Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The birth of an opera: the libretto workshop

As a vocal coach at the Crane School of Music, I've been fortunate to be involved in the Pellicciotti Opera Composition Prize, which fosters the development and creation of new American opera. Every four years, the prize allows us to commission and produce a new operatic work for our main stage, giving students and faculty the opportunity to participate in every step of the creative process. New American works have been flourishing lately, usually under the patronage of major regional and national professional companies, and it is somewhat unusual for a music school to be able to contribute to the repertoire in such a significant way.


In this post, I thought I'd write about a step in the process with which I was unfamiliar, but that I found to be absolutely fascinating: the libretto workshop and reading.

The winner of the second edition of the Pellicciotti Prize is the amazing Tom Cipullo, with his opera Mayo. Cipullo also wrote the libretto for the new work, which tells of America’s tragic infatuation with eugenics (according to Wikipedia "a practice that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population") in the early 20th century. Based on a true story, the opera follows the life of Mayo Buckner, who was committed to the Iowa Home for Feeble-Minded Children at the age of eight, and forged a life of quiet dignity and meaning while living there for the next 60 years.

In February, as part of the development of the work, we organized a libretto workshop: two days of table readings with a group of actors, culminating in a public performance of the libretto (no music, just straight theater) and a moderated audience feedback session at Opera America in New York City. Dramaturg Cori Ellison and director Beth Greenberg were leading the rehearsals along with Tom Cipullo. Music Director Kirk Severtson and I were also present during the whole process.
The workshop was structured as follows:
  • Two 3-hour rehearsals (table reading)
  • A public performance of the libretto
  • A moderated feedback session
It was absolutely fascinating to witness this text come to life! Unusually, Tom Cipullo is both the librettist and composer for the piece. This solves some of the problems that teams of librettists and composers might typically encounter (for instance, this way "everybody" is automatically on the same page), but it also presents some challenges, since the creator is not afforded the kind of back-and-forth discussion that can be very beneficial and fruitful.

Table reading
Table reading

The actors were all theater actors, not singers, and not particularly involved in the operatic world. This yielded some very interesting remarks, and discoveries (I should also point that each actor played multiple parts, and that one actor was always assigned to read all the stage directions).
  •  One topic that kept coming back was the difficulty of reading the "arias": as opera practitioners, we take arias for granted, but as a piece of theater, they are somewhat incongruous, since they tend to halt the natural flow of the plot, a fact that becomes particularly evident when the libretto is simply read. They also often contain quite a bit of text repetition. The solution offered by the director and dramaturg, was to treat them as pieces of poetry, or even Shakespearean  monologues (although those don't usually repeat text all that much).
  • At one point, a question was raised about the motivations of one of the characters. Tom's answer was that he would like to leave it somewhat ambiguous, to which the actor responded: "I don't know how to act "ambiguous", so I need to know where she is coming from. Otherwise, it won't read at all". This was quite interesting: Tom's intention was to leave this undecided for the audience, but that didn't mean that it could be left undecided for the actor herself.
  • Another aspect discussed was how the plot transitioned from scene to scene and from one act to the next. The story covers about 50 years, and given this span, it is important that the events depicted related to each other in a coherent way, without creating false causal links. Something that might be clear in the librettist's mind, might not come across as clearly to the audience.
  • The power of music: on more than one occasion, the fact the music "will flesh this out" was brought up. While the libretto is a functional piece of theater of its own, it also will nourish the music for the piece, and in turn, flourish with it.
The performance itself took place at Opera America, in Scorca Hall, in front of an invited audience of about 40. The actors were sitting next to each other on stage in front of music stands, and would rise up when their character was in the scene.

Audience in Scorca Hall, Opera America
Performance in Scorca Hall, Opera America

I was in awe of the actors, who, in a very short time, were able to deliver such nuanced renditions of their characters, and to also incorporate comments from Cori, Beth and Tom. They had no prior knowledge of the story, the plot, or the background, and yet the performance was absolutely convincing and touching. To be able to do this with 6 hours of rehearsal over a day and a half was very impressive. I mentioned this to one of them after the performance, and she simply answered: "We do these kinds of readings all the time, sometimes with no rehearsal at all. We're used to it". I wonder if this is the equivalent of sight-reading for us musicians...

After the performance, Cori Ellison led the audience through a moderated feedback session. Cori, Beth Greenberg and Tom Cipullo were on stage to receive the audience's comments and answer questions. Cori used Liz Lerman's critical response process for this, which is comprised of four parts:
  1. Statement of meaning: audience members express what was meaningful to them, what "got" to them in the piece. These should be specific, and positive comments, such as "I loved it when...", or "I was moved by...".
  2. Questions from the librettist to the audience: the writer asks, the audience responds, and a dialogue ensues. For instance: "Was it clear to you that...?", "what did you think of...?".
  3.  Questions from the group to the librettist: sometimes what is clear to the librettist is not clear for the audience, and some points of the plot might need clarification. This is helpful for the composer/librettist in order to gain a different perspective than his own on the work.
  4. Opinions: audience members can express opinions about any aspect of the work BUT, they have to ask the writer whether he/she would like to hear them. Sometimes, hearing an opinion might influence the piece too much, or inadvertently push it in a direction that wasn't the writer's initial intent. The audience member would ask: "I have an opinion about such and such, would you like to hear it?". In our case, Tom was very willing to hear these.
The session proved to be very lively and engaging. Almost everyone in attendance contributed to a very meaningful and interesting discussion about all aspects of what they heard: from the importance of telling this particular story, the clarity of the plot, and definition of characters, to the placement of the intermission, and the overall dramatic effect of the work.

Moderated feedback session

I realize I haven't said much about the actual story: I simply don't want to give anything away about Tom Cipullo's telling of it. However you can read about Mayo Buckner here.

The next step in the process will be a music workshop of the whole piece, sometime in January 2018. Stay tuned for a blog post about that! The premiere of Mayo will take place in November 2018, at the Crane School of Music, in Potsdam, NY. You can visit the Pellicciotti Facebook page, to follow along with the project.

--François