Coda | BLO | Fall 2015

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | FALL 2015

INSIDE OUR FIRST ISSUE!

PHILIP GLASS: AN OPERATIC LIFE BOHÈME MEETS 1968: INSIGHTS FROM THE DESIGNERS SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON: KELLY KADUCE RETURNS TO BLO

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

CALENDAR OF EVENTS | FALL 2015 A TASTE OF LA BOHÈME THU. OCT. 1 at 7PM | $35. Purchase online at bcae.org

IN THE PENAL COLONY | OPERA ANNEX NOV. 11, 12, 14, 15 | 2015

Presented in partnership with the Boston Center for Adult Education

The Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts 539 Tremont Street

Listen to selected recordings of the most renowned performances of La Bohème while the BCAE’s wine and cheese expert punctuates the musical adventure with French wines and cheeses inspired by the opera’s twists and turns.

Nowhere else but in Philip Glass’s chilling and darkly comic twocharacter opera can audiences explore the breakdown of civil society in 90 minutes. Adapted from Franz Kafka’s dystopian short story, In the Penal Colony is a pitch-black fable about crime… and a very unusual punishment.

Boston Center for Adult Education, 122 Arlington Street THE OPERA GALA | LA BOHÈME OPENING NIGHT FRI. OCT. 2 | Learn more on page 20!

OPERA NIGHT AT THE BPL | OPERA IN AN HOUR THU. NOV. 19 at 6PM FREE

LA BOHÈME OCT. 2, 4, 7, 9, 11 | 2015

Philip Glass

SIGNATURE SERIES | PHILIP GLASS: 40 YEARS OF OPERA WED. OCT. 21 at 6:30PM $32 members, $40 nonmembers. Purchase online at mfa.org. SOLD OUT

Presented by BLO in partnership with Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Philip Glass has had an extraordinary impact upon the musical and intellectual life of the 20th and 21st centuries. In conversation with WGBH’s Jared Bowen, Glass will discuss his 40 years of composing operas, including In the Penal Colony.

MFA Boston, Remis Auditorium, 465 Huntington Avenue DESIGN PRESENTATION | IN THE PENAL COLONY THU. OCT. 28 at 12PM Join the creative team for an intimate conversation about the inspiration and motivation behind the BLO production of In the Penal Colony.

A benefit for Orfeo patrons at the Adagio level or above.

Visit BLO.org or call 617.542.4912 to learn more about donor benefits and make your donation today!

Kevin Burdette and Duncan Rock in BLO’s Don Giovanni

Boston Lyric Opera tackles this 400-year-old art form with an engaging, thought-provoking discussion of opera’s evolution and musical highlights, with performances by BLO artists from some of opera’s greatest works.

Boston Public Library, Central Branch in the Abbey Room, Copley Square, 700 Boylston Street

PHOTOGRAPH © MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

COURTESY OF STEWART COHEN

Puccini’s poetic masterpiece is reimagined against the electrifying backdrop of the 1968 Paris student revolution. Inspired by the films of the French New Wave, this vivid new production transports one of the world’s greatest love stories to a mythological Paris, fueled by sexual liberation, intense passion, and burning idealism.

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

Citi Performing Arts CenterSM Shubert Theatre

SIGNATURE SERIES | BRINDISI! ITALIAN AND FRENCH DRINKING SONGS FRI. DEC. 4 at 7PM | $80 members, $100 non-members.

Purchase online at mfa.org.

Presented by BLO in partnership with Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Indulge in the songs and musical toasts of the operatic repertoire and the café and bar culture of Italy and France. Start your evening with performances by BLO artists amidst the art of the MFA collection, then raise a glass with small bites and a discussion of the songs. Finally, sing along as BLO artists raise a final toast and invite you to join the music!

MFA Boston, European Galleries and Riley Seminar Room, 465 Huntington Avenue Above: Dance hall, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (French, born in Switzerland, 1859–1923), colored lithograph on card stock, gift of Leonard A. Lauder

KEEP UP TO DATE WITH EVERYTHING HAPPENING AT BLO ON OUR NEW WEBSITE, LAUNCHING THIS FALL!

WELCOME TO THE FIRST ISSUE OF CODA!

EDITORIAL STAFF Riley Cameron Catherine Emmons Kate Parsons Carrie Phillips Lacey Upton Eileen Williston CONTRIBUTORS David Angus John Conklin Nancy Leary Harlow Robinson Magda Romanska 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 EXTERNAL RELATIONS Riley Cameron 617.542.4912 x 290 | rcameron@blo.org COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Lacey Upton 617.542.4912 x242 | education@blo.org SPECIAL EVENTS Danielle Schmidt 617.542.4912 x229 | dschmidt@blo.org GROUP TICKETS Rebecca Kittredge 617.542.4912 x263 | boxoffice@blo.org For a full listing of BLO staff, please visit blo.org/about.

BLO’s programs are funded, in part, by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

As we begin our 39th Season, Boston Lyric Opera is delighted to launch this bi-annual magazine, dedicated to giving you opportunities to explore, learn, and engage with opera. In each issue, you’ll find dramaturgical articles about the operas in our Season to help give you insight, context, and understanding of the productions, behind-the-scenes information and interviews with cast and creative team members, and photos and visuals to spark your imagination. You can also visit us online at blo.org for more articles, information, and news.

But we also want to hear from you with your input and feedback. Please send any ideas or suggestions for what you’d like to see in the next issue to boxoffice@blo.org. We look forward to your contributions At BLO, we believe that opera is a vital expression of the human spirit, brought to you by the power of the acoustic voice. The 2015/16 Season contains an entire universe of emotion, from the joyous exuberance of young love to the despair of love denied, the darkness of obsession to the sparkle and heat of flirtation. In this fall issue, we delve into the first two operas of the Season: Puccini’s beloved classic, La Bohème, and the unsettling, thoughtprovoking chamber opera by Philip Glass, In the Penal Colony.

Andiamo!

Esther Nelson Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director

Coda

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noun \ co·da \ ‘ko¯-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 Life is Elsewhere: May 1968 in France ..................................................................... 2 High Five: Get to Know La Bohème in Five Minutes or Less............................... 4 Philip Glass: An Operatic Life ................................................................................. 5 High Five: Get to Know In the Penal Colony in Five Minutes or Less ................. 7 Bohème Meets 1968: Insights from the Designers................................................. 8 Timeline: A New Production Comes to Life ........................................................ 10 Shipping up to Boston: Kelly Kaduce Returns to BLO ........................................12 The Historical Context of La Bohème....................................................................13 Our Summer Photo Album .....................................................................................15 The Puccini Puzzle....................................................................................................16 Contributors ..............................................................................................................18 Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony ............................................................................19 Curtains ......................................................................................................................21

BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 1

“A great mass of youth was suddenly center stage...idealistic and self righteous, excited, inflamed and zealous, but humorous, self aware and even whimsical...”

– Jean-Pierre Le Goff

A

BY MAGDA ROMANSK

— May 1968 in France

T

he year 1968 saw many protests, for a variety of reasons, around the globe. In France, the student anti-government occupation protests began as a way of challenging the old order, including capitalism and a consumerist culture, as well as the country’s bourgeois values and its violent colonial and nationalistic legacy. The students were soon joined by union workers, artists, and intellectuals, and eventually civil unrest brought the entire country’s economy to a halt. More than 400 action committees were set up throughout Paris to register and fight government policies, including the Sorbonne Occupation Committee. Fearing escalating violence, President Charles de Gaulle fled the country for a few hours. The protests did indeed escalate, and the French government responded with a show of force, provoking even more demonstrations. On May 13, more than one million people marched through Paris after the major left union federations, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO), called for strikes and demonstrations.

The protests were spurred by general frustration with the French government’s disregard for the needs of students and workers, as well as growing dissatisfaction with the ruthless demands of the capitalist market economy and the inequality it created.

The demonstrators were inspired by the left-leaning Situationist International movement, a revolutionary group of avant-garde artists, intellectuals and activists who formed in 1957 to advocate an anti-establishment call to action. Prompted on one hand by Karl Marx’s critique of capitalist social alienation and commodity fetishism, and on the other by anti-bourgeois, avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century such as Dadaism and Surrealism, the Situationist International advocated a lifestyle

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unconstrained by the requirements of the marketplace, promoting leisure, artistic, and intellectual pursuits over moneymaking labor and business. They argued for the prioritization of genuine emotions and human interaction over the alienation of cold economic exchange. The two leaders of the movement, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, provided the theoretical framework for the May ’68 protests, and many demonstrators adopted their slogans and arguments. In their books Society of the Spectacle and The Revolution of Everyday Life, both published in 1967, Debord and Vaneigem respectively promote non-conformist thinking, and argue for the liberation of everyday life from the artifice of marketplace spectacle.

Although France’s May ’68 uprising was both economic and political, a festive, bohemian atmosphere surrounded the events, and many artistic happenings and performances took place along with the protests. There was also a component of sexual liberation involved, a response to the conservative morality of France’s middle class. The students were inspired by Dada and Surrealism, which advocated free thinking, free love and creativity unencumbered by the constraints of modern civilization and its discontents. One of the Surrealist slogans, “Life is Elsewhere,” became the rallying cry of the students and artists, who longed for a life free from the harsh reality of the capitalist marketplace.

Other famous slogans included: “Il est interdit d’interdire” (“It is forbidden to forbid”); “Jouissez sans entraves” (“Enjoy without hindrance”); and “Élections, piège à con” (“Elections, a trap for idiots”). The May 1968 protests had a tremendous impact on French politics and culture, and its repercussions are felt to this day.

“…A holy moment of liberation for many, when youth coalesced, the workers listened and the semiroyal French government of de Gaulle took fright.”

– Steven Erlanger, The New York Times

It began with students demanding the right to freely sleep with each other in their college rooms and ended in one of the greatest upheavals in French society since the Revolution. Quickly spreading from the University at Nanterre, to the Sorbonne, to the streets of Paris, it escalated to violent confrontations with the police—demonstrations, tear gas, barricades, cars overturned and burning. Factory workers joined the students, creating civil unrest and, at the height of its fervor, a nationwide general strike virtually brought the entire capitalist economy and the paternalistic, conservative de Gaulle government to a dramatic halt.

And then, after a few months, it seemed to evaporate. De Gaulle called for new parliamentary elections, the workers returned to their factories, the disillusioned students to the universities. After the elections, the Gaullist party was stronger than ever.

“France was saved…Utopia was cancelled.” – John Lichfield, The Independent

BY JOHN CONKLIN BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 3

KELLY KADUCE AS MIMÌ JESUS GARCIA AS RODOLFO Directed by Rosetta Cucchi and conducted

by David Angus, with sets by John Conklin and costumes by Nancy Leary.

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know La Bohème in Five Minutes or Less LA BOHÈME Music by Giacomo Puccini Libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa Based on Scènes de la Vie de Bohème by Henri Murger Length: Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, including 1 intermission SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS Four young men share a garret room: Rodolfo (a poet and filmmaker), Marcello (a painter), Colline (a philosopher), and Schaunard (a musician). Rodolfo meets a young woman named Mimì, and the two fall quickly in love. As the friends gather at the Momus—a student hangout and revolutionary club—Musetta, Marcello’s old girlfriend, decides to get her lover back.

The two love affairs go on. Musetta and Marcello argue intensely.

Mimì decides she must leave Rodolfo because of his jealousy.

Rodolfo confesses to Marcello that he must break off the affair because Mimì is dying and he has no money to care for her. She overhears him and bids him a tearful farewell, but the two lovers agree to stay together at least until the spring.

Three months later, both couples have separated. Musetta appears at the garret with Mimì, whom she has found desperately ill, wandering the streets.

THE SOURCE Henri Murger wrote a series of sketches depicting young, bohemian artists living in the Latin Quarter in Paris in the 1840s.

Though initially not successful, he and a collaborator adapted these vignettes into a play in 1849, focusing on the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimì. The play became an international hit.

Puccini took up the story and adapted it further into his opera La Bohème, which premiered in 1896 at the Teatro Regio. Though its critical reception was initially lukewarm, La Bohème quickly gained favor with audiences and today is considered one of the most popular and beloved works of the operatic repertoire.

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SO, WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW? It’s all about the music with this one. The story of La Bohème, on its face, is simple and universal: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they part, and girl dies young. Anyone who has been through the experience of first love (and even those who haven’t yet!) can relate. Yet through sweeping melodies and lush orchestration, Puccini brilliantly brings to life a broad spectrum of emotion from the energy of youthful idealism and hope, to the romantic, joyous sweep of falling in love, to the aching despair of Mimì and Rodolfo’s final parting. Don’t forget to bring your tissues.

Want to know more about La Bohème’s music and history?

Check out “The Puccini Puzzle” on page 16.

THE BLO PRODUCTION For the Season-opening new production, stage director Rosetta Cucchi updates Bohème from the late 19th century to the Paris student riots of 1968, amidst a revolution fueled by timeless bohemian ideals, sexual liberation, drug experimentation, and burning idealism. Want to learn more about the updated setting and designs? Set designer John Conklin and costumer designer Nancy Leary share their perspectives and a sneak peek at designs on page 8.

FUN FACTS • After the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo (who wrote the opera Pagliacci) found out that Puccini was working on La Bohème, a subject that Leoncavallo had already begun setting to music, he was furious and alerted the press that he had started his opera first. Puccini clearly won the battle of public opinion, and Leoncavallo’s Bohème is rarely performed today, but the dispute between the two composers endured—in fact, from then on, Puccini generally referred to Leoncavallo (which translates to “lion-horse”) as “Leonasino” (“lion-ass”).

• “Musetta’s Waltz” is one of the most recognizable arias from La Bohème, but did you know that Puccini had used it before?

He first created the melody as part of a piano composition which was adapted to commemorate the launching of a battleship, before finally finding its perfect home in Musetta’s brash and endearing introduction at the Café Momus.

Nefertiti, Walt Disney, Columbus, Martin Luther King, Robert E. Lee, Einstein, Gandhi, Galileo, Stephen Hawking, and so on: What composer has managed to weave such an astonishingly disparate set of figures into his operas? Yet the range merely illustrates the scope, the variety, the endless curiosity and exploration of the protean Philip Glass. His 26 operas (the exact number count varies, as he plays extensively in the borders between genres) form an unassailable place at the center of contemporary opera—and of course, there certainly are more to come. In the website Operabase’s statistical listing for the seasons 200914, his operas take first place in the category of performances of works by a living composer by a wide margin (Glass came in at 79, compared to 29

by Jake Heggie and 28 by John Adams). The Fall of the House of Usher is his most-performed opera.

AN OPERATIC LIFE

BY JOHN CONKLIN

H

e has set libretti in a multitude of languages—Sanskrit, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew, Akkadian. He has set texts drawn from such figures as Allen Ginsberg, Doris Lessing, Edgar Allan Poe, and Franz Kafka (In the Penal Colony, of course, but also The Trial). He finds a vital compositional energy in close and ongoing collaborations with directors, designers, performers, and conductors such as Robert Wilson, Martin Scorsese, and Ravi Shankar. He writes in a wide range of compositional genres: nine symphonies, plus chamber music, concerti, movie scores (earning three Academy Award nominations), song cycles, music for dance, incidental theater music. He is a sympathetic, relaxed, and eloquent speaker and a skilled writer. His recent book, Words Without Music, is a unique combination of intriguing autobiography (including anecdotes on studying at Juilliard and then with Nadia Boulanger, driving a taxi, hanging out in New York City in the ‘60s, the trials and delights of becoming a “famous” composer, and more), a fascinating glimpse into the musical intricacy of his compositions, a sobering study of how a contemporary “serious” musician can (or cannot) make a living, and, as Laurie Anderson puts it, “his transcendent vision of human culture as the transmission of ideas through time.” 

Composer Philip Glass, Florence, 1993 PASQUALE SALERNO

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GLA Rehearsal for the Swiss premiere of In the Penal Colony at the Theater der Künste in Zürich, May 2011.

JOHANNES DIETSCHI

“Growing up in the world of ‘progressive’ theater as I did, and experiencing it in the ways I have, theater has always meant to me something quite different: a kind of experience that even today is viewed as anything but traditional….What has always stirred me is theater that challenges one’s ideas of society, one’s notions of order.”

- FROM WORDS WITHOUT MUSIC: A MEMOIR, WRITTEN BY PHILIP GLASS

“I have often said that I became an opera composer by accident. I never set out to become one, and even today I use the word ‘opera’ with reluctance. In the 1950s, when I was a music student, I dutifully studied the standards of the opera repertory, and I made regular visits to the old Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway at 39th Street….Not in a million years would it have occurred to me that I might someday write an opera myself, let alone spend the greater part of my adult working life in the theater.”

- FROM MUSIC BY PHILIP GLASS, WRITTEN BY PHILIP GLASS; EDITED AND WITH SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL BY ROBERT T. JONES 6 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015

To end on a more personal note, I have had the great pleasure myself to collaborate with Philip on two occasions. In 1990, he composed music for the chorus in a production of The Bacchae, a production of the Public Theater in Central Park that I designed.

The compositions were complex, difficult, and summoned up a vision of the exaltation and terror of the Greek theater at its most powerful.

I also worked closely with him, the director JoAnne Akalaitis, and the costume and lighting designers Susan Hilferty and Jennifer Tipton on the world premiere of In the Penal Colony, given in Seattle and subsequently in New York City. He was at all times both rigorous and open, generous of spirit and just a great guy to sit down with and have a talk (about anything). JoAnne had an idea to introduce Kafka as a character, speaking text from his diary, and after much discussion (it significantly altered the form and rhythm of the piece), he embraced the idea. There was also inevitably much talk about how to represent the “machine” on stage. I remember gingerly suggesting perhaps the movements of members of the string quintet, as they played the driving score with its almost obsessive energy, might “be” the visual manifestation of the machine. This was seriously considered but, in the end, discarded. I was always impressed by Philip’s genuine ability to understand and to absorb any ideas of his fellow collaborators into the spirit of the production…even if in this case, my idea embarrassingly equated his music with a terrifying instrument of torture. Perhaps I had not thought the implications out thoroughly, but Philip just smiled generously.

HIGH FIVE:

Get to Know In the Penal Colony in 5 Minutes or Less IN THE PENAL COLONY Music by Philip Glass Libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer Based on “In the Penal Colony” (“In der Strafkolonie”)

by Franz Kafka Length: Approximately 80 minutes SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS A Visitor arrives at a remote penal colony to witness the execution of a prisoner. The Officer in charge describes a machine, invented by the former Commander. It slowly carves a description of his crime into the flesh of the condemned, who has heretofore not been informed of the exact nature of his transgression, and, after hours of torture, kills him. Devoted to the ideals of the old Commander, the Officer is obsessed with the machine and what he calls the transfiguring moment of redemption that is given to the victim as he gradually comes to understand the nature of his crime. The Visitor is appalled by this description but feels he has no right to interfere. The Officer deplores the fact that the machine has not been properly maintained due to the negative attitude of the new Commander. But when he realizes that the Visitor will not support him in his report, he frees the prisoner and climbs into the machine, which begins to horribly malfunction and break apart, denying him any moment of redemption or transcendence.

THE SOURCE Franz Kafka published “In der Strafkolonie” in October of 1919 in Leipzig, and it was translated and published in English in 1941. The short story is available for free through the public domain, so to read it in all of its unsettling and provocative glory, visit en.wikisource.org and search for “In the Penal Colony.”

THE OPERA Composer Philip Glass worked on the idea for In the Penal Colony with his longtime collaborator and former wife, JoAnne Akalaitis, for several years before receiving a commission from A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) in Seattle. The opera premiered at ACT on August 31, 2000, directed by Akalaitis, with a libretto

by Rudy Wurlitzer and set designs by John Conklin. Does that name sound familiar? It should! In addition to earning awards and critical praise for his theatre and opera set designs around the country and abroad, John Conklin has served as Artistic Advisor to BLO since 2009. This Season, he designs three new

productions for BLO: La Bohème, Werther, and The Merry Widow, as well as contributing dramaturgical pieces to BLO’s magazine, program books and website.

WHAT ABOUT THE MUSIC? Philip Glass is famous for what is commonly known as “minimal music,” though he dislikes the term and prefers “music with repetitive structures.” Either way, Glass is considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His operas include Einstein on the Beach, Akhnaten, and Satyagraha. He has also garnered praise for film scores (including The Hours and Kundun), symphonies, collaborations with pop musicians, and much more.

Check out “Philip Glass: An Operatic Life” on page 5.

LET’S TALK ABOUT KAFKA Born to a middle-class, Jewish family in Prague, Franz Kafka studied to be a lawyer and spent most of his career processing claims for an insurance company, though he considered writing his true calling. “In the Penal Colony” is one of the few pieces that was published during Kafka’s lifetime, in 1919. Some of Kafka’s best-known works include The Trial, a novel about a man arrested for an unknown cause by a remote, cold authority, and “The Metamorphosis,” a short story favored by English teachers and professors everywhere, about an average salesman who wakes one day to find himself transformed into a huge, insect-like creature.

THE BLO PRODUCTION BLO’s premiere of In the Penal Colony runs November 11-15 at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts in Boston’s South End. Built in 1884, the Cyclorama first housed a 400by-50 foot cyclorama painting commemorating the Battle of Gettysburg by French artist Paul Philippoteaux. Over the years, the building has been the venue for a carousel, roller skating, horseback riding, boxing, and more. For nearly 50 years, it served as the site of the Boston Flower Exchange. Today, the Cyclorama welcomes events such as trade shows, weddings, corporate gatherings, galas, and theatre. In the Penal Colony will be the first professional opera at the Cyclorama since 1970, when Boston’s legendary director and impresario Sarah Caldwell presented Charpentier’s Louise.

FUN FACTS • The adjective Kafkaesque first entered the vernacular in 1947, as published in The New Yorker magazine, and is used to describe situations that are nightmarish, disorienting, illogical, and complex, especially when having to do with bureaucracy or official systems.

• Kafka published little during his lifetime and requested that the remainder of his manuscripts be destroyed upon his death in 1924 at the age of 40. Luckily for literary minds everywhere, his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, ignored the request and published the bulk of his work in the decade following his death.

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“Our principal characters reflect the original roles in that they are struggling, disillusioned young adults trying to assert their ideals, foster change, and in the process fall in and out of love….The social time and place created a maelstrom of student activity, which ended in shutdowns, protests, debates, and marches that marked the very beginning of France’s alignment with the social ACT II change happening in the western hemisphere.”

- NANCY LEARY, LA BOHÈME COSTUME DESIGNER

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MUSETTA

RODOLFO

SCHAUNARD

ACT I

BY JOHN CONKLIN La Bohème is, without question, one of the most popular operas, both literally in number of performances but also in familiarity, recognizability, and depth of affection. To its great advantage, it takes place in Paris, a milieu that is always compelling.

Puccini and his librettists, basing the story on the 1851 novel by Murger, called for a Paris of the 1830s (the Paris of Balzac and Delacroix). Other productions have evoked late-19th-century Paris and the Belle Époque; others have sought inspiration in Atget, Brassaï, or Utrillo, or the desperate years of World War I.

MIMÌ

ACT III

“I am most excited to see the evolution of Mimì’s character come to life. She represents the marginalized: those living without hope of a better future in 1968 France under the leadership of an outdated, formal government. Her innocence and purity of heart in the end bring her back to those she truly loves. For me, she has the greatest character development of all the principal characters in this libretto.”

Paris is a city that lends itself to the complications and timeless qualities of myth, and by now Bohème itself carries a mythical aura as well. So why has BLO chosen to surround the story of young artists, love, and death with the visual images and narrative thrust of the Paris of 1968, the Paris of a massive civil revolution, which arose out of student unrest and desire? That troubled and violent historical era itself has become a kind of myth: the heroic and, in the end, seemingly futile struggle between fervent youth and the tired clichés of the establishment, between idealism and the convenient, between freedom and repression...and ultimately between a life fully lived and the inevitable closure of death. Is this not the narrative and the emotional story of Bohème?

SET Act I: The Garret | (Official pronouncements: This Building Is Condemned No Trespassing; Unofficial graffiti: It Is Forbidden To Forbid. We Are Here!) A portrait of Godard, a placard of Che, and a movie poster for Masculin Féminin line the walls.

The furniture has been gathered from what was discarded on the street or stolen from flea markets.

Act II: The Demonstration | Transformed from the ordinary street parade led by a drum major of the traditional Bohème to an incendiary rally…“Revolution Now!” Act III: The Barricade | Generally depicted as an official tollbooth or checkpoint, in the BLO production this becomes an impulsive barricade thrown up by the students to defend themselves and to defy the police. The banal objects of daily life now become a kind of sacrificial altar.

COSTUMES Schaunard, Act I, just before he treats the group of bohemians to an evening at the Café Momus; Rodolfo; Musetta steals the scene in Act II at the Café Momus; Mimì in the opera’s first act, as she meets her love, Rodolfo.

Early set design sketches by John Conklin Costume design sketches by Nancy Leary

- NANCY LEARY, LA BOHÈME COSTUME DESIGNER BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 9

PUTTING TOGETHER A NEW PRODUCTION AT BOSTON LYRIC OPERA REQUIRES A STRONG ARTISTIC VISION, THE COORDINATION OF DOZENS OF PEOPLE, THREE YEARS OF INTENSIVE WORK, AND A BUDGET OF APPROXIMATELY ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

How does it all come together? Check out this timeline of the process that happens behind the scenes, all leading up to Opening Night.

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YEARS: OPERA SELECTION BLO’s senior leadership team begins to select the operas in a given Season, balancing budgetary considerations, artistic goals, singer availability, and venue schedules. The process of researching options, creating projections, and passionate debating can take months.

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YEARS: CONCEPT & VISION The team has chosen an opera! But what will the new production of it look like? BLO Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson and Artistic Advisor John Conklin are especially instrumental in deciding the concept and vision behind each new production, as is input from the stage director. These early conversations help shape not only that individual opera, but the entire Season.

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YEARS: CASTING Here’s when we start focusing on one of the most important elements of any opera production—the singers. Often, BLO will have certain singers in mind for particular leading roles, either singers who have had a successful run with the Company before or who are excellent candidates for making a Boston debut. If those ideas do not pan out, Director of Artistic Operations Nicholas Russell issues his “shopping list” of available roles to agents and managers.

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MONTHS: AUDITIONS BLO holds its largest round of auditions in November each year in New York City, followed by a smaller round in Boston for local singers. BLO’s artist database, which was started early in Russell’s tenure in the fall of 2008, currently contains notes and records on 4,879 singers—and will be even larger by the time this article goes to print.

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MONTHS: CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS The Company has spent the past six months to a year in creative brainstorming with the stage director and design team of the new production, hearing their ideas and refining the concept. Now, it’s time to lock it all down. Design and production contracts are fully executed and submitted by the 14-month mark.

11 Citi Center Performing Arts CenterSM Shubert Theatre IMAGE COURTESY OF CITI PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

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MONTHS: CONCEPT MEETING With the full design team in place, the Company holds what’s known as a white model concept meeting, where they see the architectural shape of the scenic design, research, and conceptual elements showing the shape and scope of the creative team’s vision for the production.

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MONTHS: SET DESIGN The Production department reviews the set designer’s drawings and whether they can be realized within the Company’s budget and time constraints. The designer makes changes based on that report and begins the process of turning his or her drawings into detailed architectural plans.

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MONTHS: PRODUCTION DESIGN The final plans for both set design and costume sketches are due, and the Company holds a last design meeting to present everything—along with a detailed, 3D model—to the full team and BLO staff. Now that the set elements have been put in place, the lighting designer can begin creating a light plot, a process that takes about two months.

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DAYS: SET CONSTRUCTION BLO works primarily with the scenic shop of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge to build its sets, a full-service shop that includes metal, woodworking, and painting. Cast measurements and costume designs are sent to Costume Works, a Somerville company that specializes in the fabrication of theatrical costumes.

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DAYS: FIRE DEPARTMENT REVIEW Samples of the materials, treated with flameretardant, that will comprise the set are sent to Boston Fire Department for review and approval, a process that all theatrical presentations must undergo.

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DAYS: REHEARSAL PREP With rehearsals about to start, the Production department loads into the rehearsal space. They bring in and set up everything that’s needed for the rehearsal process, including tables, rehearsal props, mock costume pieces, pianos, and more.

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DAYS: REHEARSALS BEGIN Singers, music staff, and artists assemble and begin the work of performance—but there is still much to do behind the scenes. Russell and Nelson stop in at rehearsal usually once per day to see how things are progressing.

Meanwhile, construction of sets and costumes ramps up, as they only have two weeks before...

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DAYS: THEATRE LOAD-IN …load-in begins! The Shubert Theatre, BLO’s primary home, is a “four-walls rental house,” meaning that only the theatre space comes with the rental—every other piece, from lights to tables to tape, must be provided by BLO. BLO hires a crew of about 32 stage, props, and lighting professionals to execute the load-in and tech process, who will work 2,883 manhours in the 10 days leading up to Opening Night.

For Opera Annex productions, load-in is more complicated; BLO must construct a theatre in a non-traditional space in addition to the regular process of loading in the scenic elements, meaning that BLO builds risers, sets up audience chairs, and creates a lighting grid, all before the opera’s set can begin to fit together onstage.

Rehearsals don’t stop, either. The Production and Artistic departments must work hand-in-hand in the space, trading off construction time seamlessly with rehearsal time so that the singers can feel comfortable and refine their performances.

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DAYS: ORCHESTRA The first full orchestra rehearsal is held, usually without the singers. Two days later, the orchestra and the singers come together for their first full rehearsal. This, the Sitzprobe (“seated rehearsal”), is a full run-through of the opera in the theatre without any staging so that the singers and musicians can concentrate fully on the music and coming together under the direction of the conductor, before they add in elements of acting, costumes, blocking, lights, and more.

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DAYS: FINAL DRESS REHEARSAL After the intensity of tech and days of full run-throughs, we’ve come to the Final Dress Rehearsal. High school and college groups, selected donors and BLO Board members, and industry professionals fill the theatre for the artists’ opportunity to perform full-out before the official opening. It’s also the last chance for the stage director, conductor, and stage crew to make adjustments or perfect changes.

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DAY: REST The day before Opening, there are no rehearsal or load-in activities scheduled—it’s a much-needed day of rest!

DAYS: OPENING NIGHT! Opening Night, followed by a party for cast and crew!

All the hard work and preparations lead to this moment.

Once the opera opens, it is considered complete and done. No additional changes will be made, and the director and designers generally depart after the Opening Night festivities. BLO holds five performances in the Shubert Theatre over the course of two weeks, or, for Opera Annex productions, four performances over the course of one week.

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DAYS LATER: CLOSING PERFORMANCE Closing performance—always bittersweet. BLO closes its productions on Sundays with a matinee performance, and the process of loading out of the theatre begins immediately after the final curtain. A crew of 44 swarm the stage to pack and load all theatrical elements into trucks, bound for a storage warehouse in Avon, MA. In just eight short hours, the last truck leaves the theatre, and BLO staff turn off the lights in the Shubert on their way out—until the next time.

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SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON:

KELLY KADUCE RETURNS TO BLO This summer, we sat down with soprano Kelly Kaduce, who returns to BLO to sing the role of Mimì in the Season-opening new production.

Read on for selections from our talk, and check out blo.org/video to view more!

BLO: Welcome back to Boston, Kelly! How does it feel to be coming back?

Kelly Kaduce: I haven’t been back to Boston in a while. I went to Boston University to get my Master’s [degree] and I’m so excited to be back. The city has changed so much. It’s really beautified, and it even starts off at the airport. I couldn’t believe it when I got off the plane that I was in the same airport that [I] used many years ago! It’s a fantastic city.

BLO: Can you talk about your previous experiences at BLO? KK: Boston is a special place for me. It’s where I really started my career. I won the Met [National Council Auditions] competition from this city in 1999 and started singing with BLO. I believe my first role was Mimì in La Bohème, and then I came back for [the title role of] Thaïs, and the last thing I performed here was CioCio-San in Madama Butterfly.

BLO: And where do you live now?

KK: I was born and raised in Minnesota. I’ve kind of lived around Boston and New York, but I currently live in Houston. My husband is a Houstonian. We have a four-year-old little boy, who is a total handful….We’ve decided to keep a little scrapbook for our son because certainly he’ll never remember all the places we’ve dragged him. I’m so excited to bring him back to Boston because this is one place he’s never been, and I can’t wait to show him all the little spots that I love.

Kelly Kaduce performs in the title role in BLO’s 2006 production of Thaïs.

THAÏS, JEFFREY DUNN FOR BLO © 2006 KELLY KADUCE, DEVON CASS

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BLO: What’s exciting about singing Mimì again?

KK: The Italians have a saying about La Bohème [that translates to] “You don’t study the opera, you just know it.” It’s kind of a badge that all opera singers wear—and conductors. Everybody knows it and it speaks so true to any artist’s life, especially a singer. When you’re first starting out, you have no money and it’s something you dearly love and are passionate about. You don’t really care if you’re living in squalor, and I think we as artists can really relate to La Bohème. It’s always a pleasure to come to it, and the music is undeniably beautiful.

BLO: Tell us a little bit about the experience of doing the Baz Luhrmann production of La Bohème. Did you and Jesus [Garcia, singing Rodolfo in the BLO production] ever cross paths?

KK: I was also part of Baz Luhrmann’s La Bohème that was on Broadway. I was not in the original Broadway cast, but I joined the New York production, I think around Christmastime, and did several performances. I met Jesus Garcia at that point and we did a few rehearsals, but we never performed together. Then I headlined the cast when they took the show to Los Angeles….It was exciting, it was thrilling, it was a fresh, new take on La Bohème acting-wise, emotionally, and it was an experience that has always stayed with me through my whole career….I was proud to be part of that and [I’m] really excited to come back and work with Jesus, since we never had an opportunity in the past.

BY MAGDA ROMANSKA Written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, the libretto of Puccini’s La Bohème is based on Henry Murger’s mid-19th-century series of sketches, Scènes de la Vie de Bohème. First published in 1847–49, in the periodical Le Corsair-Satan, Murger’s stories were based on his personal experience of living in the Latin Quarter of Paris, among students and artists, in the 1840s.

Historically, Bohemia, a region that today belongs to the Czech Republic, was inhabited in large part by the Gypsies, whose transient, nomadic lifestyle was seen as symbolizing the trials and tribulations of the artistic life. Although the vagabond life of Bohemia’s Roma people was marred by frequent persecutions, it was also romanticized and idealized in the European artistic imagination. In Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, scholar Elizabeth Wilson notes that real-life Bohemia was seen as a “mythical country,” an alternative universe in which traditional rules and values could be easily discarded.

From top: The café-concert at Les Ambassadeurs, pastel on monotype by Edgar Degas, c. 1877; The Café-Concert, oil on canvas by Édouard Manet, c. 1879

The 19th-century bohemian class emerged in France in opposition to its well-established and well-to-do bourgeoisie.

Disillusioned and embittered by the defeat of Napoleon, the French bourgeoisie, with its strict and nationalistic morality, no longer held appeal for the younger generation, who rejected their parents’ patriotic and economic priorities. As scholar Mike Sell notes, “the bohemian counterculture served…to protect the interest and express the resistance of those marginalized by the modernizing, capitalizing, counterrevolutionary nation-state.”

The bohemian appeared at the crossroads between the Romantic ideal of artistic genius and the limitations of the newly-developing capitalist system. Unlike in previous eras, artists could no longer depend on wealthy aristocratic patronage and had to rely on the same middle-class economy as the merchant class. Thus, the bohemian class was caught in a contradiction: on one hand, it aimed to transgress the constraints of the bourgeois lifestyle; on the other, it relied on middle-class market rules for sustenance.  BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 13

POSTER BY ADOLF HOHENSTEIN, 1896, PUBLISHED BY G. RICORDI & CO.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas by Édouard Manet, c. 1882

Puccini’s opera and Murger’s vignettes captured a very particular and fleeting period in Parisian history. Puccini set his Bohème in the 1830s, and at that time, the city was experiencing an influx of people from the countryside and other towns in search of jobs.

Home to a population 40% larger than at the turn of the century, Paris and its infrastructure were strained beyond its capacities.

Only 20% of its buildings were connected to a water supply, and many tenants shared common lavatories, which were emptied every night by 2,300 night-soil carts. Cramped quarters and tight architecture were conducive to frequent interactions, spurring both creative and emotional connections.

To escape the poverty and claustrophobic living conditions, many working-class women, like Mimì and Musetta, turned to prostitution, either walking the streets or working at one of the city’s nearly 200 registered brothels. In The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830–1870, Victoria Thompson argues that throughout the 19th century, women were increasingly excluded from the marketplace, and that all women who were engaged in commerce were suspected of prostitution or other less-than-honorable dealings. Money was a dirty business, and eventually “it was assumed that virtuous women could not produce 14 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015

wealth.” Thus, the only way for a woman to gain financial stability was through either marriage or concubinage. A poor, bohemian artist like Rudolfo was in no position to be a suitable breadwinner.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, Parisian coffeehouses became gathering places for what contemporary American philosopher Michael Warner calls “subaltern counterpublics”—members of marginal groups such as artistic and literary bohemians, sexual pariahs, and those operating on the borders of legality.

Spending their time in coffeehouses—often to escape their unheated apartments—many painters and writers of the era depicted the complex and seductive café life in their artworks and novels. In the 1870s, for example, both Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet completed series of drawings and sketches of Parisian café nightlife, illustrating all of its multilayered glory, from its glamour, decadence, and allure to the fundamental isolation of its many lone attendees looking to connect.

By the 1860s, much of the quaint, artistic Parisian landscape had been bulldozed on the orders of Baron Haussmann, town planner and Prefect of the Seine. Although the life of the Parisian bohème continued, things had changed.

Puccini statue, decorated with flowers, Corte San Lorenzo at Lucca, Italy

RICHARD TULLOCH

Bohemians were rebellious, flamboyant, loud, and seemingly shameless, often blurring the line between private and public life.

Murger himself describes them as those who have “given evidence to the public of their existence.” Sociologist Dick Hebdidge called them one of the “spectacular subcultures,” and historian Mary Gluck noted that the bohème was “performed through gestures, clothes, lifestyle, and interior decoration.” Parisian bohemians in particular were inspired in their fashion by “Gothic novels, fashionable romances, romantic dramas, and melodramas, whose colorful images saturated the world of popular culture.”

LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY

OUR SUMMER PHOTO ALBUM

2015/16 has been a busy season at Boston Lyric Opera already!

From getting to know our supporters to performing around the city to enjoying students’ original operas, we’re going into the fall knowing that opera is thriving in Boston.

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8 LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY

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1. BLO presented Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano, in recital as part of July’s Outside the Box Festival on Boston Common. 2. BLO Board members Michael Puzo and Steven Akin (left and right) visit with supporters Carol Taylor and John Deknatel (center) at the annual Orfeo Society event in June. 3-5. Boston-area teachers explored the process of composing an original opera and integrating opera into the classroom during BLO’s 5th annual Music! Words! Opera! Teacher Workshop, August 3-7, 2015. 6. Hennigan School students performing their original opera at the Boston Public Schools Arts Festival on Boston Common. 7. Tenor Omar Najmi and mezzo-soprano Heather Gallagher perform a free children’s concert in the iconic courtyard of the Boston Public Library. 8. Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director of BLO, Esther Nelson (second from left) poses with BLO artists Kelly Kaduce, singing Mimì in La Bohème, James Myers, rehearsal coach/pianist, and Roger Honeywell, this Season’s Count Danilo in The Merry Widow (left to right).

9. Crowds gather on Boston Common to watch Jennifer Johnson Cano in recital, accompanied by Christopher Cano, during July’s Outside the Box Festival.

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oday, an operatic world without Puccini’s La Bohème seems as unthinkable as a Christmas without The Nutcracker. The most often performed of the composer’s operas, and among the most popular works in the repertoire, it has attracted some of the greatest singers of all time (Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, to name only two) to the juicy leading role of the impoverished, tubercular seamstress Mimì. La Bohème was one of the first operas to be recorded and has been staged in every way imaginable in all the world’s major houses.

Hollywood has often plundered its music, most notably in a key romantic scene between Cher and Nicolas Cage in the 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck. This touching tale of struggling Parisian artists even inspired a smash hit Broadway musical, Rent.

But the reviews of the premiere in Turin on February 1, 1896, did not seem to predict such enduring success. Local critic Carlo Bersezio predicted that La Bohème would not survive, a view shared by many other industry insiders. Audiences, however, loved the show, so much so that the initial production ran for 24 sold-out performances. This sharp divide between the negative critical and academic reception and the positive popular one has followed La Bohème (and most of Puccini’s other operas, for that matter)

THE PUCCINI ever since. Composers, critics, and musicologists have repeatedly accused Puccini of pandering to lowbrow, middle-class taste and of shameless manipulation of his audience. “To some younger Italian contemporaries, the name Puccini seems to have assumed honorary status as a four-letter word,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker write in their guide to La Bohème.

The anti-Puccini forces received powerful ammunition from the grumpy musicologist Joseph Kerman in his influential 1956 book Opera As Drama. Here, he dismisses Puccini’s operas as “secondrate stuff ” and famously condemns Tosca (completed four years after La Bohème) as “that shabby little shocker.” Take that, Giacomo.

So what explains this drastic divergence of views?

Puccini, April 1908 A. DUPONT

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In her book The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism and Modernity, Alexandra Wilson observes that the explanation lies primarily in the political/cultural environment in Italy and Europe around the time of the opera’s premiere. Puccini (1858-1924) wrote his major operas during a period perio of considerable turmoil and

social change. Italy had only recently (in 1870) been unified into a single nation, and Italian intellectuals and artists were struggling to define what Italian culture should be. For many of them, Puccini’s operas—especially La Bohème, with its French source and Parisian setting—weren’t “Italian” enough, and his musical style was dismissed as too “international” and “decadent.”

Even worse, his characters had a heroism deficit. It was generally acknowledged that Puccini’s female characters—especially Mimì and Tosca—upstaged his men, providing fuel for the oft-repeated claim that he was too “feminine” at a time when Italian culture was striving to become more masculine and nationalistic. To some, the characters of La Bohème were trivial and weak—pathetic losers.

One critic even called them “invertebrates,” and others insinuated that Puccini was homosexual (he was not). Wilson links such objections to a rise in anti-feminist, misogynist attitudes in Italy at the time, which would eventually lead to the fascist nationalism of Mussolini.

Critics also relentlessly compared Puccini to the two operatic giants of the age—his Italian countryman Giuseppe Verdi on the one hand (who died in 1901) and the German Richard Wagner on

PUZZLE the other. His operas didn’t have Verdi’s patriotism and strength, or Wagner’s musical complexity and depth, they complained.

At a time when the Modernist movement was sweeping across Europe and Wagner’s operas were becoming better known in Italy, Puccini’s style seemed conservative and passé. Filippo Marinetti, strident leader of the Italian Futurist movement, attacked his operas as the equivalent of musical “junk food.”

But none of this intellectual verbiage stopped audiences from loving La Bohème. In fact, it likely encouraged them. The opera’s seductive blend of humanity and nostalgia, its poignant portrayal of tender first love, its very real and humble characters (so different from the remote kings, queens and gods populating many operas), and its glorious flood of symphonic and vocal lyricism—these features never fail to move and enlighten audiences. Today, as in the past, Puccini’s “passionate feeling for life” (as novelist Heinrich Mann put it) continues to seduce and fascinate.

A NOTE FROM DAVID ANGUS, BLO MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR OF LA BOHÈME, ON ITS MUSIC: For me, the word that sums up Puccini’s music is passion. The surges of emotion that ebb and flow through his romantic music appeal directly to the listeners’ hearts, whether or not they know anything about music. He knows exactly how to allow a singer to soar over the orchestra in wonderful lyrical lines, and he plays with our emotions with his gorgeous twists of harmony. What so many critics fail to observe is what an extremely masterful composer Puccini was—exquisite touches of orchestration, tremendous driving energy, subtle harmonizations that tug at the heart strings. Suddenly we can all identify with the real pain and happiness that the people on stage are experiencing, and, without any intellectual pretensions, we laugh and cry with them.

BY HARLOW ROBINSON BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2015 | 17

LIVE PERFORMANCES DAILY.

Left to right, top to bottom:

Bob Oakes Tom Ashbrook Jeremy Hobson Robin Young Lisa Mullins Bill Littlefield Anthony Brooks Meghna Chakrabarti www.wbur.org

On-air, online and at live events, WBUR is your source for what’s happening in Boston and around the world.

CODA CONTRIBUTORS  John Conklin (pages 3, 5, 9) is an internationally recognized set designer and dramaturg. He has designed sets on and off-Broadway, at the Kennedy Center, and for opera companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Bastille Opera in Paris, the Royal Opera, and the opera houses of Munich, Amsterdam, and Bologna, among many others. Mr. Conklin is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School and has served as the Artistic Advisor to BLO since 2009.  Magda Romanska, Ph.D., (pages 2, 13, 19) BLO Dramaturg, is an award-winning theatre scholar and writer. She is Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy at Emerson College, and Research Associate at Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and Davis Center for Eastern European Studies.

 Harlow Robinson (page 16) is an author, lecturer, and the Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History at Northeastern University. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Opera News, Symphony, and other publications.

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NEAL FERREIRA AS VISITOR DAVID MCFERRIN AS OFFICER Directed by R. B. Schlather and conducted b Ryan Turner, with sets by Julia Noulin-Merat by and costumes by Terese Wadden.

BY MAGDA ROMANSKA

AMERICAN EDITION COVER BY GEORGE SALTER, 1937

Recognized as one of the leading writers of his era and as the foremost critic of modernity, Franz Kafka is primarily known for his nightmarish—“Kafkaesque”—worlds in which an individual is overpowered and ultimately destroyed by incomprehensible and indifferent bureaucratic structures. In Kafka’s literary universe, the concept of justice is warped, and all human actions prove futile in the face of the irrational and inhuman apparatus of the law.

Written in October 1914 and published four years later, Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” reflects the harrowing atmosphere of wartime Europe, entangled for the first time in the bureaucratically-administered, cold, and efficient process of mass destruction of unprecedented scale. During World War I, for the first time in history, European armies used chemical weapons, and the violence and devastation they caused left many soldiers severely handicapped and traumatized. Kafka’s story confronts the sheer absurdity and horror of the calculated, mechanical, detached cruelty that modern warfare had brought forth.

In addition to being a critique of the war machine in general, “In the Penal Colony” is also considered an allegorical commentary on European colonialism. For many centuries, major European countries, such as England, France and Belgium, managed their colonial outposts remotely through predatory and punitive policies, including slavery and forced labor in galleys and mines. The distant relationship between the Empires and their colonies made the administration of the colonizing policies even more dehumanizing, as the directives came from outside authorities and could not easily be altered or appealed. Many colonies, Australia for example, were also remote prison posts where Europe sent its prisoners and other outcasts. The process of colonization—the politics and economy of human exploitation—included the subjugation, objectification, and “othering” of the colonized in order to justify and perpetuate itself, and, as such, it trapped the colonized in the existentially impossible condition of self-abnegation. As the writer Franz Fanon argues, the colonized create a sense of self through the imaginary construct of the colonizer: “My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored.”

“In the Penal Colony” captures the coldhearted, mindless, unstoppable “banality of evil” that pervaded the administration of colonies. Because it is located far away from “other countries,” the unidentified penal colony is ruled by its own internal sense of justice: there is no possibility of recourse and no due process. The judgment and administration of a sentence rest with one man who has ultimate power of life and death over the island’s inhabitants. He doesn’t want to be troubled with an elaborate judicial process, and in his mind, “guilt is always beyond doubt.” Kafka wrote “In the Penal Colony” at the same time that he was writing The Trial, and the two stories share a similar sense of helplessness against the overwhelming machine of the law. In both stories, the law is inscrutable and irrational. In both stories, Kafka is also preoccupied with the concept of justice: how it’s defined, interpreted, and executed. As global events unfold in the 21st century, Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” reminds us about the fundamental limits and reach of the law and justice.

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In BLO’s 2011 production of The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits, Emperor Überall (background, Andrew Wilkowske, baritone) exults over the advancement of his worldwide war with his Loudspeaker, bass Kevin Burdette.

CURTAINS A LOOK BACK AT BLO’S PAST PRODUCTIONS

JEFFREY DUNN FOR BOSTON LYRIC OPERA © 2011

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11 Avenue de Lafayette Boston, MA 02111-1736

“WITH A NEW TEMPO, NEW AMBITIONS AND NEW CAPACITIES THAT PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF ITS REPERTOIRE, IT SHOULD BE FASCINATING TO SEE WHERE BLO GOES FROM HERE AS IT APPROACHES ITS 40TH ANNIVERSARY.” – The Boston Globe