Mark’s previous works, Little Women and Lysistrata, are both adaptations of existing works. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with in this work, where it appears he’ll be creating something out of whole cloth, to say nothing of the ambitious and potentially controversial subject matter.

I’m already in danger of this becoming a Mark Adamo fan site, but I must congratulate my friend, and share this major announcement here. More information is buried in this press release (pdf) from San Francisco Opera, and in time, you’ll surely see more about this on Mark’s own site.

The press release also contains welcome news of commissions for Jennifer Higdon and Christopher Theofanidis, both of whom I admire greatly.

With this site, Mark joins the world of Composers Who Blog, and there are already a number of intresting posts about the Israel première of Little Women and many other topics. I’ve known Mark for almost 25 years, and if anyone ought to be blogging, it is he. Mark is well known as a composer, particularly of opera, but he is also a wonderful writer (with a wicked sense of humor, by the way). I’m looking forward to his writings on opera and theater.

Also of interest is a trove of information on the operas Little Women and Lysistrata as well as his gleaming Harp Concerto and several choral works.

Congratulations, and welcome, Mark!

Mordake is a very beautiful work, both musically and visually, performed most courageously by the amazing John Duykers. It’s very difficult to describe, so I’ll just tersely say that it’s a one-man show about a guy with two faces.

The visual element is a brilliant, dynamic video background, similar to the one used for Berkeley Opera’s Bluebeard’s Castle, described earlier. It is full of surprises but any scent of gimmicky is trumped by Duykers’ performance, which never loses focus. Erling’s music has a harmonic sense that is personal and unique without sacrificing beauty or transparency. The synthesizer-based score is full of timbral surprises.

Anyone in the Bay Area with the slightest interest in music theater should try to see this. Here are details on how to do that.

Here’s the segment containing my favorite part, known to people familiar with the piece as “The Seventh Door”. It’s basically the denouement, where we find out what Bluebeard’s been trying to prevent Judit from discovering. Below is the corresponding excerpt from my own translation of the libretto, mentioned in the previous post.

		BLUEBEARD
See them.
There are all of my late wives.
See my former wives.
See whom I loved.

		JUDIT
They’re alive.  They’re alive in here!

	(The three former wives enter through the seventh door,
	glorious and laden with crowns and jewels. One after
	the other, their faces pale, they proudly take their
	places opposite Bluebeard, who dips to his knees.)

		BLUEBEARD
	(With his arms outstretched as if he were dreaming.)
They’re beautiful. Beautiful.
Beautiful flowers.
They always were, and they still live.
It was they who collected my many treasures.
It was they who tended my garden.
It was they who made my empire grow.
All of it belongs to them.
All of it. All of it.

		JUDIT
	(Standing among the former wives as the fourth,
	doubled over and afraid.)
How beautiful they are. How magnificent.
I am bedraggled and worn.

		BLUEBEARD
	(Stands. Whispering.)
The first one I found at dawn,
In the beautiful, red-smelling dawn.
Every dawn belongs to her now.
Hers is the fine, red robe.
Hers is the silver crown.
Every dawn belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The first wife goes back.)

		BLUEBEARD
The second one I found at noon.
Speechless, flaming, golden noon.
Every noon belongs to her now.
Hers is the heavy robe of fire.
Hers is the golden crown.
Every noon belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The second wife goes back.)

		BLUEBEARD
The third one I found at evening.
Peaceful, languid, dusky evening.
Every evening belongs to her now.
Hers is the brown robe of sorrow.
Every evening belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The third wife goes back.  Bluebeard stops in front of
	Judit, and they face each other for a long time.  The
	fourth door slowly closes.)

		BLUEBEARD
The fourth I found at night.

		JUDIT
Bluebeard, stop! Stop!

		BLUEBEARD
Starlit, black night.

		JUDIT
Stop.  Stop. I’m here still!

For the Bartók, I have the privilege of working with the cast of two singers on the nuts and bolts of Hungarian pronunciation, and I’m particularly pleased that Berkeley Opera is using my translation of the libretto for the English supertitles.

I began working on the translation recently after seeing a production that used an old singing translation that was at times incomprehensible, and at times just plain silly. My goal was to stick to the exact meanings line for line in the libretto by Béla Balázs, without sacrificing natural, comprehensible English. It is, in fact, a very tight libretto in a strict eight-syllable-per-line form borrowed from Hungarian folk poetry, and the translations I’ve seen are inappropriately verbose and formal. I hope that audiences will be able to follow the meanings of the words without being distracted by the words themselves.

This Bluebeard will feature the use of a unique, projected image background by Naomie Kremer. It’s difficult to describe here, but it’s very effective, to say nothing of just plain beautiful.

Performances are:

• Saturday, May 3, 8:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, May 7, 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, May 9, 8:00 p.m.
• Sunday, May 11, 2:00 p.m.

At Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College Avenue (at Derby), Berkeley.

More details are on Berkeley Opera’s web site.

			BLUEBEARD
Well, we’re here.  This is my castle.

			JUDIT
This is your castle?  Kinda creepy.

			BLUEBEARD
Yeah.  You sure you want to come in here?

			JUDIT
Yeah.

			BLUEBEARD
Well, okay then.

			JUDIT
So, like, what’s with the seven doors?

			BLUEBEARD
You don't want to know.

			JUDIT
Open them up.

			BLUEBEARD
Um, I don't think so.

			JUDIT
Aw, come on.  Just one?

			BLUEBEARD
Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you.

More to come.

As someone with a new opera idea in the pipeline, I’m keenly interested this topic and Karren was kind enough to let me read an advance copy of the book. I’m not a critic, so I’m unable to offer an in-depth review, but I thought I should at least call readers’ attention to it.

The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas uses Karren’s own project as a frame of reference throughout, but she also wisely sought input from other professionals in the field, including the likes of Placido Domingo, Mark Adamo, Libby Larsen and Ned Rorem. Every aspect of making a new opera is discussed: collaboration, finding an audience, finding a commission, working with singers, working with directors, critics and more.

As far as my own project is concerned (it’s a secret), reading this book has given me a good picture of the various ways to pursue it, and what to expect if and when I do. My favorite chapter title: “Hubris, Vanity, Rejection”.

What’s really fun about this book is the structure. Karren’s own opera is a result of many years studying the work of Gertrude Stein, and the book is organized in what might be described as a “cubist” way. In a sense, it’s really two books in one: one is about her own background leading up to the creation of her opera and its production, and the other is a more general look at the world of American opera. But, the two books are presented simultaneously in layers.

Any composer or writer who is not already intimate with the vagaries of the American opera world would surely learn something from this book, but also the tone of the book is light and sharp, and so I imagine it would be enjoyable for anyone who is peripherally interested in the topic. The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is not yet in stores, but it’s available now from the publisher’s web site.

Whether or not you have any interest at all in the harp as an intstrument, this is a worthwhile thing to read. It’s a great example of how a smart composer starts a new project by asking questions. Mark’s approach here reminds me of thorough advance work he puts into his stage works. (More on that here.)

1.) Since the harp is, by design, more impressive spelling out harmony than theme—but I want a theme with a real authority on which to organize the piece—can I come up with a melody that’s all harmony and all line at the same time, and yet is still versatile enough to express whatever I need?

2.) Are there unusual technical or timbral resources the harp can muster that are theatrical (read: loud) enough to hold their own in an orchestral texture? Can I design a movement to ask a question to which these timbres would be the answer?

3.) And how do I make this piece not just an orchestra score which happens to have a very large harp part, but a true concerto: one which sounds as if all of its gestures and materials are generated by the soloist? In other words, how do I keep the orchestra, with its limitless melodic potential, from upstaging the harp?

Mark’s Four Angels will receive its premiere at the Kennedy Center on June 7 – 9, 2007 performed by Dotian Levalier and the National Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor.

This is a beautiful and admirable work, and it’s the first of John Adams’ theatrical works that actually “works”. I think the reason must be that this is the first one that has, you know, a plot. The music is rich and colorful, and chock full of delicious Adamsy goodness. The music is so effective, and yes, dramatic, that I wasn’t nearly as irritated by Peter Sellars’ staging as I would have been otherwise. Much has been made, with good reason, of Adams’ musical depiction of the main character’s transformation into a tree, which occurs four times in the opera. In each case, the context is different, and Adams paints each transformation in a different way, the final one being a literally spectacular payoff at the very end of the piece.

Painting. This is what Adams is extraordinarily good at in his operas. The final tree transformation joins the hair-raising arrival of Air Force One in Nixon in China, The “gymnopedie” depicting Klinghoffer’s slow-motion descent in The Death of Klinghoffer and the final moment of Doctor Atomic as great examples of how Adams’ can create music that, when combined with staging and lighting, tells a story that words cannot.

Again, this was a “semi-staged” production. About a third of the stage in Davies Symphony Hall was dedicated to staging, with a platform cleverly placed above the orchestra for some of the action. The staging used an interesting, and sometimes very moving, convention of having a dancer shadow each of the characters. Unfortunately, there are several long orchestral and choral passages that were, I guess, unstageable. During these passages we’d have the singers standing or sitting motionless and the dancers doing very little. It’s still unclear to me what the significance of some of these passages is in terms of the storytelling.

A Flowering Tree also makes use of a narrator, which can be problematic when it comes to staging. What do the characters do while the narrator is singing? Like Doctor Atomic, whose libretto was slapped together from “found materials”, this suggests some sort of fear of having to actually write for the characters, which I find puzzling and disappointing. But in this case, Sellars handled this fairly well, I thought. I guess there was so little happening anyway, so the narrator fit in somewhat naturally.

The use of a narrator and the many how-on-Earth-do-I-stage-this moments had me thinking that this might be a better oratorio than opera, but in the second act as the story unfolded I became increasingly convinced. Whereas Doctor Atomic had no plot to speak of, and we never heard from the characters in their own words, this piece has an appropriately simple plot. We understand what the characters want, and we’re routing for them. Given this foundation for the first time, Adams shows what he can do dramatically.

In classical circles, it’s OK, actually. As far as I know, I haven’t been judged negatively because there are musicals in my bio, but in my head at least, there’s the danger of that. (You’re judging me right now, aren’t you!)

But dealing with theater people has been a tricky dance. Actors tend to like my stuff, but they look at it kind of sidewise and treat it as an oddity. They don’t complain about how difficult it is, but they do make a topic of it. In one case I was turned down by a playwright because my music wasn’t “tuneful” enough. He knew what he wanted and had a valid point, although I was baffled at the time. I think my music is very lyrical and reasonably easy. But what do I know? I can take 4-part dictation, so my idea of easy has nothing to do with it. I’m still learning on that front.

Here’s the problem: Most people equate “musical theater” with “Broadway”. I do not. Broadway has turned into something that I’m not particularly interested in being a part of. There’s still a place for Sondheim there, because he’s Sondheim. Put someone else’s name on Passion or Sunday in the Park With George, and they’ll show you the door pretty quickly.

So where do I fit in? No really, I’m asking.

Given the nomenclature available to us now, I have two choices: it’s a “musical” or an “opera”. Eros At Breakfast doesn’t quite fit the average person’s idea of either of these. It’s clearly not an opera, because, for one thing, it’s not all sung. It’s written with actors in mind, not singers. Singing actors, yes, but actors. That’s why I call it a musical.

But the music is conceived much in the way of an opera. It’s not lead-sheet tunes to be scored for reeds, bass and drums. The accompaniment helps tell the story; the composition is often driven by counterpoint, and not by chord progressions. Some songs don’t end, because the character is interrupted, so there’s a contiguous feel similar to most contemporary operas.

So, no, this isn’t intended for Broadway, although of course I would be delighted. Maybe someday Broadway will go back to being about theater more than it’s about money. For now, I can think of numerous regional and local theater companies around the country that have done very well with this sort of thing.

(But they’ll still think it’s weird.)