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Aspen Music Festival and School – Festival Focus, Week 4
Opera Program Brings Patchett’s Bel Canto to Life
BY LAURA SMITH Vice President of Marketing and Communications
Author Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel Bel Canto is described on her own website as “a spellbinding story about love and opera.” On Friday, July 21, at the Benedict Music Tent, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) presents an opera based on the book, bringing Patchett’s dramatic story to life with all the tenderness and tension for which her novel was so highly acclaimed.
Set during a real-life hostage situation that took place in 1996 in Lima, Peru, the story is driven forward by the main character, Roxane—an opera singer—and her “bel canto,” or “beautiful singing.” During a months-long captivity, it’s Roxane’s daily practice of singing that connects the characters to each other, to their humanity, and to love.
“It is music, in the form of Roxane’s voice, that allows these people to find common ground,” notes Renée Fleming, superstar soprano, co-artistic director of the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program, the work’s champion, and the voice upon which Patchett based Roxane’s singing.
“Throughout history, the shared experience of music and art has created community, to the extent that it’s part of human evolution,” says Fleming. “It’s in our DNA.”
“Presenting this is going to be so much fun,” says Patrick Chamberlain, vice president for artistic administration at the AMFS. “This is the second ever performance of this opera, which is really significant. It was premiered by the Chicago Lyric Opera, with music by Peruvian composer Jimmy López Bellido, based on the impassioned novel. It is a real passion project of Renée’s.”
Fleming spent five years nurturing and workshopping the opera’s commission in Chicago along with Bellido and director Kevin Newbury—the same team now coming to set the work in Aspen.
“Renée has absolutely championed this work,” says Chamberlain. “When she and Patrick Summers took over as co-artistic directors of AOTVA, this was very high on the list as a work that we would produce here. What makes it uniquely suited to what we can do at Aspen are the same reasons why it’s so challenging for other companies to produce. It requires a huge orchestra, a huge chorus, and tons of roles. It’s in seven different languages. It’s just a big old-school grand opera, the likes of which aren’t really being written anymore.”
Says Fleming, “I realized when Bel Canto premiered in Chicago that it is really an ensemble piece, with opportunities for so many singers to work closely with the director. That is a foundational experience for a young performer in opera, making it ideal for our program. And we are so fortunate to have the original director, Kevin Newbury, because, among his many creative gifts, he is fantastic at building the sense of ensemble.”
Ensemble work is important in a program like the AOTVA, which brings exceptional young opera talent to Aspen to train to launch into their careers, not just vocally but dramatically.
Bel Canto gives both performers and audience an intense experience. “As in many of Ann Patchett’s novels, humans are put in a dire situation, and it brings out the best in them,” says Fleming. “Bel Canto offers audiences (and performers), pretty much the full range of emotions— the joy and excitement of an exclusive gathering, the sudden intrusion of terror, life and death confrontations, resignation, the development of understanding, and, of course, love.”
The opera’s libretto was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. It is sung in Spanish, English, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Latin, Italian, and Quechua. As if that weren’t enough, Patchett quipped that she “learned opera” like another language when she wrote the novel.
She self-professes she “knew nothing” about opera when she found the idea for the book, but, she says, “Once I came up with the character of Roxane Coss I threw myself into learning about it whole-heartedly. I also started playing opera recordings all the time and attending operas whenever possible. I absolutely fell in love with opera. It’s been such a wonderful bonus of writing this book. I feel like I learned a second language.”
In a final dramatic layering around this charmed project, it ultimately led to a real-life story of love and opera. Through the book, Patchett and Fleming became friends and the love-spell of the novel worked its magic: “Ann actually introduced me to my husband,” Fleming explains, “so I have a lot to thank her for.”
