P ER F O RM A N CE
PHOTOS FROM PRODUCTIONS OF THE CHAMBER OPERA “AS ONE” - COMMISSIONED, DEVELOPED, AND PRODUCED BY AOP; PHOTO BY SUZANNE VINNIK
Chautauqua Opera’s production of As One.
Beyond Binary
We’ve all gone through the adolescent awkwardness of a changing body suddenly not feeling like our own anymore. But what if it never has?
“A
s One was already on our radar, but we’d originally planned to do an opera with a larger cast in 2020,” says Opera Maine executive director Caroline Musica Koelker. Then the pandemic hit and it became the perfect time for Opera Maine’s Studio Artist Program to do a 75-minute chamber opera with only two singers.” Two singers who play the same character—often at the same time—as she comes to terms with her identity as a transgender woman. In Opera Maine’s production July 16 and 18 at Westbrook Performing Arts Center, the role of Hannah Before will be sung by baritone Jack Canfield and Hannah After by mezzo-soprano Heather Jones. “There were only about four or five notes that they really have in common, but they’re in different parts of their registers,” composer Laura Kaminsky observes in a Stingray Music PausePlay interview. “It’s the high part for the baritone and the lowest part for the mezzo.
B Y GWEN THOMPSON
To try to honor what those voices do in that range but have them together so that they don’t sound like one of them’s straining and the other one’s gasping for breath was a fun challenge.”
“There’s nothing to hide behind—no powdered wigs or gods and fairies.” –Richard Gammon Instrumental accompaniment will be supplied by a string quartet drawn from Portland-based Palaver Strings. Seated onstage, the quartet “often portrays another character or another facet of Hannah, becoming part of her emotional and psychological landscape,” says Opera Maine Studio Artist director Richard Gammon (left). “We’re not worried about the string quartet [as opposed to wind instruments] producing aerosols.” But even with official distancing restrictions lifted, the singers’ own comfort lev-
els with proximity onstage need to be considered. “Spacing works to tell the story— at least right now in my head—with them not being in close physical contact,” Gammon says. COVID aside, As One is “one of the stricter pieces I’ve worked on with production requirements. In opera you’re given guidelines by the music. There’s almost too much freedom in straight theatre. I find if I’m given a really strong structure, I feel more free if I don’t fight it, so I tend to work in opera a lot.” Gammon says the Westbrook Performing Arts Center is “the best technically equipped space the Opera Maine Studio Artists have ever performed in.” And threetime Tony nominee Christopher Akerlind will be designing the set and lighting. But “we’ve never used any amplification unless it’s specifically asked for by the composer. We’ve never amplified singers, so we’re not going to amplify at all.” Central to the multi-media production are projections created by co-librettist (with Mark Campbell) and filmmaker Kimberly Reed, who made her mark with the awardwinning documentary Prodigal Sons, about SUMMERGUIDE 2021 159