CODA: Fall 2019

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | FALL 2019

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

A BIG TOP IN A BIG RINK FORBIDDEN LOVE IN D.C. ESTHER NELSON’S 10TH SEASON

ESTHER NELSON, STANFORD CALDERWOOD GENERAL & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | DAVID ANGUS, MUSIC DIRECTOR | JOHN CONKLIN, ARTISTIC ADVISOR

FALL 2019 EDITORIAL STAFF Eileen Williston, Managing Director Cathy Emmons Madison Florence Jayne Gallagher Sara O’Brien John Michael Kennedy, JMKPR CONTRIBUTORS Lucy Caplan Richard Dyer John Michael Kennedy Harlow Robinson Nathan Tavares DESIGN Leapfrog Arts MISSION The mission of Boston Lyric Opera is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera by creating musically and theatrically compelling productions, events, and educational resources for our community and beyond. We produce opera in all forms, large to small, popular to lesser known, from early music to newly commissioned works.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE Boston Lyric Opera 11 Avenue de Lafayette Boston, MA 02111-1736 P: 617.542.4912 | F: 617.542.4913 AUDIENCE SERVICES 617.542.6772 | boxoffice@blo.org PATRON SERVICES Bailey Kerr 617.542.4912 x 2450 | bkerr@blo.org EDUCATION Rebecca Kirk 617.542.4912 x2400 | education@blo.org EVENTS Sara O’Brien 617.542.4912 x2900 | sobrien@blo.org For a full listing of BLO staff, please visit BLO.org/about.

GET SOCIAL WITH OPERA #PAGBLO | #FTBLO | ED Q BLO’s programs are funded, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

WELCOME It’s hard to believe that in BLO’s 40-plus years, we have never produced a Pagliacci. Always among the most frequently produced operas around the world, Pagliacci never fails to enthrall and entertain audiences. Seen through a contemporary lens, Leoncavallo’s masterwork remains a shocking tale of abuse and mad jealousy.

As you’ll read in Richard Dyer’s history of the opera here, Pagliacci’s short length upended the tradition of multi-act operas that proliferated for centuries, and forced producers to pair it with other short operas. The idea of double features in opera, theater, and films was particularly popular in the first half of the 20th century. But Pagliacci stands well enough on its own, as it was originally intended to do. It’s winking “play within a play” meta-structure jolts audiences and delivers extra layers of meaning and mystery onto the music and characters, especially with this accessible, skillful, English translation by Bill Bankes-Jones.

In Harlow Robinson’s piece, we learn that the commedia dell’arte overlay in Pagliacci was a more traditional trope of the times, imparted in early opera and theater works to focus attention more on the performers and their improvisations, rather than the well-trod morality stories these entertainments delivered.

Fellow Travelers gives us an infusion of capital-P Politics, and another dose of passion.

Gregory Spears’ and Greg Pierce’s 2016 opera is based on the historical novel of the same title by award-winning writer Thomas Mallon. The notion of “witch hunts,” real or imagined, is not new to politics. Some who lived through the tumultuous McCarthy hearings in the 1950s may remember the fear stoked by a government leader’s demonizing of marginalized groups of Americans.

In Fellow Travelers, seasoned State Department politico Hawk and DC newcomer Timothy find love during the “Lavender Scare” that aligned with McCarthyism’s second “Red Scare.”

Many country-loving patriots’ social advocacy, or their sexual orientation, suddenly got them labeled as subversive and anti-American. Lucy Caplan’s article touches on operas that are based on “ordinary” fictional characters in extraordinary real times. And new CODA writer Nathan Tavares’ interview with Spears, Pierce, and Mallon about their work highlights the creators’ choices for the characters and the opera. In Fellow Travelers, the spirit of the times forces choices that seem, at first, the only viable ones. It’s only later—and with more perspective—that we can see situations with clearer eyes. True for Hawk and Tim then, and true for us now.

Opera is an art form that delivers the emotions of today through the stories of the past and the present. I thank you for joining us and I am particularly grateful for your support during my fulfilling first decade here at Boston Lyric Opera.

Esther Nelson Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director

UPCOMING COMMUNITY EVENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS Stranger Than Fiction: Pagliacci & Commedia Dell’arte...................................2

COURTESY WBUR

Quickstart: Get to Know Pagliacci..................................5

NOVEL-TO-OPERA: FELLOW TRAVELERS TUE | NOV 12 | WBUR’S CITYSPACE

Fellow Travelers the opera was adapted from the 2007 historical novel of the same name by the American novelist and critic Thomas Mallon. Mr. Mallon, along with opera composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce, will headline an event and discuss the novel-to-opera adaptation process. (You’ll remember CitySpace as the location where BLO and WBUR hosted last season’s amazing discussion with The Handmaid’s Tale novelist Margaret Atwood and composer Poul Ruders.) Details and tickets at wbur.org/events.

TALKBACKS: PAGLIACCI

SAT | OCT 2 | IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE 7PM PERFORMANCE

Don’t miss the only post-performance talkback for BLO’s Pagliacci, a collaboration with The Boston Globe and its “Globe Insiders” program, and featuring cast and creative team members. Moderated by Boston Globe Assistant Arts Editor Christy DeSmith.

Opera & the Ordinary: History & Interiority in Fellow Travelers...................... 6 Quickstart: Get to Know Fellow Travelers...................... 8 Sneak Peek: Fellow Travelers...................... 9 Roar of the Clown: Pagliacci’s Surprising Provenance & Enduring Popularity ..............................10 The Opera Gala #EN10..................................13 Adaptation & Arias: Finding Faith & Freedom in Fellow Travelers..................14 Contributors & News.............16 Curtains.................................17

TALKBACKS: FELLOW TRAVELERS

NOV 13 - 17 | IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING ALL PERFORMANCES

Stay after the show! After every performance of Fellow Travelers, plan to join artists, creative team members and special guests who will talk about the process of putting the opera on stage and discuss its powerful story. Audience questions about the show are always welcome. Talk backs begin shortly after the end of the performance and are about 25 mins. Buy your tickets and bring your questions!

LO is proud to partner with Boston History Project on Fellow Travelers.

B Look for special items on BLO’s blog In the Wings.

Cover: Leapfrog Arts and iStock Far left, Esther Nelson by Liza Voll Photography.

Above, from left, Composer Poul Ruders, novelist Margaret Atwood and senior editor for WBUR’s Arts and Culture Team Maria Garcia, who moderated the discussion “The Handmaid’s Aria: How an Iconic Novel Became an Opera” last spring.

EVENTS ARE ADDED THROUGHOUT THE SEASON. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO RSVP, VISIT BLO.ORG/CALENDAR | #PAGBLO | #FTBLO | #EN10 BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 1

STRANGER THAN FICTION: PAGLIACCI & THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE

BY HARLOW ROBINSON

La commedia è finita. “The drama is finished.”

Shrove Tuesday (Pierot and Harlequin) by Paul Cézanne, 1888

With these famous last words, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s hot-tempered Pagliacci reaches its shocking end. The protagonist/clown Canio proclaims them, having just murdered his wife and her lover before a horrified audience gathered to see a funny play suddenly turned into real-life tragedy. (In the original score, these words were assigned to the Buffoon Tonio, but soon after the 1892 premiere it became customary for Canio to sing them instead.)

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I

n Italian, the word commedia can mean “comedy,” or “drama,” or, in a figurative sense, “farce” or “sham.” All of these could apply to the situation at hand, an entangled backstage story of infidelity, betrayal and unwanted sexual advances. Three men are rivals for the affections of the leading lady Nedda, leading to disastrous results.

But in this particular case, commedia also refers to a specific dramatic style, the venerable commedia dell’arte. Pagliacci (“The Clowns” or “The Buffoons”) serves up a supposedly realistic slice from the life of an itinerant acting troupe in an Italian village around 1865. The leading characters all have double identities, one in reality and another on stage, where they adopt the highly stylized stock commedia dell’arte roles that had become standardized in this kind of popular entertainment since around 1600, first in Italy and then across Europe.

Nedda (a soprano) is Colombina, the Ingenue; her real-life husband, Canio (baritone), is Pagliaccio, the Clown; the disfigured Tonio (baritone), Nedda’s unwanted admirer, is the Buffoon Taddeo; and Beppe (tenor) is Arlecchino, the Jester. Silvio (baritone), Nedda’s lover, is a villager, the only principal who is not part of the troupe.

allegedly even presided at the trial. So the vernacular, coarse style and rough players of the commedia dell’arte, along with the “real-life” story of backstage jealousy and murder, proved a perfect vehicle for Leoncavallo. He was a leading representative of the rising anti-aristocratic verismo style, also seen in such operas as Puccini’s Tosca (another actor/singer) and Pietro Mascagni’s raw and earthy Cavalleria Rusticana (with which Pagliacci is often paired).

Pagliacci has a prologue and two acts. In the prologue, the Buffoon Tonio/Taddeo appears in costume (as in ancient Greek tragedies) to invite the villagers to come to the show, breaking through the barrier separating spectacle and spectator with the question: “Is not the actor a man with a heart like you?”

Act I establishes the complicated sexual/romantic relationships between the “real” characters as they prepare offstage for their upcoming performance. Canio, the troupe’s director, and Nedda are married, but she secretly loves Silvio. The partially crippled actor Tonio also loves Nedda, who rudely rejects his advances. Resentful and jealous, Tonio reveals to Nedda’s husband that she is having u

Descended from the tradition of Roman masks and aimed at a popular, mostly illiterate audience, commedia dell’arte performances were originally considered so obscene that women were barred from the audience. The simple plots tended to reinforce conventional ideas about marriage, but usually included scandalous scenes of adulterous behavior (like those going on between the actors offstage here). Often the actors wore masks as signifiers of their roles.

Performances featured local dialects and civic personalities, so different commedia traditions developed in various Italian regions.

The actors worked together regularly, often changing details and adding topical references on the fly. Performances (which usually included some kind of music) depended on their talents for improvisation. Audiences were more interested in the performers’ skills than the flimsy narrative.

Like commedia, opera has always valued performance over narrative, as historian Nino Pirrotta has written. “The whole history of opera has always been characterized by a subordination to the singers, to their personalities and capacities, even to their caprices.

Either about the commedia dell’arte or about the opera, the attitude of the public was mainly that of amused incredulity toward the fiction taking place on the stage.”

When Leoncavallo wrote Pagliacci, commedia troupes still roamed Italy, a familiar feature of the local landscape. In fact, the composer, who also wrote the libretto, claimed (probably inaccurately) that he based the story on a real incident that had occurred in such a troupe in the mountains of Calabria. His own father, a judge, had

Pierrot and Harlequin

by Antoine Watteau, c. 1718-1719

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 3

Scene from the commedia dell’arte, 1580s

an affair with Silvio. Act I ends with Canio’s brilliant “the show must go on” aria (one of the most famous in all opera), “Vesti la giubba” (“On with your costume”), where he attempts to conceal his personal misery behind the smiling mask of a commedia clown.

Act II moves to the village stage, where the principals adopt their respective stock roles in a commedia that mirrors their tense offstage relationships. (The clown Pagliaccio is married to Columbine, who loves Arlecchino but is also desired by the envious Taddeo).

The actors’ inflamed “real” emotions begin to intrude (in shrewdly timed aside comments) and eventually explode into the bloody dénouement of Canio’s double murder of Nedda and Silvio.

Confused members of the audience ask: “Are they in earnest?

What are they doing?” Real-life drama proves more compelling than the frivolous entertainment of the commedia dell’arte.

Stranger than fiction, indeed. La commedia è finita.

Leoncavallo’s use of commedia dell’arte characters and conventions may be the most famous in operatic history, but it is not the only one. Mozart employed commedia masks for purposes of disguise and mistaken identity in The Marriage of Figaro and in The Magic Flute. But it was “modernist” composers of the early twentieth century who rediscovered and repurposed the commedia dell’arte style on a larger scale. Unlike the verismo master Leoncavallo, they were attracted by the anti-realistic, highly stylized and “formalist” aspects of commedia tropes.

Ferruccio Busoni (Arlecchino, 1913), Richard Strauss (Ariadne auf Naxos, 1912), Arnold Schoenberg (Pierrot Lunaire, 1912), Igor Stravinsky (the ballets Petrushka, 1911 and Pucinella, 1920), and 4 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019

Captain Babbeo and Cucuba, scene of the commedia dell’arte

Sergei Prokofiev (Love for Three Oranges, 1919) all created neoclassical works that exploited the abstract nature of the commedia aesthetic, pairing it with a dissonant harmonic language and a less-conventional dramatic structure. They shared a sympathy for certain features of the commedia style: abstract, non-realistic characters who can easily be assigned symbolic meaning; a rejection of logical psychological motivation; and an emphasis on poetic imagery and language. They saw commedia techniques as providing an alternative to what they regarded as the outmoded psychological realism of the verismo style.

In Pagliacci, however, Leoncavallo emerges not as a modernist but as a polished traditionalist. Ever mindful of his audience and what would “sell,” he follows in the well-trod path of Verdi (especially Otello, another story of a reasonable man led into violence by jealousy) and Mascagni, whose 1890 smash hit Cavalleria Rusticana served as a model. Leoncavallo uses the ancient commedia dell’arte conventions not to challenge tradition, but to deepen the authenticity and emotional truth of a timeless story anchored in music of seething visceral power. w

QUICKSTART:

PAGLIACCI

Music & Libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo English translation by Bill Bankes-Jones Sung in English and Italian with English surtitles. For ages 12+.

SEP 27 & 28 | OCT 2, 4, & 6 DCR Steriti Memorial Rink

Enjoy food & fairgrounds prior to the opera!

Evening performances: Food at 6:30 PM | Fairgrounds at 7 PM | Opera at 8 PM Matinee OCT 6: Food at 1 PM | Fairgrounds at 2:30 PM | Opera at 3:30 PM

SYNOPSIS

Tonio speaks to the audience directly—hinting at the story they’re about to perform and reminding us the actors are real people who experience emotions and passions.

The townspeople cheer the arrival of a commedia dell’arte troupe as the actors drum up business for the show. We get the first sign of backstage trouble when Canio angrily stops Tonio from offering Nedda a hand off the stage.

The characters in Pagliacci are commedia dell’arte actors whose onstage stories are nothing compared to the backstage dramas they endure. Four of our five singers have dual roles Rafael Rojas is Canio, leader of the troupe; onstage Canio takes the role of Pagliaccio the clown Lauren Michelle is Nedda, the lead actress married to Canio but secretly in love with Silvio; onstage she’s Colombina—married to Pagliaccio but in love with Arlecchino Michael Mayes is Tonio, the “fool” of the troupe; onstage, Tonio becomes Taddeo, Colombina’s servant

Nedda worries that Canio suspects her affair with young villager Silvio. It turns out Tonio loves Nedda too, but she laughs at his advances. Tonio sees Nedda nuzzling Silvio. He tips off Canio who confronts Nedda and pulls a knife on her.

Omar Najmi is Beppe, an actor; Beppe plays Arlecchino

Beppe disarms Canio and persuades everyone to get ready for the show. Tonio whispers to Canio that Nedda’s lover will reveal himself during the performance. Canio dons his clown makeup and outfit.

David Angus Conductor David Lefkowich Stage Director Julia Noulin-Mérat Set Designer Charles Neumann Costume Designer Pablo Santiago Lighting Designer

While collecting money from the audience, Nedda whispers a warning to Silvio. The play begins and it feels uncomfortably familiar in its tale of a cuckolded husband.

Tobias Greenhalgh is Silvio, a local and Nedda’s lover

DESIGN TEAM

Pagliaccio/Canio confronts Colombina/Nedda and the lines between real life and onstage drama blur, ending in tragedy.

THE SIMPSONS | 20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION

SNAP SHOTS

• Last season (2018/19), Pagliacci was the 20th most staged opera around the world. Fifty productions yielded 195 performances.

(For the ten seasons between 2009 and 2018, Pagliacci was still the 20th most-staged opera. Consistency!)

• Canio’s jealous and murderous clown in Pagliacci is among the most cited and parodied opera characters in pop culture.

References have ranged from Seinfeld (twice) to The Simpsons to Coca-Cola and Rice Krispies ads—even a video by Queen!

• Canio’s famous aria, “Vesti la giubba,” has been translated as “put on the costume” or “on with the motley.” Google translates it as “dress the jacket,” which just doesn’t make sense.

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 5

OPERA & THE ORDINARY:

HISTORY & INTERIORITY IN FELLOW TRAVELERS

BY LUCY CAPLAN

I

n a 2018 interview, composer Gregory Spears explained that he was drawn to the subject matter of Fellow Travelers because he “really wanted to write an opera about ordinary people,” and he “liked that the central characters weren’t historical figures.” This seemingly simple juxtaposition—ordinary people versus historical figures—raises complex questions. Who gets to be an operatic subject? What kind of stories is the art form best equipped to tell?

Can opera make the ordinary extraordinary?

There is no shortage in opera of powerful kings, queens, pharaohs, and emperors, both real and imagined. But the genre’s capacious range also encompasses plenty of apparently unremarkable figures.

They tend to show up in realist works: think of the apartmentdwelling artists in La Bohème, or the factory workers in Carmen.

These are the types of people who, broadly speaking, might otherwise be lost to history. But by elevating them to a place of prominence, the genre offers a different—and potentially transformative—historical narrative. Through opera’s combination of dramatic narrative and musical complexity, ordinary people might be heard and remembered, singing their way into our ears, our consciousness, and our collective memory.

Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller and Timothy Laughlin are the two regular men at the heart of Fellow Travelers, which is based on Thomas Mallon’s novel of the same name. A State Department bureaucrat and a young aspiring politician, respectively, they are caught up in a love affair after meeting in a Washington, D.C. park. All normal enough—yet the times in which they live insist otherwise. Forces beyond their control interfere: namely the Lavender Scare, the mass purging of gay people from U.S. government jobs during the panic-ridden McCarthy era.

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Many gay people had lived openly during earlier moments in U.S. history, especially in urban areas like New York City and Washington, D.C., but around the middle of the century they were pushed into the closet. The Lavender Scare put the force of state power behind this cultural shift, allowing the government to intervene in citizens’ private and professional lives, and drive them out of the federal workforce. It was interwoven with the anticommunist Red Scare of the same era. Communism and homosexuality were often conflated in popular discourse as similarly subversive, threatening, godless and antithetical to national values.

Under these circumstances, Hawk and Timothy cannot be ordinary men pursuing an ordinary relationship; instead, they are marked baselessly as a national threat. The men are forced underground, hiding their affair under a quilt of codes, subtexts, and denials.

Their relationship unfolds in a bifurcated array of locations: a public landscape of parks, offices, and interrogation rooms, as well as a private realm of apartments, kitchens and homes. Timothy, especially anguished, seeks solace in other institutional spaces, from the cavernous sanctuary of a Catholic church to the regimented confines of the U.S. Army. Hawk decides marriage and a house in the suburbs is the preferable option. But neither is willing to abandon the relationship entirely.

As the story unfolds, audience members necessarily find themselves in an odd position. The line between surveillance and spectatorship blurs as we become privy to the men’s—especially Timothy’s—innermost thoughts and hidden moments, able to witness precisely what they are trying to hide.

JAMES VAUGHAN/FLICKR

DAN NORMAN

Left, postcards for Washington, D.C. and the Hotel Washington, an ad for the U.S. Army c. 1950; above, Minnesota Opera’s cast of Fellow Travelers, 2017; background, a still from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

The music of Fellow Travelers keeps this paradox at the forefront of the opera. Spears’ music is more intimate than grand, seeking to entice rather than merely to impress. Quasi-Baroque ornamentation and minimalistic repetition toward the beginning of the opera foster a sense of familiarity, inviting listeners to search for details. Reinforcing this sense of normalcy, the libretto relies upon plainspoken language that unfolds in speech-like patterns (although there are a few plaintive, lyrical exceptions).

At the same time, the opera’s music is never simple. Multiple musical ideas appear at once, resulting in stylistic collisions: a cool ostinato, for example, thrumming below a vibrantly romantic melody. This musical evocation of text and subtext might be interpreted in several ways. In one sense, it is a reminder that people’s lives are often more complex than they initially appear— a charged notion in a context of persecution, where the wrong word or behavior might render one a victim. In another, this musical interplay allows the opera to represent its characters’ interiority and psychology more powerfully. Spears has explained, “I try to avoid writing music that tells a listener what to feel or music that directly represents or underlines a character’s feelings from moment to moment.” Instead, indirection becomes the predominant musical

strategy. As textures and tensions accumulate in the score, the traditional boundary between action and emotion collapses in favor of a multilayered, ambiguous sound.

Ultimately, the opera raises the question of what it means to be a “historical figure,” to return to Spears’ term. Some accounts of the past refer to ordinary people, especially marginalized people, as “voiceless,” due to their relative absence from records of public and civic life. But others have critiqued that formulation: these people were never without a voice; they were willfully unheard or silenced. Fellow Travelers makes that fact plain. Even as gay people were silenced within the context of public life, men like Hawk and Timothy defiantly continued to speak, sing, and express their thoughts. Yet their ability to do so does not mean that they emerge from the Lavender Scare unscathed. Instead, the opera reveals the harmful consequences that Hawk and Timothy ultimately face. As they struggle to navigate a landscape of persecution and danger, their relationship falters, fractures, and falls apart.

It bears remembering, though, that in the not-so-long-ago era in which Fellow Travelers takes place, an opera about gay life would have been a virtual impossibility. That is no longer the case. An abundant array of recent works—Terence Blanchard’s Champion (2013), about gay black boxer Emile Griffith; Peter Eötvös’ adaptation of Tony Kushner’s play about the AIDS crisis, Angels in America (2012); and Iain Bell’s Stonewall (2019), about the monumental uprising that catalyzed the gay rights movement— creates a panoramic historical landscape. Like Fellow Travelers, these operas exemplify one element of opera’s enduring power: its ability to engage in historical storytelling, to illuminate even the most ordinary facets of the past in extraordinary ways. w BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 7

QUICKSTART:

FELLOW TRAVELERS

An Opera by Gregory Spears Libretto by Greg Pierce Based on the 2007 novel Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon Sung in English.

NOV 13 – 17

Robert J. Orchard Stage at the Emerson Paramount Center

SYNOPSIS

Setting: Washington, D.C., 1953, during the Eisenhower presidency and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for communists and “sexual subversives” in the federal government.

In Dupont Circle, cub reporter Timothy Laughlin reviews his notes from Senator McCarthy’s wedding. State Department employee Hawkins Fuller approaches and the men share a moment of attraction. Before they part, Timothy mentions seeking a job on the Hill.

Hired as a Senate speechwriter, Timothy learns Hawkins had recommended him. He delivers a thank-you gift, and meets Hawkins’ assistant, Mary Johnson, and secretary, Miss Lightfoot.

Hawkins arrives unexpectedly at Timothy’s home later and they spend the night together. Although amazed by the passionate encounter, Timothy wrestles with his faith.

Mary cautions Timothy of Hawkins’ many failed relationships.

Eventually she resigns, unable to stomach working for Hawkins or the government anymore.

After Hawkins is cleared, Timothy announces that he has enlisted and will go to France. While there, he writes letters to Mary and Hawkins, who since has married a woman and moved to the suburbs.

When Timothy and Hawkins reunite, it’s clear Timothy wants more than Hawkins can give. Hawkins decides desperate action is needed to make Timothy fall out of love with him.

Above, Senator Joseph McCarthy chats with his attorney Roy Cohn, 1954 8 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019

Chelsea Basler* as Mary Johnson Jesse Blumberg as Hawkins Fuller Jesse Darden* as Timothy Laughlin Simon Dyer* as Sen. Potter’s Assistant, other roles James Maddalena as Senator Charles Potter, other roles David McFerrin* as Senator Joseph McCarthy, other roles Michelle Trainor* as Miss Lightfoot Vincent Turregano* as Tommy

DESIGN TEAM

Emily Senturia Conductor Peter Rothstein Stage Director Sara Brown Set Designer Trevor Bowen Costume Designer Mary Shabatura Lighting Designer

SNAP SHOT

Conductor Emily Senturia, whom we welcome to BLO for the first time for Fellow Travelers, follows in the footsteps of three other extraordinary women conductors who’ve led the BLO Orchestra: • Beatrice Jona Affron, who conducted Akhnaten in January 2000 • Jane Glover, who conducted The Marriage of Figaro in April 1999 • Susan Davenny-Wyner, who conducted Ballad of Baby Doe in January 1998

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION/NYWT&S COLLECTION

Rumors abound at a Christmas party: a General encourages Timothy to enlist; Miss Lightfoot overhears a revealing conversation. Later, Hawkins is interrogated on suspicion of being a homosexual.

The cast features a deep bench of talented singers, six of whom are alumni* of BLO’s Jane and Steven Akin Emerging Artists initiative.

SNEAK PEEK:

Fellow Travelers was originally developed and co-commissioned by G. Sterling Zinsmeyer & Cincinnati Opera, where it premiered in a 2016 production directed by Kevin Newbury. It was mounted by Lyric Opera of Chicago in Spring 2018 and at Minnesota Opera that summer. Here are a few photos from the Minnesota production, whose sets and costumes BLO will use.

PRODUCTION PHOTOS BY DAN NORMAN

Above left Nicholas Davis, Andrew Wilkowske, and Sidney Outlaw; above right, Andres Acosta and Hadleigh Adams; below, Adriana Zabala and Andres Acosta

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 9

ROAR

OF THE CLOWN

PAGLIACCI’S SURPRISING PROVENANCE & ENDURING POPULARITY

BY RICHARD DYER

On May 21, 1892, the audience assembled at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan was in for a surprise.

The occasion was the world premiere of a new opera with a prestigious cast headed by celebrity baritone Victor Maurel, who had created the part of Iago in Verdi’s Otello and would soon appear in the title role of the first performance of Verdi’s Falstaff.

On the podium was the 25-year-old Arturo Toscanini who was already regarded as the most talented young conductor in Italy. The unknown quantity of the evening was the composer and librettist Ruggero Leoncavallo, who at 35 was experiencing his first opening night.

Set model for the “big top” performance space. Model design and photo by Julia Noulin Mérat.

Pagliaccio costume sketch by Charles Neumann.

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The surprise came early on. Midway through the overture, Maurel stuck his head through the curtain and stepped forward—not in formal wear, but in the costume of a commedia dell’arte clown. He began to sing, apologizing to the audience for the interruption and announcing himself as the prologue, speaking on behalf of the creator, Leoncavallo. He is not here to reassure the audience that this is only a play; instead, he says, the creator offers “a slice of life.” “Now you will see men love as they do in real life; you will see hatred and its bitter fruit. You will hear painful cries, angry shouts, and cynical laughter.”

This was a declaration of independence for opera. No longer will its subjects be mythological characters or historical kings, pharaohs and potentates. Operas will now treat the common man in a new style of vocal writing requiring expanded and explosive techniques of singing over a large and colorful orchestra.

The audience in 2019 will be surprised, too, by Boston Lyric Opera’s production. Pagliacci has most often been performed in a double bill, usually in tandem with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. The Metropolitan Opera was the first to pair them back in 1893 although its first performance there was alongside Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Later couplings included ones with Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Trovatore, La Fille du Regiment, L’Elisir D’Amore, Don Pasquale, Gianni Schicchi and, of all things, Hänsel und Gretel.

BLO decided that Pagliacci could stand alone, but within a new fairgrounds setting that the stage director David Lefkowich describes as helping to create a “different act one.” The public will arrive at the DCR Steriti Memorial Rink and (if arriving early enough for a proper picnic) enjoy a fleet of food trucks. Inside the “big top” that comprises the fairgrounds and the performance area for ticketholders, there will be jugglers, acrobats, aerialists, and a contortionist as well as members of Circus Up, a Boston training center in the circus arts. Several area choruses will sing, each at a different performance, an act of community engagement both on the part of the BLO and of the choruses.

Inside the fairgrounds installation are games, food and carnival attractions which the public can enjoy for an hour or so before Leoncavallo’s opera begins; the festive atmosphere will also invade the opera itself right up until the shocking tragedy.

Canio, the head of a traveling theatrical troupe, is rough around the edges, a man with a violent past; his wife Nedda is a strong woman in the #MeToo era; Tonio is the ringmaster. And Silvio, the only major figure outside the commedia troupe, is Nedda’s peasant lover. Their commedia dell’arte antics will be authentic, but filtered through the lens of today. The opera-within-theopera that Canio and Nedda and Tonio are performing parallels the real-life situation, passions reach the boiling point, and there are two murders before an audience that thinks it is watching superior acting realizes with horror that the murders are real.

“The audience for the opera-within-the-opera, which is the chorus, has no idea it is going to experience a tragedy,” Lefkowich says. “We want the Boston public to experience the same expectation and joy that the chorus in the opera does, while simultaneously experiencing the full range of passion in the music.

And we want the audience to feel as trapped as Nedda does.”

Leoncavallo would seem an unlikely candidate for an operatic revolutionary. He was born into a family of substantial means.

His father was a magistrate and judge who encouraged his son’s cultural interests—Leoncavallo began to study music at the age of seven; two years later, he was admitted into the Naples Conservatory where he remained for a decade. Then he attended university in Bologna, where he studied literature as well as music. And there he met Richard Wagner. Leoncavallo was not interested in the heroic and mythological dimension of

At the Circus by Louis Anquetin, 1887

Wagner’s work (he made fun of the “argumentative dragons” and the “transmogrified toads”) but he was fascinated by Wagner’s system of intertwined musical motives, which remained a major influence. Inspired by Wagner, he planned an Italian equivalent to the Ring Cycle, three operas on Renaissance subjects that he called Crepusculum.

Before embarking on this, he first wrote an opera based on the life of English imposter-poet Thomas Chatterton but then the impresario who had agreed to present the opera absconded with the funds. The Ricordi publishing house then approved the libretto for I Medici, the first opera in the projected Renaissance trilogy and subsidized the composition of the music without ever deciding to publish or promote it, instead assigning Leoncavallo to the team working on the libretto for Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

By this point, Leoncavallo was thoroughly frustrated. He also took note of the overnight success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana which had recently won a competition sponsored by the publisher Sanzongo. Leoncavallo was a very cultivated man who realized that Mascagni’s opera represented a new musical aspect of a populist “realist” movement in the arts that began with novels, plays and paintings, and was now gaining international momentum. He decided to create another such work that he believed would be superior to Mascagni’s.

Pagliacci (The Clowns) was the result of a very fast creative process.

Leoncavallo liked to point out that the story came from real life, in fact from a murder trial his father had presided over when he had been a child. The story had literary and theatrical sources as well. u BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 11

Pagliacci, like Cavalleria Rusticana, had a sensational opening night and quickly shot round the world. And it soon became a paradigmatic opera, thanks initially to the tenor Enrico Caruso, who sang the principal tenor role 133 times at the Metropolitan Opera; his third recording of Canio’s “Vesti la giubba” in 1907 was the first disc to sell more than a million copies.

Despite all that was “modern” about Pagliacci, many aspects of the opera would have felt familiar to its first audience. The opening chorus, for example, in which the rural community looks forward to the arrival of a company of travelling players who would perform late in the evening after the vesper service celebrating the Feast of the Assumption, is pure local color; soon after, there is another chorus in which the villagers celebrate the bells resounding from the church and warn young lovers that their elders are watching them. Later, Nedda sings an aria to the birds who have a freedom she never will; she begins by trilling like the birds; this expands into a soaring, voluptuous melody colored by a shimmer of the harp. The opera-within-an-opera contains an old-fashioned serenata and the music dances in the rhythms of the minuet and the gavotte; the orchestration of the inset opera is light and transparent.

But there is another side to the story and another style of vocal and orchestral writing. Canio’s first aria is marked “con grande espressione” but it also hints at a basic instability. Other instructions for the leading tenor are “heartbreaking,” “declamatory with great sorrow,” “violent,” “almost speaking,” “laughing bitterly,” “agitated,” “in a frenzy” and “sobbing.” Tonio’s writing is equally extreme, and Silvio and

Pagliaccio, portrayed here by Enrico Caruso, has been one of opera’s most recognizable characters since his first appearance in 1892.

Nedda are told to sing a passage in their love duet appassionatissimo.

The opera closes with the double murder of Nedda and Silvio and the famous spoken summing-up, “The comedy is ended.”

Originally, Tonio was supposed to deliver that line, which makes sense—he both begins and ends the opera. But Caruso was one of the first to appropriate the line and most tenors since his time a have continued the practice, although an occasional historically informed performance in our own day will restore it to Tonio.

Leoncavallo creates an equilibrium and then systematically destroys it, which is what tragedy does. An appalled community witnesses a personal tragedy, and that is what Lefkowich and BLO hope to achieve as well. “We want to fuse the Boston audience with the world of Pagliacci, the principal singers, the chorus, the orchestra, the atmosphere, the comedy, the tragedy, the theatricality and the reality,” Lefkowich says. “Everything happening at once.” w

WALKING TALL: CIRCUS UP TEACHES SELF-ESTEEM

When you come into the Pagliacci fairgrounds, you’ll enter the world of a midway: carnival games, food and drink, magicians, acrobats and energy readers who’ll tell your future. But pay special attention to the circus acts—they’re youth performers from Circus Up, the Jamaica Plain-based “social circus” non-profit that uses circus arts to overcome social barriers for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Ranging in age from 10 to 16 years old, the Circus Up performers possess an extraordinary breadth of talents from stilt-walking and contortion to partner acrobatics, double trapeze, unicycling and juggling. Circus Up director Leah Abel says her studio is a “non-competitive place where kids can build their communications and trust skills while they’re honing their physical skills.” The young troupe includes a few teen veterans of corporate gigs and outdoor festivals, but this is their first time as part of an opera.

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AIMÉ DUPONT | LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

Despite what the prologue says, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci represents a significant synthesis of new and old. The idea of a prologue came as a response to a request from Leoncavallo’s friend Maurel, who wanted a prominent aria. It was impossible to find a place to insert an aria for the baritone in the opera itself, so Leoncavallo decided to create a prologue—and the music anticipates some of the principal musical themes of the opera. And there was historical precedent for a prologue—the earliest opera to survive in the repertory, Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) opens with a prologue about the power of music.

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BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 13

ADAPTATION & ARIAS FINDING FAITH & FREEDOM IN FELLOW TRAVELERS

BY NATHAN TAVARES

“That’s not how it happened in the book,”

you might hear people lament when viewing an adaptation of a piece of literature. But an opera adaptation is a balance of exploration and compression, not just an attempt to shoehorn a novel’s worth of story into two hours. Especially in the case of the opera Fellow Travelers by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce, a co-commission between the Cincinnati Opera and producer G. Sterling Zinsmeyer that was inspired by Thomas Mallon’s 2007 historical fiction novel of the same name, and which premiered in 2016.

“If the standard of the opera was the degree to which it’s absolutely faithful to the book either in terms of incident or in terms of its emotional tenor, that’s probably a prescription for catastrophe,” Mallon laughs.

Both the opera and the novel explore the tragic love story between two men—the suave State Department employee Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller and the young and naïve Timothy Laughlin—in 1950s Washington, D.C. at the height of the McCarthy Era. Along with searching for communists he claimed were hiding in the State Department (the so-called “Red Scare”), Senator Joseph McCarthy sparked a witch hunt for gays and lesbians in the government, claiming they were disloyal and prone to blackmail.

This “Lavender Scare” led to the mass-firing or resignation of upwards of 5,000 government employees.

14 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019

While historical details suffuse Mallon’s text, the creative team of Spears and Pierce made the decision to narrow the opera’s scope to Hawk and Timothy’s relationship against the backdrop of paranoia and secrecy. The opera unfolds in 16 short scenes that play out almost as conversations, with Spears’ score for a 17-person chamber orchestra balancing lush instrumentation with minimalism and almost eerie repetition during climatic moments. By exploring two Fellow Travelers arias, we can spotlight one of the adaptation’s strengths: how the creators knew when to adhere to the source material and when to diverge.

“LAST NIGHT” Admitting he “knew zero” about the world of opera, Mallon told the creative team early on he’d stay out of their hair—and that he trusted their talent and vision. But he did have one ask: Don’t make Timothy Laughlin’s politics and religion a joke. A devout Catholic and conservative anti-communist, Timothy believes things that might sound ridiculous to the liberal-minded; like that Harvard professors tend to be Communists, and—if his childhood priest is right—mortal sins wreak more havoc than earthquakes.

“I didn’t want his politics or his religion to look like something that he was supposed to just get over,” Mallon says. “Like, if once you shed those youthful encumbrances and that oppression that you grew up with, then you’ll be a full-fledged gay man.”

DAN NORMAN

Hadleigh Adams, Calvin Griffin, and Andrew Wilkowske in Minnesota Opera’s Fellow Travelers.

Hoey committee report, that claimed homosexuals were not suitable for work in the Federal Government and were risks to national security, December 15, 1950.

“It’s such a confusing thing to say to God,” Spears says. “The aria comes to a resolution and focuses on the impossibility and all the contradictions that he’s fallen into.” Others might view being Catholic and gay as being at odds with one another—but not Timothy. “Before that point in the opera, he has a hard time speaking clearly and directly,” Spears continues. “He stumbles over his words a lot. That aria is the first time that we hear Tim, with a lot of confidence, really tell us who he is.”

With this single aria, Spears and Pierce stayed faithful to Mallon’s original vision of Timothy and brought him to life—contradictions and all.

“A HOME OF OUR VERY OWN” Both the opera and novel explore the hidden: hidden sexualities; hidden secrets; and emotions hidden from lovers. Even in the face of Timothy’s sincerity, Hawk often remains inscrutable and relies on the defense mechanisms of his charm and good looks.

Mallon admits that many people view Hawk in the book as a villain—especially in light of a betrayal against Timothy by the book’s end. Though, Pierce pictures Hawk as a man weighed down by internalized homophobia, who has seen only heterosexual relationships he can model.

Near the novel’s conclusion, Hawk allows himself to admit his feelings to Timothy just for an instant, before his walls fly up again.

“He realizes, ‘I cannot be what this young man wants me to be,’” Mallon says. Timothy is the braver of the two, willing to dive into the relationship while Hawk caves to the internal and external pressures of homophobia. “That to me was the tragedy of the book, and I don’t think that comes through if you just think of him as a villain.”

But at this same point in the opera’s initial libretto draft—without the context of the novel’s deep dive into Hawk’s character—silence didn’t work.

OF THE U.S. SENATE, RG CORDS NATIONAL ARCHIVES/RE

During the aria, Timothy comes to view his experience with Hawk not as a sin to confess, but as something sacred. “Thank you Holy Father for sending him,” he sings by the end in an almost liturgical refrain over slow, dissonant chords.

VINTAGE/RAND OM HOUSE

“He’s having this flood of emotions and so it made sense to me for him to sing these fragments. He’s still trying to put together his memories of what happened,” Pierce says. Only when singing about the Catholic catechism he knows so well does Timothy sing in complete sentences. “I’ve been told over and over that / ‘Mortal sin kills the life of grace in our souls.’”

46

In scene five of the opera, Timothy visits a church, intent on confessing his first sexual experience with Hawk. The aria “Last Night” starts with joyful fragments of, “Last night. / How many? / How many kisses? / His hands… / How many hours?”

Thomas Mallon’s 2007 book Fellow Travelers followed in the footsteps of his previously acclaimed historical novels Henry & Clara and Dewey Defeats Truman. Mallon will be in Boston to talk about the novel’s operatic treatment.

See page 2 for details.

“I remember listening to what I had written so far and just feeling this need to hear from this central character who seemed so opaque in some ways,” Spears says. The audience needed insight into Hawk’s heart, so he talked with Pierce, who then wrote Hawk’s aria “Our Very Own Home.”

“The audience has x-ray vision into his soul at that moment of the aria and the real conundrum he’s in where he has fallen in love with Timothy but just cannot think of himself as a gay man in a relationship like his parents,” he says. The aria lets him remain unguarded a while longer and explain this, dismissing the domesticity of “Matching plates…a bed…a bookshelf.” It’s almost as if one of them would have to be the traditional “wife,” and Hawk is not willing to do that. “We’ll never be that, Skippy,” he sings.

This expansion in the opera guides the audience toward an understanding of Hawk’s act of betrayal against Timothy. He drives the other man away because he knows that he can never give Timothy the kind of life he wants.

Ultimately, Spears’ and Pierce’s adaptation both captures the spirit of the original novel and serves as much more than a simple translation of the story from one medium to another. “We treated the opera as a thing that needed to work on its own terms,” Pierce says. “And the relationship—though it’s based on the novel—it had to be about these very specific guys.” w BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 15

BLO NEWS

FALL CODA CONTRIBUTORS

v Lucy Caplan (page 6) holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University. The recipient of the Rubin Prize for Music Criticism, she teaches in the History and Literature program at Harvard College and writes frequently about music and culture. v Richard Dyer (page 10) is a distinguished writer and lecturer. He wrote about music for The Boston Globe for more than 30 years, serving as chief music critic for most of that time. He has twice won the Deems Taylor/ASCAP Award for Distinguished Music Criticism. v Nathan Tavares (page 14) is a writer and editor who holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. A former assistant editor at The Improper Bostonian magazine, his editorial efforts celebrate the performing arts in Boston, with a focus on highlighting diverse voices and stories. He is a recipient of writing fellowships from the I-Park Foundation in East Haddam, Connecticut and is a certified artist in the city of Boston.

LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY

v Harlow Robinson (page 2) is an author, lecturer and Matthews Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography; Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians; and the forthcoming Lewis Milestone: Life and Films (due Dec. 1 from University Press of Kentucky). He is a frequent lecturer and annotator for The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Lincoln Center, Boston Symphony, Aspen Music Festival and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has contributed essays and reviews to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and Opera News.

Like all editions of CODA, this one was made possible by a dedicated group of people committed to documenting what we do each season at BLO. We take a moment here for special thanks to Jeffrey and Jane Marshall for their help bringing CODA to you, and for their passion and support for the arts across Boston.

Thank yous about CODA would not be complete if we didn’t recognize the dedication and talent of Lacey Upton, BLO’s long- time Director of Community Engagement. Lacey left BLO this summer to pursue a Master’s degree in education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Lacey, we wish you the graduate school version of “toi toi toi”!

Welcome back to Bradley Vernatter who rejoined BLO in the new position of Chief Operating Officer. In this new role, Brad will support Esther Nelson on operational and strategic issues.

Brad previously was our Director of Production, before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. and to consult on new performance space development projects. ...and warm congratulations from the BLO family to Annie Rabbat and Tom Rosenthal on the September arrival of their baby Benjamin. Annie is Concertmaster of the BLO Orchestra, and a well-respected member of the city’s music community who is also part of the Grammy nominated, Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry.

COMING SOON: We’ve touched on it a bit in these pages, but the 2020 winter/spring edition of CODA will have a special focus on General and Artistic Director Esther Nelson’s milestone 10th Anniversary Season. Stay tuned!

16 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019

CURTAINS

A LOOK BACK AT BLO’S PAST PRODUCTIONS

JEFFREY DUNN FOR BOSTON LYRIC OPERA

This year we celebrate Esther Nelson’s 10th Anniversary as General & Artistic Director of Boston Lyric Opera. Her tenure has been marked by many accomplishments—perhaps none as impactful to BLO as the launch of the Opera Annex in her first full Season.

The inaugural Annex production of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw was mounted at Boston’s Castle at the Park Plaza, and it riveted audiences. It featured simultaneous action both on the installation set and via live feed video. Here, the Governess tries to break the hold that Quint has over Miles.

Vale Rideout (tenor), Ryan Williams (treble), and Emily Pulley (soprano) in The Turn of the Screw, 2010

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2019 | 17

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Coda noun \ co·da \ ‘kō-d \ symbol O \ (1) a concluding musical section that is formally distinct from the main structure (2) something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize and usually has its own interest.

SEP 27 – OCT 6

NOV 13 – 17

In celebration of Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson’s 10th Season, BLO mixes power and politics, showcasing diverse artists in starring roles. Join us for one of our most thrilling Seasons yet.

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MAR 13 – 22

MAY 8 – 17

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