Mazzoli's chamber opera Proving Up examines American Dream

Mazzoli’s chamber opera Proving Up examines American Dream

JESSICA CABE Festival Focus Writer

Like many artists, composer Missy Mazzoli has always sought a way to explore the American Dream through her work. It’s a concept that has captured audiences of various art forms for centuries, and Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) audiences will have the chance to explore the idea of the American Dream at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, July 30, in Harris Concert Hall, during a performance of Mazzoli’s new chamber opera, Proving Up.

Proving Up is a 2017 work co-commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha, and Miller Theatre at Columbia University, and it is based on the short story of the same name by Karen Russell. The work tells the tale of the 1860s frontier, where families struggle in pursuit of the American Dream. The story is full of passion, hope, and heartbreak, with themes of fate, destiny, good, and evil.

“I had for a long time wanted to write an opera about the origins of the American Dream, but I didn’t know how to do that in a way that wasn’t heavy handed and preaching,” says Mazzoli, “until I read Proving Up.”

Students of the Aspen Opera Center will present American composer Missy Mazzoli’s (pictured) chamber opera Proving Up on July 30.

The opera centers around a family caught up in the idea that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but then fate intervenes. The work is a clear fit for the AMFS’s season theme, “Being American.”

“What Missy is able to capture are the trials and tribulations of an American family settling that part of the country, in Nebraska,” says Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor. “Sometimes even when they settled,they didn’t necessarily survive the elements. What is stunning about this work is her ability to narrow on this experience of the family collectively and individually and to capture the ethos and the pathos of their situation individually and collectively.”

Mazzoli says we are in the midst of a golden age for opera, and much of the great works by living composers are coming from America.

“Opera was dominated for centuries by the western European tradition, and I love that tradition, but Americans have our own stories to tell,” she says. “We want to make sense of our lives,and that’s the role of opera; that’s the role of art.”

Mazzoli will be present at the performance, featuring singers of the Aspen Opera Center, both to answer the musicians’ questions and to put a face to the music for audiences—a rare treat when so many classical programs are dominated by composers who are no longer alive.

“I like to show up,” she says. “I think it’s important for living composers to show up in front of audiences.”

In addition to overseeing final rehearsals of Proving Up and being present for the performance, Mazzoli will also speak to students in the AMFS’s Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies. She says it’s important to continue fostering great composers, especially now.

“We’re in a real golden age for composing opera,” she says. “It’s one of the most exciting art forms happening right now.”