An Opera in Five Acts
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AN OPERA IN FIVE ACTS MUSIC BY LIBRETTO BY RICKY IAN GORDON ROYCE VAVREK STEPHANIE BLYTHE ELIZABETH FUTRAL THEO LEBOW TOBIAS GREENHALGH DANIEL BREVIK MEMBERS OF THE ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL CHRISTIE COMMISSIONED AND PREMIERED BY OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS RECORDED IN PERFORMANCE : JUNE 2014 1 CD 1 1) PROLOGUE | ALICE KNITS THE WORLD [5:35] ACT ONE 2) SCENE 1 — 27 RUE DE FLEURUS [10:12] ALICE B. TOKLAS 3) SCENE 2 — GERTRUDE SITS FOR PABLO [5:25] AND GERTRUDE 4) SCENE 3 — BACK AT THE SALON [15:58] STEIN, 1922. ACT TWO | ZEPPELINS PHOTO BY MAN RAY. 5) SCENE 1 — CHATTER [5:21] 6) SCENE 2 — DOUGHBOY [4:13] SAN FRANCISCO ACT THREE | GÉNÉRATION PERDUE MUSEUM OF 7) INTRODUCTION; “LOST BOYS” [5:26] MODERN ART. 8) “COME MEET MAN RAY” [5:48] 9) “HOW WOULD YOU CHOOSE?” [4:59] 10) “HE’S GONE, LOVEY” [2:30] CD 2 ACT FOUR | GERTRUDE STEIN IS SAFE, SAFE 1) INTRODUCTION; “TWICE DENYING A WAR” [7:36] 2) “JURY OF MY CANVAS” [6:07] ACT FIVE | ALICE ALONE 3) INTRODUCTION; “THERE ONCE LIVED TWO WOMEN” [8:40] 4) “I’VE BEEN CALLED MANY THINGS" [8:21] 2 If a magpie in the sky on the sky can not cry if the pigeon on the grass alas can alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas. They might be very well very well very ALICE B. TOKLAS well they might be they might be very well they AND GERTRUDE might be very well very well they might be. STEIN, 1922. PHOTO BY MAN RAY. EXCERPT FROM GERTUDE STEIN’S LIBRETTO FOR SAN FRANCISCO FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS BY VIRGIL THOMSON. MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. 3 PRODUCTION CAST ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY CONDUCTOR GERTRUDE STEIN DAVID ROBERTSON, MUSIC DIRECTOR Michael Christie Stephanie Blythe FIRST VIOLINS BASSES HORNS STAGE DIRECTOR ALICE B. TOKLAS Erin Schreiber Erik Harris Thomas Jöstlein James Robinson Elizabeth Futral Emily Ho David DeRiso Anna Spina Helen Kim Donald Martin TRUMPETS SET DESIGNER PABLO PICASSO, Joo Kim Ronald Moberly Thomas Drake Allen Moyer FERNANDE, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Xiaoxiao Qiang HARP Caroline Schafer COSTUME DESIGNER SOLDIER 1 Angie Smart Megan Stout TROMBONES James Schuette Theo Lebow Jessica Fellows FLUTES Paul Jenkins Kyle Lombard Andrea Kaplan Gerard Pagano CHOREOGRAPHER LEO STEIN, Jennifer Yamamoto Ann Choomack TIMPANI Seán Curran MADAME MATISSE, DOUGHBOY, SECOND VIOLINS PICCOLO Thomas Stubbs LIGHTING DESIGNER MAN RAY, Kristin Ahlstrom Ann Choomack PERCUSSION SOLDIER 2 James F. Ingalls Eva Kozma OBOES John Kasica Tobias Greenhalgh Nicolae Bica Barbara Orland Chris Treloar VIDEO & PROJECTION Jooyeon Kong DESIGNER HENRI MATISSE, Michelle Duskey PIANO Shawn Weil Greg Emetaz MARIE LAURENCIN, Marc Gordon Damien Francoeur- ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Jane Price ENGLISH HORN Krzyzek (OTSL) SOLDIER 3 WIG & MAKEUP Elizabeth Michelle Duskey DESIGNER Daniel Brevik Vonderheide Marc Gordon ORCHESTRA Tom Watson VIOLAS CLARINETS PERSONNEL Christian Woehr ORCHESTRATIONS The action takes place Diana Haskell Beth Paine Susan Gordon Ricky Ian Gordon Timothy Zavadil Megan Stout at 27 rue de Fleurus in Morris Jacob Bruce Coughlin SAXOPHONE STAGE PERSONNEL the 6th arrondissement Gerald Fleminger Adrianne Honnold Bruce Mourning CREATIVE of Paris spanning many Chris Tantillo BASSOONS Joseph Clapper DRAMATURGY years in the early part CELLOS Andrew Gott Brian Marten Mike Cohen Melissa Brooks of the 20th century. David Savige Anne Fagerburg MUSIC LIBRARIANS Henry Skolnick James Czyzewski Elsbeth Brugger CONTRABASSOON Alvin McCall Henry Skolnick David Savige Davin Rubicz Henry Skolnick 4 FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF OPERA THEATRE JAMES ROBINSON A couple of years ago, I approached my dear Stein’s lifelong partner, became a critical part HORNS friend Stephanie Blythe about doing a project of the story and we turned to the gorgeous Thomas Jöstlein for Opera Theatre. We had worked together Elizabeth Futral, who had played Cleopatra to Anna Spina many moons ago in a production of Handel’s Stephanie’s Caesar. When we needed a few TRUMPETS Julius Caesar (she played the villainous other characters, Ricky and Royce suggested a Thomas Drake Tolomeo) at the Wolf Trap Festival when we trio of strapping young men (all young artists Caroline Schafer were both relatively new to the opera business. from The Gerdine Young Artist Program) as TROMBONES Over the years, I have seen her hailed as one Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and the rest to Paul Jenkins of the most marvelous singers of our age and round out the salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Gerard Pagano a formidable champion of American music. I am delighted that this fusion of established TIMPANI As an educator, she has helped to nurture American artists and early-career up-and- Thomas Stubbs young talent throughout the country, and comers has come together to celebrate the PERCUSSION she is known for giving early-career singers life of a great writer whose work continues to John Kasica rousing and inspiring master classes. So intrigue and inspire us. So we all welcome Chris Treloar having Stephanie in our midst in St. Louis was you to 27 rue de Fleurus — where, as Virgil PIANO a natural and appealing notion, but the project Thomson said, “Every story that ever came into Damien Francoeur- in which she would star eluded us. the house eventually got told in Alice’s way, and Krzyzek (OTSL) Ultimately, we decided that it would be ideal [that became] its definitive version.” p if one of her favorite composers, the stylish THE 2014 WORLD PREMIERE OF “27” AT OPERA THEATRE ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL and sophisticated song and opera composer OF SAINT LOUIS. PHOTO BY KEN HOWARD. Beth Paine Ricky Ian Gordon, were to create a new work Megan Stout for her — but we still didn’t know what the subject would be. One day with giddy delight STAGE PERSONNEL Ricky presented his idea to us both: a fantasy Bruce Mourning Joseph Clapper on Gertrude Stein. Of course! We all devoured Brian Marten books on the colorful and influential American author and collector of art (and maker of MUSIC LIBRARIANS artists!), and decided to make an opera. Elsbeth Brugger Soon thereafter, the marvelous Royce Vavrek Henry Skolnick came on board and whipped up a soufflé of a libretto. Naturally, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude 5 A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER RICKY IAN GORDON When James Robinson asked me to write an and facing the repercussions of them bravely. opera for the great Stephanie Blythe, I thought She loved beauty and was constantly inter- immediately of a lifelong obsession, Gertrude preting and reinterpreting what she thought Stein. At Carnegie Mellon University, at the was beautiful. Mostly, she believed in herself age of seventeen, I picked up the book Charmed with such rigor it fascinated me. And her world Circle just before catching a terrible cold, and — the habitués of her salon, Picasso, Matisse, read it in the course of a week in bed. I Hemingway, Fitzgerald, anyone who was doing remember nothing that week but eating anything of interest, thinking anything worth tangerines and reading about Gertrude and thinking — came through her Paris salon at 27 Alice and their milieu. I was mesmerized by rue de Fleurus, until finally, it was Alice who their world. Gertrude was in many ways a came through and stole her heart. I believe I perfect role model. She was committed to her was meant to write an opera about these two, own muse, ruggedly individual, unswayed by about their world, because it is what I wanted others’ opinions, and uninhibited in terms of my world to be. When I left school, I held being who she was, loving whom she loved, salons in my New York apartment. Everything weighing what she weighed, having opinions I wrote, I premiered there. 6 In Royce Vavrek I found the perfect of events, narrowing down the collection of librettist. Making characters out of these people to the few who seemed seminal, and two, creating a “story”— a “narrative” — out using the World Wars as brackets to give us a of events in their world, and compressing it sense of who and what they were, and what into ninety minutes is quite a challenge. I their struggles and delights were. Right at didn’t want to bring Gertrude to life through the outset I told Royce not to whitewash her writings, as Virgil Thomson and so her — as there is speculation as to HOW many others already had. I wanted to bring they stayed safe during the war, being both the woman to life, to create a sense of who Jewish and lesbian. And the paintings are so she was, what she felt, how she and Alice alive, they should sing! And he didn’t and lived their lives and related to one another they do… and to the denizens of their world. Gertrude I was almost in a trance composing this found her life in Paris with and through opera. I was excited to play it for anyone her brother Leo, but Leo couldn’t find I could, because it felt so alive. It was of himself, and was threatened by Alice and course, a great pleasure, hearing Stephanie’s by Gertrude’s ascension as a writer. He saw voice in my head as I wrote it, as well as that in Alice a hundred percent commitment of my dear friend Elizabeth Futral, who to his sister whom he could never support was cast early on as Alice. I hope this opera so completely. Royce used Alice’s knitting is as much of a pleasure for the audience as — an appropriate musical gesture — as a it was to create.