TOOLKIT
1
WELCOME!
The A.R.T. is thrilled to welcome you to Crossing, a world premiere opera from rising modern classical music star (and recent Harvard College grad), Matthew Aucoin. Inspired by the diary Walt Whitman kept as a nurse during the Civil War, Crossing explores how the individual experiences of soldiers are remembered and told. As Whitman listens to wounded veterans share their memories and messages, he forges a bond with a soldier who forces him to examine his own role as writer and poet. In the following Toolkit, we’ll provide a brief intro to modern opera, the myriad musical influences of Crossing, and a dive into what makes its central subject– Walt Whitman– such a special and contemporary figure to explore. As always, thank you for joining us at the theater; we hope to see you again soon!
–A.R.T. Education & Community Programs
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ON CROSSING 4 CROSSING 101 WALT WHITMAN: NURSE, FRIEND, POET
6 10
WHO’S WHO IN CROSSING 16
Crossing Toolkit Supervising Editor Brendan Shea Editor Brenna Nicely Contributors Brenna Nicely, Julia Bumke, Matthew Aucoin, Drew Faust
Thank you for participating in the A.R.T. Education Experience! If you have questions about using this Toolkit in your class, or to schedule an A.R.T. teaching artist to help facilitate Toolkit materials in your classroom, e-mail the A.R.T. Education and Community Programs department at: education@amrep.org 617.496.2000 x8834
3
ON CROSSING BY MATTHEW AUCOIN
The following, in which composer Matthew Aucoin explains his relationship to opera and to Walt Whitman, is an excerpt from the A.R.T.’s Spring 2015 Guide. Visit americanrepertorytheater.org for the full text of Aucoin’s article.
The act of setting a word to music is an act of “crossing” from one medium to another: the word’s bare form, dipped in the bath of music, becomes a new entity, neither language nor music but an independent substance with new properties and powers. Language, when it reaches us through music...becomes a sensual presence, a graspable form...it is this unique capacity to reconcile and unite the senses that draws me to opera. It drew Walt Whitman to opera, too. “But for the opera…I could never have written Leaves of Grass,” he reminisced late in life. It’s perhaps surprising that the quintessential American poet, the writer whose signature bard-call is a “barbaric yawp” rather than a refined warble, spent his formative years...absorbing the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, and the young Verdi. I share Whitman’s opinion that the essence of opera has nothing to do with the stuffy salons and social one-upmanship of the wealthy Americans who imported it to New York in the 19th century: opera is a primal union of animal longing, as expressed in sound, and human meaning, as expressed in language. Indeed, Whitman considered opera the pinnacle of human expression, something “beyond” the powers of language alone. And in his best poems, Whitman operates like an opera composer: he carries the English language, whose laws we thought we knew, into a new musical landscape...
4
Indeed, Whitman considered opera the pinnacle of human expression, something “beyond” the powers of language alone. And in his best poems, Whitman operates like an opera composer: he carries the English language, whose laws we thought we knew, into a new musical landscape... “What is it, then, between us?” With this resonant question at the climax of [his poem] “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman asks many things at once: what is his relationship to his contemporaries, his fellow men and women? What is his relationship to you, the reader...whenever and wherever you may be reading his poem? And what is the relationship between the contradictory elements of his own self? The phrase “between us” itself has a double meaning: what is the relationship between us, and what stands between us, keeping us apart? In the moment that Whitman asks this question, he is in a state of unknowing; he wants to know, and needs to know. Crossing emerges out of my sense that Whitman wrote his poetry out of need – that his poetry is not, or is not exclusively, a vigorous assertion of what he is...but rather the expression of a yearning to be what he is not, or to reconcile opposing aspects of his identity...into one capacious presence. The person/persona/personality “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs” is the living product of this need.
So, in Crossing, the Walt Whitman who walks the stage is not that familiar poetic persona. Rather, this is Whitman as I imagine he might have been to himself, starting from a midlife crisis which prompts his radical, heroic decision to drop everything and volunteer in the war hospitals. Naturally, this Whitman is a fictional creation. Crossing is a musical fantasia which imagines and realizes the many forces – generosity, insecurity, longing, selflessness, bravery, unfulfilled sexual desire, a need to escape his own life, a boundless kindness – that caused a man named Walter Whitman, Jr. to forge an indelible embodiment of the American spirit in his poetry. • Matthew Aucoin is the writer and composer of Crossing. DISCUSS:
• Why do Whitman and Aucoin value opera as a means of “human expression?” • Aucoin names several characteristics of the “American spirit” that Whitman expresses through his art. What, to you, makes up the American spirit? And which artists capture it best?
5
CROSSING 101 WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE? In its truest form, opera combines the best elements of a music concert and musical theater: compelling music, captivating performers, and, most importantly, engaging visual and aural storytelling. Unlike most musicals, operas are often written so that everything–even dialogue–is sung, so that the audience is swept up in the music from start to finish.
...but what is this one like? Crossing expresses its emotionally dense subject matter through lush, complex and, at times, challenging musical compositions. At its core, Crossing is a one-act opera composed primarily for tenor, baritone, and bass voices with a soprano soloist. The following two sound clips show two different ways that Aucoin tells his opera’s story: one is a choral piece, written for 12 male voices, and the other is a male solo that starts with brief sung dialogue. Hear how Aucoin plays with the rhythms of his characters’ speech: when does their music sound conversational; when does it sound like a song? When the singers’ lines overlap in the choral piece, how does that change the storytelling? Take note of how Aucoin tells story through both his lyrics and the music itself: how does the music make you feel, and how do these feelings change from the beginning to the end of each piece?
FREDDIE STOWERS
6
FINAL CHORUS
WHO DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
Matthew Aucoin is one of the standouts in a generation of contemporary classical composers who are reinvigorating opera by bringing in fresh ideas from other musical genres. Aucoin counts jazz, classical, and even indie rock music among his influences, and the following artists have all informed his work on Crossing as both a composer and a librettist.
THOMAS ADÈS
“Concentric Orbits” is a concerto written for a solo violinist and a chamber orchestra that premiered by Adès in 2005. The first movement, called “I. Rings,” uses musical repetition and contrasting tempos, and often has two musicians playing at different speeds simultaneously. Compare this with how the vocal and instrumental lines intersect in Crossing.
CONCENTRIC ORBITS: I. RINGS 7
Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a two-act opera about how a famous ladies’ man meets his match. In the “Champagne Aria,” Don Giovanni energetically plans a party at his palace. His excitement is immediately apparent in how he sings, moving quickly between notes and using the upper- and lower-most notes in his vocal range. It’s an aria that takes enormous control and skill. Compare Giovanni’s emotionality to Freddie Stowers’s solo from Crossing.
W. A. MOZART
DON GIOVANNI: “CHAMPAGNE ARIA” Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote The Nose when he was only 22 years old. Now fully integrated into the classical canon, the opera’s brash, atonal score and plot adapted from the bizarre stories of Gogol made a controversial debut in 1927.
THE NOSE: “CATHEDRAL SCENE”
SHOSTAKOVICH
RADIOHEAD JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE 8
Radiohead is a contemporary, fiveperson rock band from England. They count jazz among their influences; this is reflected in how their music is often improvisatory. Their music also relies on repetition, with musical patterns that grow and morph throughout instrumental sequences between sung verses. Radiohead songs are typically longer than the average rock single. Do you hear this type of rhythmic repetition in the Crossing excerpts?
Baltimore’s indie rock whiz kids Animal Collective toe the line between uncompromising sonic experimentation and popular accessibility. Their mercurial sound blends psychedelia, improvisation and pop-sensible hooks with an ironic sense of ritual (in both performance and song structure). Listen for how “Fireworks” balances the naive with the off-kilter; singalong with sound poetry.
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
FIREWORKS Duke Ellington was a prominent band leader, composer, and pianist in the 1920’s-70’s. Though often considered a jazz musician, he preferred to refer to his music “American Music”, a form beyond categorization.
SATIN DOLL
DUKE ELLINGTON
DISCUSS: • What instruments are most noticeable when you listen to each piece for the first time? Are the instruments’ parts repetitive, or do they have melodies that you could repeat back? • How does listening to these pieces make you feel? Do they tell as story or evoke specific emotions? • How do these pieces compare with one other, both across genres and within the same genre? Are there themes that you could pick out that relate to either Walt Whitman, the Civil War, or other elements of Crossing?
9
WALT WHITMAN: NURSE, FRIEND, POET WHO WAS WALT? Walt Whitman is often regarded as one of America’s best nineteenth century poets, though his poetry never garnered substantial popularity during his lifetime. Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn in a time when the area was still dominated by farmland with strong family legacies, including his father’s own family farm. He always maintained a strong connection to his upbringing in New York and found the financial troubles that led to the loss of the family farm especially devastating. Despite Whitman’s limited formal education, he worked multiple jobs in his youth as a schoolteacher, reporter, editor, and publisher, mostly in Brooklyn. During the Civil War, Whitman’s brother George served in the Union Army. After his brother was injured in battle in 1862, Whitman made his first trip to an army hospital to care for him. After it was clear that his brother would recover, Whitman moved to Washington and began volunteering his time at the many hospitals in the area until the end of the War in 1865. Although Whitman suffered a near psychological breakdown after the War and assassination of President Lincoln, he referred to his time caring for the wounded as the most rewarding period of his life. Following a serious stroke in 1873, Whitman moved into his brother’s home in Camden, New Jersey where he lived until his death in 1892.
10
From This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust: “Whitman became a tireless hospital visitor, spending seven or eight hours each day ministering to patients, chiefly in Washington, D.C., where almost fifty thousand men lay sick and wounded. His efforts were less medical than consolatory; he provided rice puddings, small amounts of spending money, stamped envelopes and stationery, peaches, apples, oranges, horseradishes, undershirts, socks, soap, towels, oysters, jellies, horehound candy - and love, comfort, and ‘cheer.’ And he himself wrote hundreds of letters - often, he reported, more than a dozen a day - for soldiers unable to do this for themselves. After suffering with his family the torments of uncertainty about George’s fate, Whitman understood well the importance of communication between battle and home front. ‘I do a good deal of this,’ he wrote in the New York Times, ‘writing all kinds, including love letters... I always encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them.’ He often wrote, too, to inform relatives of soldiers’ deaths... Whitman introduced no innovations to the genre of the condolence letter. Instead he provided families with the information they expected and needed.” (123-124)
11
WHO CAN TELL SUCH A STORY? Whitman felt a responsibility to tell the stories of the soldiers he met in the
hospitals during the Civil War. He found great joy in comforting the ailing soldiers and feared that these men would be forgotten without his help. In his letter-writing duties and journal-keeping, he found an outlet for the lifelong desire he felt to connect and serve humanity through his writing. Memoranda During the War is based on a collection of diary entries, notes, letters, and jottings that Whitman penned during his time as a volunteer in Washington’s army hospitals. Publishers thought that telling the realistically grim stories of the soldiers was an unsavory way to depict the War and did not want to take a risk on Whitman, who was known for rubbing people the wrong way with his radical style and content. It took Whitman ten years after the War had ended to self-publish Memoranda in 1875. Memoranda During the War is Walt Whitman’s testament to both the terrors and heroism of the Civil War.
12
EXCERPTS FROM MEMORANDA DURING THE WAR... “The bulk of the Army, to me, develop’d, transcended, in personal qualities — and, radically, in moral ones — all that the most enthusiastic Democratic-Republican ever fancied, idealized in loftiest dreams. And curious as it may seem, the War, to me, proved America and the Modern.”
amp, Hospital or C in n e th d n a imens of “Every now meet – spec I s g in e b re and there a terestedness in is d , ss e n li aps some unworld roism – perh e h d n a ty ri io or animal pu , or from Oh n ia n ia d In s ess unconsciou th the calmn ir b se o h w n o ended, and Tennessee – to have desc s m e se n e v atever of hea wing up, wh ro g l a u d ra change, whose g work-life or f o s e c n a st the circum education r small or no o , ip nge, sh rd a h or wer of a stra o p e th , it d inward that attende ss, fibre and e tn e e sw l a spiritu d.” also attende health have
“Those three years I considered the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson and reminiscence of my life.”
13
THE POETRY OF WAR Often named one of the definitive American Poets, Walt Whitman’s poetry reflects on his love of nature, democracy, and humanity. He believed in an ideal unity of mankind’s body and soul with the world, even when faced with death– this became a common theme of his poetry. Whitman’s experiences during the Civil War changed his life and his writing forever. Today, his poetry is some of the most evocative writing of the Civil War period. Whitman published his poetry collection Drum-Taps directly after the War, in 1865. DrumTaps can be considered the poetic equivalent to Memoranda. In these poems, Whitman often depicts himself and soldiers both as in the hospitals and on the battlefield. As Whitman never visited the front lines, all of his depictions are based on secondhand anecdotes and stories from the soldiers he interacted with. His poem “The Dresser,” later titled “The Wound-Dresser” vividly depicts the atmosphere of a Civil War hospital. DISCUSS: • Based on his descriptions in the following poem, how do you think Whitman felt about the soldiers? How did he think about the war?
“THE WOUND-DRESSER” (FINAL VERSION) AN old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war, But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself, To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains? O maidens and young men I love and that love me, What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust, In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge, Enter the captur’d works—yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade, Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys, (Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)
14
But in silence, in dreams' projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.) Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital, To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again. I onward go, I stop, With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you. On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush'd head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine, Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard, (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.) From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood, Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side-falling head, His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, And has not yet look'd on it. I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking, And the yellow-blue countenance see. I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. I am faithful, I do not give out, The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.) Thus in silence in dreams' projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, (Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
15
WHO’S WHO IN CROSSING CAST Performing in an opera requires a unique mixture of acting and vocal skill. The performers learn, memorize, and perform technically and physically demanding music while acting and moving at the same time. Because of all of these challenges, rehearsing an opera requires a demanding mix of both music and staging rehearsals. Since singing in an opera in a large opera house is so physically and vocally demanding, “vocal rest” days are required between every two or three performances. This is why operas are often not performed every day of the week like many plays and musicals.
Walt Whitman:
Rod Gilfry (Baritone)
John Wormley:
Alexander Lewis (Tenor)
Freddie Stowers:
Davone Tines (Bass Baritone)
Messenger:
Jennifer Zetlan (Soprano)
Ensemble: (Tenors) William Goforth, Frank Kelley, Miles Mykkanen, Daniel Neer, James Onstad, Greg Zavracky; (Baritones) Michael Kelly, David Kravitz, Matthew Patrick Morris, Edward Parks, Jorell Williams Dancers: Hiroki Ichinose, Jehbreal Jackson, Jenna Pollack, Waldean Nelson Covers: Edward Parks (Whitman), Miles Mykkanen (Wormley), Ian Pomerantz (Edward Parks), Sharin Apostolou (Messenger)
16
ORCHESTRA A Far Cry A Far Cry is a GRAMMY nominated, self-conducted orchestra founded in 2007 by a collective of 17 young professional musicians based in Boston. They have developed an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. Crossing marks the first time A Far Cry performs performs under a formal conductor.
1st Violin: Miki-Sophia Cloud (concertmaster), Annie Rabbat, Charles Dimmick 2nd Violin: Liesl Doty, Megumi Stohs Lewis, Andrew Eng Viola: Jason Fisher, Sarah Darling, Amelia Hollander-Ames Cello: Michael Unterman, Jacques Lee Wood Doublebass: Karl Doty, Erik Higgins Flute: Rachel Braude, Vanessa Holroyd Oboe: Miri Kudo Clarinet: Rane Moore Bassoon: David Richmond French Horn: Hazel Dean Davis, Clark Matthews Trumpet: Paul Perfetti Trombone: Gabe Langfur Percussion: Nicholas Tolle, Robert Schulz, George Nickson Piano: Adam Nielsen
17