Canada, as well as many newspapers. Emboldened by their success, Larsen, Duncan, and the fledgling board enthusiastically planned for a 1974 season, which would bring one major change to the company’s direction.

1974 continued the inaugural year’s three-production season, but with a new approach to repertory selection. Madama Butterfly, Falstaff, and Robert Ward’s The Crucible (based on Arthur Miller’s play of the same name and winner of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music) were the second season’s offerings. The blend of two works by major names from the 18th or 19th centuries and a 20th-century piece, often by a living American composer, became the company’s signature style over the next four decades. To be sure, DMMO wasn’t bound to the formula—some years had three operas from the Classic and Romantic eras—but it gave the company a reliable approach to balancing box office appeal with the cachet of new and unusual works.

Larsen’s penchant for conducting and directing every opera brought with it challenges—especially since they all opened within an eight-day period—and opportunities, especially for the early-career assistant conductors and assistant directors, who were given much more responsibility than they would get at other companies in the same functions.

Their contributions weren’t obvious to audience members, but many went on to have important careers, including Stewart Robertson, future music director of Glimmerglass Opera and artistic director of Florida Grand Opera; Dugg McDonough, who won the 2019 American Prize for Stage Directing and co-led the Des Moines apprentice program for 20 years; Victor DeRenzi, artistic director of Sarasota Opera; Raymond Harvey; Vincent Liotta; Bill Farlow; and more recently, Susanne Sheston, chorus master of the Santa Fe Opera; and David Neely, DMMO Music Director and Principal Conductor.

1975 saw the creation of the company’s Apprentice Artist Program, which brings 40 or so young singers to Indianola every summer for training and performance opportunities, including repertoire coachings; seminars in acting, diction, languages, audition techniques, stage combat, and vocal wellness; appearing as choristers and in supporting roles; understudying major roles; and performing in a special concert with the festival orchestra.

The most ambitious undertaking during the first decade was Verdi’s Otello in 1982; rarities included Puccini’s Il Trittico and Jules Massenet’s Manon. Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (subject of a complete filming by Iowa PBS), Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah were some of the high-profile 20th-century pieces.

In 1987 the company took to the road for the first season with the OPERA Iowa educational touring troupe. This youth initiative has been tremendously popular and has helped raise the visibility of the company and the art form statewide and even internationally through tours to Japan in 1992 and China in 2000. OPERA Iowa has performed operas written specifically for young people, like Sid the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing (above), as well as reworked standard operatic works such as The Barber of Seville and The Magic Flute. Each year the group presents nearly 100 performances for approximately 25,000 to 35,000 people each year. This program has provided fertile artistic ground for the commissioning of new operas including Stephen Paulus’s Harmoonia, Amy Tate Williams’s Rumplestiltskin and two works by Michael Patterson, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and A Dream Fulfilled: The Saga of George Washington Carver.

Three disparate events were especially noteworthy during DMMO’s second decade. The company gave its first and, until this year, only world premiere in 1986 with Lee Hoiby’s The Tempest (below), which opened during a torrential summer downpour. It received generally positive reviews, but Larsen, Duncan, and the board of directors clearly felt their resources were better deployed somewhere other than on commissioned world premieres.

The second was underground—a 1987 orchestra pit expansion. It allowed for a corresponding expansion of the repertory with pieces as The Flying Dutchman (1987,), Turandot (1988), Boris Godonov (1990), Der Rosenkavalier (1992) and Salome (2002) added to the mix.

The third was the sudden, early death of Doug Duncan in 1988 at age 37. Fortunately, Jerilee Mace (above), the company’s first paid, year-round employee, was on hand and she stepped into the executive director role, serving with great success through 2005. Mace started with the company in 1976 and her organizational ability led a hard-working and loyal staff, tireless in their efforts on behalf of DMMO. During her tenure, Jeri staked out the importance of DMMO’s educational programs, oversaw the establishment and significant growth of the endowment fund and ably guided the maverick company from one with an annual budget of $100,000 to a mature organization with an annual budget of almost $2,000,000 and eight yearround employees.

During the 1990s, crossover works that blend aspects of opera and music theater also started to appear, beginning with Sweeney Todd in 1995 and Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes’ Street Scene in 1999. That same year also brought the debut of supertitles at the Pote Theater for Il Trovatore, the foreign-language staging in the summer festival, and they were soon used for all operas.

The end of the decade also saw the return to Indianola of Michael Egel, an Algona, Iowa, native and Simpson College alum who had been pursuing a graduate degree in vocal performance at the University of Memphis. Although he was that rare operatic commodity, a tenor, Egel found himself increasingly attracted to administration and production work during his time in Tennessee, spending more time moving scenery, building props, and selling tickets than he did in the practice room. He began with DMMO as a summer intern in 1994 and returned to the company for several summers as company coordinator. He then joined the year-round staff in 1999 in a dual role as its artistic administrator and director of education, where he oversaw the Apprentice Artist Program, OPERA Iowa and a myriad of details related to the summer festival season.

Unusual repertory continued to provide many of the company’s most notable achievements as it entered the 21st century, starting with Norma in 2000. Bellini and bel canto may seem lightyears from the company’s traditional strengths, but it was a resounding triumph, with Caroline Whisnant and Gwendolyn Jones earning special praise as Norma and Adalgisa, respectively. The operas of Benjamin Britten have held a special place in DMMO history, from its first season’s Albert Herring to multiple A Midsummer Night’s Dream, its touchstone work. The large-scale tragedies of Peter Grimes (2013) and Billy Budd (2017) joined the repertory after the orchestra pit expansion, and in 2005 the company cracked the toughest nut of all, his Gloriana (below). Written for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation celebration in 1953, the opera focused on the troubled relationship between the first Elizabeth and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and its initial staging earned Britten some of his few critical brickbats. Not so in its DMMO presentation, with Opera News saying, “The season’s triumph was a stunning presentation of Britten’s Gloriana. . . Seen now at a distance of fifty years from its notoriously unsuccessful premiere, it really emerges as a piece of modern bel canto.”

The decade closed with another rarely performed and famously challenging work to stage successfully, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz. A pinnacle of German Romanticism, its folk storyorigins and extensive dialogue have kept most American companies at a respectful distance. Opera News offered high praise for the 2009 production, calling it “the artistic highlight of the season” and spotlighting Robert Larsen for “his stunning leadership of Der Freischütz, a score he obviously loves passionately.”

It was also Larsen’s last production as a conductor and stage director. In his mid-70s and in failing health, he stepped down from both roles and worked with Michael Egel, who was appointed artistic director in 2010, to plan the 2011 season. “It was not obvious to me—nor to Robert Larsen—that I would succeed him,” Egel told Opera News in a recent interview. But in fact he was the ideal candidate, bringing the perfect combination of respect for Larsen’s accomplishments, awareness that his predecessor would still be highly visible around the company, and knowledge that DMMO still had important artistic ground yet to cover.

Three areas of the repertory drew his attention. One was the dearth of works from the Slavic traditions, with Boris Godunov in 1990 the only prior representative. Two great Czech works joined the roster with Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa in 2015 and Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka in 2018; and two works sung in Russian with Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in 2012 (above) and The Queen of Spades in 2021. A fourth Russian opera is slated for 2023—Sergei Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges.

The roster of contemporary composers performed at DMMO hadn’t changed much over the years, focusing on those who had achieved their greatest successes in the 1950s and 1960s. Egel added newer voices with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (2014) and Three Decembers (2015), with Jonathan Dove’s Flight in 2018, and with Kristin Kuster’s A Thousand Acres this year, the first festival season production composed by a woman.

The most surprising repertory omission was at the other end of the timeline. Larsen was never particularly attracted to the Baroque repertory, although he professed to liking Monteverdi, so the company’s first foray into preMozart territory came in 2021, with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s outrageous comedy Platée.

The appointment of David Neely as music director and principal conductor in 2012 ensured dependable quality on the podium, and Egel developed relationships with several stage directors, most notably Kristine McIntyre and Chas Rader-Shieber, who bring varied and imaginative visual sensibilities to new productions, utilizing entirely original costume and scenic designs. As the final step in the DMMO leadership transition, “general director” was added to Egel’s title in 2013.

A major new initiative—the 2nd Stages Series—is an Egel hallmark. The series is one through which smaller-scale contemporary operas are staged in venues throughout the region in order to engage new audiences, develop community-based collaborations and explore current-day social issues. Soldier Songs (2017) and Glory Denied (2019) were collaborations with the Iowa National Guard and were staged at Camp Dodge, its home base. Both operas addressed the challenges faced by returning war veterans. DMMO will return to Camp Dodge in 2023. Other 2nd Stages productions have also been produced at venues with a specific relationship to their content. These include Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land (left), about a Midwestern farm family in the 1930s, at the Maytag Dairy Farms, Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetit!, in which Julia Child bakes a chocolate cake, at the Iowa Culinary Institute, and Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei, at the Science Center of Iowa.

“In terms of moving the company forward,” Egel says, “2018’s As One, which features two voices sharing the part of a sole transgender protagonist and was performed in partnership with Transformations Iowa and One Iowa, was a definite highlight.” Egel also cites Fellow Travelers as another move-the-needle event for which DMMO partnered with One Iowa and Capital City Pride for its 2021 production. “Hoyt Sherman Place was filled with so many new people.”

Iowa PBS has been just as much a pioneer in broadcasting opera as the Des Moines Metro Opera has been in producing it. After a feature on La Bohème in 1978, broadcasts of complete operas began a year later with the filming of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Resuming the tradition was a high priority for Egel. Working with Iowa PBS producer/editor Judy Blank, DMMO was back on the air in 2013 with Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, and the series has continued with the annual broadcasting of a less-familiar work, including Rossini’s Le Comte Ory (2014), Janáček’s Jenůfa (2015), Dvořák’s Rusalka (2018) and Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (2021).

Upper Midwest Emmy Awards for best arts and entertainment program have been bestowed on three of the opera telecasts: Massenet’s Manon (2016), Britten’s Billy Budd (2017) and Hoiby’s Bon Appétit! (2019).

The last decade has also featured a relentless cascade of good news on the financial front. To cite just three items, the operating budget and contributed income have doubled since 2012, the company’s Carnegie Library became the Lauridsen Opera

Center (above) through a $4 million renovation and expansion, and Egel has overseen a doubling of the company’s endowment through the current $15 million 50 NEXT campaign. See page 40.

The obvious question is, “What’s next, Michael Egel?”

“Having now completed my first decade from years 40 to 50, I’m thinking about the next decade between 50 and 60. We can imagine the future from a position of strength on all fronts. Sustaining our growth for the future was what the our last decade had to be about. We’ve achieved that,” Egel says. “I still feel that I have much more to say artistically to propel us forward into the future. There’s much fertile ground to explore.” That’s good news for the company and its patrons, given the successes of the past 10 years.

“There are important pieces that we’ve never done; in fact, I have a sizable list. It’s exciting to dream about company premieres such as Don Carlos, Pelléas et Mélisande and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. We’d like to come back to Wagner, to explore more Massenet and lesserknown works of Mozart. And I’d like to introduce Mr. Handel to our audiences. There are works by contemporary composers and the opportunity to feature works by diverse and underrepresented composers that we can bring to the spotlight. There will also be a continued emphasis on new pieces and possibly commissioning on a more frequent basis than in the past. And then at last, there are some repertory standards that should be revisited, works that have withstood the passage of time and hold up to the scrutiny of a modern lens.” Thoughts about theatrical venues are also very much on Egel’s mind. “We really have to examine the future of our performing home. We push our current theater to its limits every season. We need to be thinking about the possibilities, benefits and challenges of our now 52-year-old theatre, about the planning and resources it will take to support the current operation and to secure a future-focused venue for tomorrow. That is the crux of the next decade. I’m excited to tackle this challenge.”

So let’s all plan to meet again in 2032 to celebrate another glorious decade in the history of the Des Moines Metro Opera!

Mark Tiarks began his professional opera career as a stage manager and stage director in DMMO’s 1978 season. Since then he has been Artistic Administrator for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Producing Director of Court Theatre, General Director of Chicago Opera Theater, and Director of Planning and Marketing for the Santa Fe Opera.

We salute the pioneering members of the “Des Moines Metro Summer Festival of Opera” for their participation in the company’s 1973 inaugural season.

CO-FOUNDERS

Douglas Duncan and Robert L. Larsen

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Lawrence O. Ely, President; Don Easter, Vice-President; Clara Mann, Secretary; Doyle L. Woods, Treasurer Beth Black, Curtis Lamb, Robert L. Larsen, A.M. Rockwell

OPERA GUILD

Martha Alberding, Nancy Buxton, Lujean Cole, Luella Heskett, Mildred Lekberg, Gladys Shaw

SOLOISTS

Nadine Asher, Robert Benton, Leslie Brelsford, Cherie Carl, Douglas Duncan, Cheryl Hinman, Gregory Isaacs, Robert Jones, Edward Kingins, Anne Larson, Mary Joyce Lind, Carmen Peterson, Jean Reese, Reid Stringer, Carol Stuart, Kirk Stuart, Victoria Villamil

CHORISTERS, DANCERS, AND SUPERNUMERARIES

Albert Henry Adams II, Tom Arand, Lynne Arand, Lennie Belas, Sue Bloom, Richard Bowlsby, Linda Brown, Virginia Cotta, Barry Crees, Mark Fuller, Marla German, Peg Golden, Richard Harper, Cary Hartin, Cherie Horel, Steve Isaacs, Roberta Kerr, Ann Kuyper, Don Mariano, Diane McLain, Cindy Melson, Lu Ann Mitchell, Bill Nelson, Gayletha Nichols, Nita Ott, Michael Patterson, Frank Patterson, Marilyn Pierce, Jane Poston, Beth Reed, Judd Reed, Janet Reese, Tom Roberts, Cherie Runciman, Shirley Starr, Peggy Strauel, Reid Stringer, John Strovers, Kirk Stuart, Kathy Symons, Timothy Thomas, John Thomson, Robbin Williams, Caryn Wilson, Debbie Wilson, Sue Wiser, Waller Wiser, Kent Wood

ORCHESTRA

Bob Allen, Karl Bargen, James Brauninger, Eve Brauninger, Christine Carlsten, Sally Cline, Darwin Dasher, Bruce Degen, Toby deLaubenfels, Ruth Dreier, Gaile Gallatin, Richard Gerstenberger, Julie Graham, Mary Jo Green, Barbara Haines, John Hancock, Craig Hancock, Betty Hendrickson, Edwin Holcomb, April Kaskey, Gene Kubli, Rebecca Landwehr, Jay Light, James Luke, David Majors, Cindy Melson, Anita Michick, Sandra Moore, Beth Munsen, Bill Nelson, Elizabeth Paquette, Mark Rasko, Martha Robbins, Marcia Romback, Florence Roskamp, Jill Rowley, Barbara Smart, Connie Solomon, Jacquelyn Stanek, Pat Stephenson, Steve Swenson, Kathy Worster, Lynnea Young