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Missy Mazzoli Operas Breaking the Waves | Song from the Uproar Proving Up | A Flourish of Green | The Listeners

‘Mazzoli, certainly and happily, continues to show herself a natural opera composer: Her music responds keenly to the story’s time and place as well as to its characters’ respective journeys...’ Anne Midgette, Washington Post

Cover image: Caroline Tompkins

Missy Mazzoli’s talent draws audiences equally into concert halls, opera houses and rock clubs. Her work inhabits an exquisite sound-world that melds indierock sensibilities with formal training from Louis Andriessen, David Lang, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Richard Ayres. Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working” by The New York Times, her music has been performed worldwide by ensembles such as the BBC Symphony, Kronos Quartet, JACK Quartet, LA Opera, Roomful of Teeth, Crash Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, and Opera Philadelphia. Her music has been featured at festivals including the Edinburgh International Festival, Aspen Music Festival, BBC Proms, Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon, the Cabrillo Festival and the Gaudeamus New Music Festival (Amsterdam). Hailed as “among the best twenty-first-century American operas yet produced” by Opera News, Breaking the Waves, (2016) with librettist Royce Vavrek, was commissioned and premiered by Opera Philadelphia with Beth Morrison Productions and was awarded the inaugural Award for Best New Opera by the Music Critics Association of North America. A new production premieres in 2019 with Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival. Mazzoli and Vavrek’s opera Proving Up premiered at Washington National Opera (2018) and was co-commissioned by Opera Omaha and Miller Theater of Columbia University. Her multimedia chamber opera, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, has received numerous performances including those by BMP / LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Milwaukee Opera Theater, Chicago Fringe Opera and Musiktheatertage Wien. Recent works include Dark with Excessive Bright for solo double bass and strings (commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and London’s Aurora Orchestra); Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, expanded for the Boulder Philharmonic, Three Fragile Systems for Grand Band, Vesper Sparrow for Roomful of Teeth, You Know Me From Here for Kronos Quartet; and Bolts of Loving Thunder for Emanuel Ax. Mazzoli is currently Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony (2018-2020). She is on the composition faculty of the Mannes College of Music and a co-founder of Luna Composition Lab. An active pianist, Mazzoli performs with Victoire, an all-female quintet which is dedicated to her own compositions.

Introduction

Breaking the Waves An opera in three acts

Breaking the Waves An opera in three acts (2017) Libretto in English by Royce Vavrek. Duration

2 hours

Premiere

September 2016, Opera Philadelphia

Cast & Orchestration 2S, Mz, 2T, Bar, 3B-Bar, small men’s chorus of 12-14 singers; 1(pic).1.1.1(cbn)/1.0.1.0/perc/ pf(syn).hp.egtr/str

Synopsis Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, Breaking the Waves tells of Bess McNeill, a religious young woman with a deep love for her new husband Jan, a handsome oil rig worker. When Jan becomes paralyzed in an off-shore accident, Bess is put to the test as he encourages her to seek lovers and to tell him of her sexual activities. He insists that the stories will help keep him alive. Bess struggles to meet other people’s expectations and is torn between Jan’s desires, the disapproving eyes of the townspeople, her protective family and the extent of her own faith and fidelity. Her increasing selflessness leads to a finale of divine grace, but at great cost.

‘ Mazzoli has produced an opera as potent as its model...’ George Loomis, Musical America

‘ Mazzoli’s music lived up to the hype her work has engendered: Breaking the Waves stands among the best twenty-first-century American operas yet produced.’ David Shengold, Opera News

Breaking the Waves (Dominic M. Mercier)

‘ If opera is the art of emotional extremity, few subjects are as operatic as Breaking the Waves... It is not easy to find new operas that command attention, tell their story lucidly and create a powerful, permeating mood. Dark and daring, Breaking the Waves does all this with sensitivity and style.’ Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

‘Savage, heartbreaking, and thoroughly original...’ Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal

Song from the Uproar (James Matthew Daniel)

‘ The music skillfully evoked that passion through minimalist-style repetition, haunting melody, rhythmic variety... It was both powerful and new.’ Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal

‘ As revivified in composer Missy Mazzoli’s enthralling Song from the Uproar, Isabelle Eberhardt is no victim... Missy Mazzoli’s kaleidoscopic score begins with static and a metallic shudder, and embraces slithering cello lines for Isabelle’s erotic reveries and ghostly, echoing voices as she wanders the desert…’ Marion Lignana Rosenberg , Time Out New York

(2012) Libretto in English by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek. Duration

1 hour 15 minutes

Premiere

February 2012, The Kitchen, New York, NY

Cast & Orchestration Mz, SSATB chorus; fl(pic), cl(bcl), pf, egtr, db; electronics

Synopsis Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904) was an explorer, nomad, journalist, novelist, passionate romantic, Sufi, and one of the most unique and unusual women of her era. At age twenty, after the death of her mother, brother and father, she left her life in Switzerland for a nomadic and unfettered existence in the deserts of North Africa. She traveled extensively through the desert on horseback, often dressed as a man, relentlessly documenting her travels through detailed journals. At age twenty-seven Isabelle drowned in a flash flood in the desert. Song from the Uproar uses texts inspired by her writing to immerse the audience in the surreal landscapes of Isabelle’s life; she describes the death of her family, the thrill of her arrival in Africa, her tentative joy at falling in love, the elation of self-discovery and the mystery of death.

‘ In the electric surge of [the opera] you felt the joy, risk, and limitless potential of free spirits unbound.’ Steve Smith, The New York Times

Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt A chamber opera

Proving Up An opera

Proving Up An opera (2018) Libretto in English by Royce Vavrek. Based on a story by Karen Russell.

Duration

1 hour 10 minutes

Premiere

January 2018, Washington National Opera

Cast & Orchestration 2S, Mz, T, Bar, B-bar, non-singing role; 1(pic+hca).0.1(bcl+hca).1(cbn+hca)/perc/ 1.1(hca).0.0/hp.pf(hpd)/str(min 1.1.1.1.1); the percussion battery includes 7 suspended acoustic guitars

Synopsis Proving Up is an opera about the American Dream, told through the story of Nebraskan homesteaders in the 1870s. A family dreams of “proving up” and obtaining the deed to the land they’ve settled. They obsessively list the requirements of the Homestead Act: five years of harvest, a sod house dwelling, and perhaps the most elusive element – a glass window. With their eldest son incapacitated, Ma and Pa Zegner send their youngest living child Miles on a mission to share the valuable commodity with their distant neighbors who are expecting a visit from a government inspector. Miles mounts his gray mare with the window wrapped in burlap and gallops across the land. The elements, natural and otherwise, have other plans, and Miles comes face to face with a strange man who turns out to be the ghost of a neighboring farmer, driven mad by the requirements of “proving up.” The willowy figure knows all too well the cost of the American Dream, and the window soon becomes a broken mirror reflecting great tragedy.

Proving Up at Opera Omaha

‘ This weekend a new opera, Proving Up, proved itself indeed – a chamber opera worthy for the 21st century. Born out of a spirit of inquiry, Proving Up is mysterious, mesmerizing, startling in moments, and highly atmospheric.’ Susan Galbraith, DC Theatre Scene

‘ As powerful as it is bleak, it cannot leave audiences cold: You may hate it, or you may love it, but you will definitely have some reaction... Mazzoli’s vocal writing, too, is admirable, allowing the words to be clearly expressed and showing off singers...’ Anne Midgette, The Washington Post

A Flourish of Green / The Listeners

A Flourish of Green Libretto in English by Mark Campbell. Duration

7 minutes

Premiere August 2013, Opera Philadelphia Cast & Orchestration 2S, T; pf

Synopsis A micro-opera Inspired by Day Four, Story 5 of Boccaccio’s The Decameron

Opera in development (available for co-commission)

The Listeners Libretto in English by Royce Vavrek. Based on an original story by Jordan Tannahil. Premiere Norwegian Opera, March 2021; Opera Philadelphia September 2021

Synopsis A middle-class mother living in a southwestern U.S. suburb notices a “hum”, a high-frequency environmental noise that only a select few people, “the Listeners”, can hear. A community organization quickly forms to solve the mystery of the hum, but when a de facto leader suggests a spiritual significance the meetings become increasingly cult-like, ritualized experiences. It becomes clear that this community of “Listeners” is on a collision course of destruction. The Listeners is an opera about our desperate desire to belong, our search for community and meaning, and the power of charismatic leaders who exploit these desires.

Missy Mazzoli (Marylene Mey)

For more information about Missy Mazzoli, please contact: Peggy Monastra E: peggy.monastra@schirmer.com T: 212-254-2100 Marcos Cuevas E: marcos.cuevas@schirmer.com T: 212-254-2100 musicsalesclassical.com

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