ABSTRACT

OUT OF THE ASHES: THE RECLAMATION OF A LOST FEMALE NARRATIVE AS TOLD THROUGH ’S SONG CYCLE : INTO THE FIRE

by Lizabeth Malanga

This paper explores Jake Heggie’s song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the fire as a musical reclamation of French sculptor, Camille Claudel’s historical narrative. The author provides an overview of Camille Claudel’s life in order to contextualize her place in art history and how Claudel has been represented and treated in recent scholarship and media forms. Through an analysis of Heggie’s biography, this paper addresses his life and development as a composer within the genre to gain an understanding of the composer’s ideals as they pertain to his choice of subject matter. A discussion of the circumstances surrounding the genesis and performance history of the song cycle, along with a commentary on the textual and musical setting of the cycle aim to assert Heggie’s music as an authentic reclamation of Claudel’s narrative.

OUT OF THE ASHES: THE RECLAMATION OF A LOST FEMALE NARRATIVE AS TOLD THROUGH JAKE HEGGIE’S SONG CYCLE CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE

A Research Project

Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Music Performance

By

Lizabeth Malanga Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014

Advisor: ______Dr. Tammy Kernodle

Reader: ______Dr. Claire Boge

Reader: ______Audrey B. Luna

1

2 Introduction Sometimes elements of inspiration and opportunity align and great works are the result of happy circumstance. This paper will delve into one such instance: Jake Heggie’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire. Commissioned to write a work for the prestigious San Francisco based Alexander String Quartet, Jake Heggie took his lifelong interest in the life and work of French sculptor Camille Claudel and turned it into a new monodrama/song cycle that during its debut featured the quartet and American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. With texts by librettist, and frequent collaborator, the cycle offered a fresh perspective on Claudel’s life and work through music. Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was a controversial, fascinating, creative, and brilliant femme-artist during a momentous era at the turn of the century in France. She was an artistic genius who was successful despite her inability to transcend her gender and social stigma. Her artistic and romantic relationship with (1840-1917)) has come to define her and her place in history as an errant muse. Her brother, Paul, and their mother had Claudel institutionalized due to her deviant behavior and this subsequently led to her descent into paranoia. She endured thirty years in an asylum and upon her death was buried in mass grave; no one from her family attended the funeral or claimed her remains. Claudel has slowly gained recognition since the early 1980’s as scholars began to rediscover her and family members started to share her letters and photographs. Misread and misrepresented throughout her life and now in death, literary and film interpretations of Claudel’s life have framed her experiences around her tumultuous relationship with Rodin. Recent scholars, however, have attempted to liberate Claudel from these readings; placing the emphasis on her marginalized experience as an independent female artist of genius in the French patriarchal society during the late nineteenth century. Heggie is amongst this collective that is determined to reclaim and empower Claudel’s story by repositioning her not as a victim but as the complex female artist who’s life was dramatically transformed through her experiences. His unique compositional style lent itself to this effective monodrama for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Gene Scheer’s innovative lyrics provide an authentic emotional narrative for Claudel by using her own words to convey her story through her sculptures at a pivotal moment in her professional and personal life. The resulting composition, described by Heggie both as a song cycle and as a monodrama, has a clear dramatic

3 arc, an emotional journey, and deeply human story. The result is an effective and fresh new work, which easily transitions from the recital stage to a larger production in a concert hall, destined to become an important addition to the repertoire of art song. The purpose of this discussion is to explore Jake Heggie’s musical reclamation of Camille Claudel’s historical narrative through a discussion of the song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the fire. The approach to this subject will be fourfold. First, it will provide an overview of Camille Claudel’s life in order to contextualize her place in art history, despite the social/gendered expectations governing nineteenth century France. Second it interrogates how Claudel has been represented and treated in recent scholarship and media forms. Through an analysis of Heggie’s biography, this work will address his life and development as a composer within the art song genre to gain an understanding of the composer’s ideals as they pertain to his choice of subject matter., It will explore the circumstances surrounding the genesis and performance history of the song cycle and the textual and musical setting of the cycle as it relates to expressing Claudel’s authentic narrative by including her sculptures as primary sources. In doing so, librettist Genre Scheer and Heggie use her own sculptures as a layer of understanding for how Claudel engaged with the world around her. In this author’s opinion, Camille Claudel’s story as told through Jake Heggie’s composition repositions her from being a victim of her circumstances to a woman deserving the role of a heroine who possesses a relevance to modern audiences today. Moreover, the author asserts Heggie’s monodrama/song cycle, Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, to be a substantial contribution to the art song repertoire for female singers who desire to share in Claudel’s compelling transformative journey.

Camille Claudel: Femme Artiste and Female Genius In order to best understand the innovation in Heggie’s setting of Camille Claudel’s story, we must first discuss her position as an artist in early 20th century France and her eventual tragic demise. Claudel’s life story is emblematic of the struggles female intellectuals faced as they attempted to engage with the social structures and gender expectations that framed the public sphere at the turn of the century. Camille Claudel was known to only a handful of admirers in France as recently as thirty years ago. As a female sculptor of the late nineteenth century she defied the prejudiced patriarchal society in which she lived. Claudel was determined to establish herself as an artist

4 and she attempted to have authority and complete autonomy in her personal and professional life-- a struggle she endured until her tragic death in 1943. Claudel was beautiful, talented, determined, witty and fiercely independent, traits that ultimately sustained her as an artist at a time when women simply were not favored to be career artists. Camille Claudel was born on December 8, 1864 in a small town within the Champagne region of France. She was the eldest of three children born to Louis-Prosper, a registrar of mortgages, and Louise-Athanaïse, a woman with a bourgeoisie heritage. She had a sister, Louise, and brother, Paul, who would become a poet, playwright and diplomat (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p.11). By age 12, Camille was already showing signs of artistic promise in her sketches. At age 13, she sculpted David and Goliath and caught the attention of the sculptor Alfred Boucher, who would then become the patron of Claudel’s atelier [French for workshop] once she moved to .1 Her father amassed enough wealth to employ a private instructor for his children and under this guidance Camille received an education that went beyond the standard generally given to women at that time. Eventually, it became clear that the provincial town in which she had grown up lacked the necessary facilities to offer advanced studies in art for women. Another setback to Claudel’s development was the barring of women from nude studies; they were absolutely excluded from mainstream art and commissions of the time period due to societal norms and practices. Monsieur Claudel made the executive decision to move his family to Paris for the sake of Camille’s art and also for Paul’s education in literary studies (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 18). In 1881, Claudel began her studies at the Academie Colarossi at age seventeen. She had enrolled in the most revolutionary institution of the time that gave men and women equitable admissions and pre-professional opportunities. It was clear from the beginning in her choice of artistic institution that her career was already on the edge of propriety. During her studies at the Academie, Claudel rented an atelier with two British girls, one of who was to become her life- long friend, . Lipscomb had crossed the English Channel in search of opportunities that could not be found in England and she was eager to live a life liberated from the pressures of Victorian morality and propriety. Lipscomb and Claudel shared many personal attributes, the most notable being their complete disregard for propriety and their singular

1 It was old tradition for established artists to regularly visit student’s ateliers or studios/workshops and charge nothing for their advice (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p.28).

5 determination to succeed, it was clear they were to be good friends. The two of them happily shared their atelier and their newfound freedom at a time when it was very suspect for young women to have an apartment of their own in Paris, even though the Claudel household was just across the street. While studying in Paris, Claudel’s life was to change in a permanent manner with lasting effects that she took with her to the grave. Her mentor and patron Alfred Bouchor won the prestigious Grand Prix du Salon in 1882, which changed the direction of his artistic career and decided he could no longer sustain his daily obligations to his students. He asked his friend and fellow sculptor, Auguste Rodin, to oversee his students (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 29). And so, in 1882 Rodin entered Claudel’s life as a mentor and patron of her atelier. Rodin was twenty-four years older than Claudel but he was immediately impressed with her talents: Right away, [Rodin] recognized Camille Claudel’s prodigious gifts. Right away he realized that she had in her own nature, an admirable and incomparable artistic temperament. Right away he became, not a teacher, but rather a brother of the young artist who was later to become his loyal and intelligent young associate (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 50).

Through visiting the Claudel/Lipscomb atelier, Rodin became familiar with their talents and works and when the pressure of time became overwhelming for Rodin and his assistants while sculpting a large commission, he looked no further than these two young girls. Rodin asked Claudel and Lipscomb to assist with his 1885 commission and with no concern for propriety the twenty-year-old girls joined what had been until that time an all- male atelier. After completing extraordinary work for his commission, Rodin began to admire Claudel’s abilities, he trusted her judgments and talents, and she quickly became his most trusted assistant. Claudel began working faithfully for Rodin, while maintaining her own work at the same time. She produced a large body of work under Rodin’s tutelage and quickly achieved great success, despite the lack of enthusiasm from the French art critics. For a long while, Claudel was able to thrive in the male-dominated medium of nude as she produced works in heroic sizes- life sized or larger. But while no one could deny her talents, critics had difficulty understanding her work. She was destined to be at odds with a duality that the critical society at the time could not comprehend. As far as the critics were concerned she was exhibiting traits of masculine genius, as one critic, Octave Mirbeau stated in the Supplément illustré du Journal in May 1893:

6 Madmoiselle Claudel . . . brings us works that, by their invention and the power of their execution go well beyond what can be expected of a woman . . . so profound a poetry and so male a conception that we pause quite surprised in front of this artistic beauty coming from a woman (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 108).

The confusion Claudel met with in the public eye was the idea that she, as a woman, was able to conceive and execute sculptures that rivaled the works of men far beyond her age and experience, including those of Rodin. The ideology surrounding the realm of French artists at the turn of the century was dominated by principles developed by a group of artists known as the Symbolists. This artistic group (which encompassed artists, poets, authors, and musicians) coalesced around a determination to replace what they perceived to be a corrupt bourgeois value system with their more spiritually attuned, highly idealistic, mystical, and transcendent aesthetic. In order to attain these values the Symbolists took on the creative personae of feminized masculinity, and given the masculine culture of the time, woman were theoretically banished from the creative realm as they were unable to conform to the constructed profile of feminized genius. The femme-artist and the “masculine” woman artist were developed as critical subcategories by Symbolist art critics and neither could attain the status of a male artist. The critics ensured that the female creative genius remained a structural impossibility (Matthews; 1999, p. 5). The concept of a female having such talent, especially in the depiction of nude men and women, was inconceivable and highly concerning. To the Symbolists, women were not capable of possessing a capacity for such ideas and talents. What was more, the fact that Claudel began to develop a more personal relationship with Rodin placed in her a separate category, one that was seen as more befitting for a woman at the turn of the century: a muse. Claudel was read to be Rodin’s muse or his whore, but certainly not a self-possessed artist aware of her talents for she then crossed a line that challenged society’s expectations and ideals of propriety. For many, she was exhibiting signs of female deviance. According to the aesthetical views of the time Claudel’s deviance took on many forms, the foremost being that she challenged the male-centered concept of genius. Her work took her outside of what was considered the woman’s “natural sphere”, which in nineteenth century France meant the domestic household and all the formalized duties of a bourgeoisie wife (e.g. to fulfill the “natural” role in society by bearing children). The creative nature of woman lay solely in their bodies with their reproductive nature representing the only acceptable form of creativity.

7 For a woman to abandon her reproductive and/or domestic duty to pursue any kind of “higher” form of artistic activity was to repudiate her own gender and her family’s reputation. Women were to fill a strict and rigid role of femininity within French society, while men could embody both masculine and feminine sides especially those who reflected the Symbolist view of artistic genius. Women were to be modest and enticingly timid, and were not seen as possessing any intellectual fortitude capable to the task of creating, innovating or originating the new, the woman was an object and a consumer of objects and nothing more. In 1871, Charles Darwin wrote his volume The Descent of Man, which expanded his theories of evolution through the modern era, that through natural selection “man had become superior to women in courage, energy, intellect, and inventive genius, and thus would inevitably excel in art, science and philosophy” (Matthews; 1999, p. 71). He goes on to say that the talents of women on the other hand lay in the areas of “intuition, perception, and imitation” which Darwin defined as signs of inferiority, “characteristic of lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization” (Matthews; 1999, p. 71.) These inferior traits as Darwin defines them are the very notions of femininity that the Symbolists drew upon to create an alternative identity that was antithetical to the norm, one that they deemed as desirable: the feminized masculine (Matthews; 1999, p. 71). The feminized masculine aesthetic advanced by the Symbolists created a paradox that on one hand embraced traits of femininity such as intuition, spirituality, hypersensitivity, and emotionalism but rejected the female as a creative being. Social systems of the time supported the ideological control over to women to ensure that the gendered notion of genius would be purely masculine. For the majority of thinkers and artists, these female traits were only desirable, beneficial, and productive when found in the male sex. (Matthews; 1999, p. 76) The concept of feminized genius became so widely accepted that when women experienced these female traits they were repositioned as a sign of disease or pathology, when these traits were found in men they were seen as privileged male geniuses. And so, the medical community established a condition where the frailty and weakness of the female constitution was thought to predispose women to an exhausting form of madness, untempered by their intellect and uncontrolled by critical faculties. Thus the medical condition hysteria--a condition that explained female traits that paralleled those of mad genius in men--was created.

8 A curious trend of widespread mental illness among women began at exactly the same historical moment as the feminized masculine model of creativity was being advanced. Hysteria became one of the mechanisms through which similar experiences of anxiety and emotionalism were dealt with differently according to gender. Hysteria was essentially constructed as the physical manifestation of the undesirable female characteristics (intuition, perception, and imitation, emotionalism, anxiety) while viewed as objective truth in terms of the masculine genius. As one author pointed out the stages of female hysteria paralleled the Symbolist stages of the creative process, describing them as visionary, hallucinatory, ecstatic, and similar to intoxication, all states which are reminiscent of the experience of ecstatic inspiration detailed in the Symbolist aesthetic (Matthews; 2002, p. 76-77). When seen from the perspective of the “maddened genius” Vincent Van Gogh, whose hyperaesthetic and neurotic tendencies took the form of “great” works of art through his excessive sensibilities, this hysterical illness in the male form becomes heroicized as a sign of his genius. The construction of hysteria as it was reconfigured to woman’s disease paralleled, absorbed, and ultimately disempowered those female traits that were so culturally privileged in men and helped constitute creativity as an exclusively male domain. As Claudel was determined to promote her work and gain prestige within the art world she had to accept the criticism and attempt to transcend their limitations of expectations. Since she was woman artist creating with the realm of the avant-garde, the critics began to read her work through the male-centric aesthetic and characteristics in order for them to accept and properly critique their art. As a woman, Claudel could not be expected to have genius, and since she clearly did, in the eyes of the critics she had to lose her gender and any perception of femininity to become sexually ambiguous within society. She was constantly up against the duality of a female genius due to her gender and her apparent possession of great talent and intellect. Following the cultural practices of respectability was not important to her and once she became “male-identified”, she began to enjoy life as an artist living outside of the constraints of bourgeois propriety. Claudel’s relationship with Rodin was clouded by the public knowledge that she was Rodin’s mistress and muse, and yet she was sculpting forms that were not indicative of a woman’s capabilities and talents. Rodin insisted they share a workspace and so he bought a house on the outskirts of Paris where they could work and be together, away from the confines of

9 Parisian life. Rodin provided her with materials and models, and together they thrived on mutual admiration and inspiration. Claudel was Rodin’s kept woman—living in a cavalier manner, producing a huge body of work for herself, while assisting her lover with his. But this seclusion, from her friends and society, had a detrimental effect on her art as she was hardly receiving the attentions she knew she deserved from critics and patrons. From the outside, society viewed Rodin’s isolation within his country atelier as a necessary and natural progression for him in order to create to great art. However in terms of Claudel she was seen as being selfishly obsessed with her own work as opposed to her professional commitment to her art. Claudel’s professional reputation was entangled in critics’ interpretation of her private life. In the eyes of these critics, her gender and sexual currency as a woman negated any reading of her intellectuality. They were aware of her sexual relationship with Rodin, which for them meant that her artwork could exist only as a part of his artwork, it could not stand as a purely autonomous art. It is not clear if Claudel was unwilling or unable to understand the profound nature her situation, but what is known is that she continued to live outside of the social expectations of the time. This expression of freedom was emblematic in her approach, which consisted of combining the traditionally elite art of sculpture with perfect liberty (Higgonet; 1993, p. 19). Claudel’s talents could not be ignored, and critics tried to review her work objectively whenever she was able to exhibit them. Her sculptures showed great proficiency in the representation of the nude. The male and female form were sensitively carved and her use of materials, especially in marble, showed unparalleled talent. It should be noted that Rodin rarely carved in marble as he lacked the necessary technique, but Claudel mastered the medium. As one critic remarked “ . . . They [Claudel’s sculptures] are strong, luminous representations of men and women. Timeless, powerful, and charged with emotion, they offer a revolutionary vision of the human condition, the unified mind-body subject undistorted by gender-stereotypes” (Ryan; 2006, p. 178). Claudel’s most important achievement was her representation of the female body at a time when new expressions of liberation and constraint were appearing in women’s fashion and other aesthetic paradigms. It is clear that Rodin saw women as sexual creatures. His sculptures reflect an ideal that women were objects of desire, something to be conquered and adored with a lustful energy. If Rodin’s sculptures expressed desire’s power, Claudel explored its reciprocity. In her works one cannot discern a clear boundary between the

10 sexual and asexual. Claudel refused to divide women into the common binary of the virgin and whore as was so often seen in the works of male artists during this period (Higgonet; 2006, p. 26). She successfully represented a full spectrum of female identities--the very young, the very old, the exultant, the despairing and the wealthy. She sculpted women alone and in groups, in meditative poses or addressing each other. Not one is the subject of pity, sentimentality or jest (Higgonet; 2006, p. 26-27). After her relationship with Rodin disintegrated, women as solo became the focus of her works, symbolizing her shifting sense of consciousness as both a woman and artist. Claudel also shifted mediums and began focusing on small miniatures using new materials in a mixed media format, such as carved onyx with bronze accents. For approximately ten years Rodin and Claudel had engaged in a professional and personal relationship. However in 1892 their tumultuous relationship came to a close when Rodin finally decided that he would committed fully to his life partner, Rose Bleuret, and the son they had together. This enraged Claudel, as she had given Rodin her youth, her work and her devotion. What was most frightening for Claudel was how much she had come to depend on him for stability and financial security. Rodin committed to support her financially, but Claudel decided to completely sever her ties with him. She sought the means to continue her work, but also receive greater promotion. In the years following the breakup, Claudel began a steep descent into reclusion and reckless public behavior. She became obsessed with her art, blaming Rodin for her lack of success. She was frustrated by the lack of state commissions, which would have provided her financial independence and security without assistance from her family. She was unaware that Rodin remained aware of her situation through friends and that he stepped in at every possible turn to make sure that she received work, materials and money. However, it was evident to the few who remained in contact with Claudel that her frustrations with the established art world grew and she was dissolving into poverty, eccentricity and obscurity. Her family grew increasingly tired of being associated with Claudel, especially her brother Paul who became a devout Catholic in the middle age of his life. Paul and Camille often socialized within a similar circle of friends as he became a well know poet, and diplomat, and she an aspiring symbolist artist. After her father’s death in 1913, Claudel stopped receiving financial support from her family and she began to withdraw even further from public life.

11 In March of 1913 Claudel’s mother and brother had her institutionalized. The family cited a kind of hysteria as Claudel’s illness, which paralleled the use of hysteria as means to categorize women who would not conform to social convention and their supposed decline into pathology and madness (Matthews; 2006, p. 79). Hysteria was the disease most strongly identified with the feminist movement at the end of the century and may have represented the use of an oppressive structure to put independent women in their place. Claudel’s placement in an asylum for the last thirty years of her life exemplifies how a societal and ideological construction of difference could be used to control and disempower women. Claudel did not sculpt during these final institutionalized years; she was literally and figuratively silenced, wiped from history and from her family tree. Despite her own written pleas and letters of recommendation from her doctors, Claudel remained in an asylum until her death at age 79 in 1943. Although there may have been a time when Claudel needed immediate medical attention, there is evidence to suggest that there was no reason for her to remain in an asylum during the final years of her life. However, by law she could not be released without her family’s consent, which from extant documentation was not granted or considered. The tragic case of Camille Claudel was one of the most visible examples of how the power of ideology affected women who defied social conventions. Her nervous illness may well have been in response to a lack of control in her life. She became a victim of the social culture of her time and of Rodin’s ultimate lack of commitment towards her in the manner she desired. Her professional aspirations were rooted in the marginalization of creative women and the fear surrounding the nature of independent women. She was consumed by her fear over her career and the lack of control she was able to assert. She became frustrated with the lack of recognition she received, which she desired and believed she deserved. Claudel could not transcend her gender though her talent was evident and acknowledged by critics. As a woman she could not gain access to materials without commissions and her gender was keeping her from succeeding along with her tainted reputation as Rodin’s mistress. The reception of her work was constantly met with two readings: she was a female and she was Rodin’s protégée. To some extent, Claudel achieved the status of “honorary” maleness without ever truly attaining the true status or benefits of that gender, however she never fully escaped the categories of femme- artiste and so she was nonetheless seen as other than female. The gender of creativity and gender difference became the central structuring tenet of social order in which critics were embedded that their

12 reading and admiration of Claudel’s work was always tempered by her otherness as a woman producing strong, expressive, intellectual art (Matthews; 1999, p. 138-139). Her own family became so ashamed of her, afraid of her otherness that even in her death, they chose not to dignify her as their own so her remains went unclaimed upon her death in 1943. Claudel’s bones remain in exile to this day in a mass grave only steps away from where she was sequestered for thirty years. (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 252-253) A plaque in Villaneuve, where she grew up with her art in exhibition alongside Rodin’s in the Musée Rodin in Paris, are the only physical traces of her legacy.

Camille Claudel: Issues of Representation & Treatment Since her emergence into modern scholarship, Claudel’s biography has been subjected to various readings and interpretations.2 Claudel’s story first came to the forefront in the early 1980’s and it seems hardly coincidental that her life and works came into greater recognition within the realms of third wave feminism as the lives and narratives of women were experiencing reclamation from conventional ideology of women and their social spheres. From the first biography, written in 1982 by Anne Delbeé a French Theatre Director, to more recent publications efforts to illuminate Claudel’s life and her works have undergone several incarnations with various degrees of authority. It is important to acknowledge that Anne Delbeé’s biography falls into the novel genre, so while her writing contains all the relevant facts, the melodrama that initially drew Delbeé to Claudel has overwhelmed her narrative in clouded overheated prose. Delbeé’s novel may have inspired the 1989 film into production and her own play adaptation but it is hardly authoritative and accurate. It did however pique the interest of many historians, writers, and art enthusiasts. Interest in Claudel grew but many continued to analyze her legacy through the limited narrative of the scorned woman and female protégée The 1989 film, Camille Claudel3, directed by Bruno Nuytten focused on the fanatical and antagonistic relationship between Claudel and Rodin. It also provided one of the first three-

2 The author has chosen to deal with selected writings and film adaptations. This is by no means a complete survey of the vast literature available on the subject of Camille Claudel, her life, and her works. For a more comprehensive resource on the literature available consult www.worldcat.org. 3 Adjani, Isabelle, Gérard Depardieu, and Bruno Nuytten. Camille Claudel. Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment [distributor], 1989.

13 dimensional portraits of Claudel as a struggling female artist desiring recognition for her artistic achievements. However, it should be noted that at times Claudel is portrayed as a lovesick and obsessive woman who could scarcely overcome her attachment to Rodin, which results in her downward spiral and eventual incarceration. Scholar, Joan Driscoll Lynch summarized her reading of the film’s reading of Claudel in her article as such; “beneath the apparent melodrama . . . is a story of self-interested biographies and the subordination of women’s history to the complicity of patriarchal interest and generic requirements” (Lynch; 2007, p. 259). Rodin is an impressive historical figure to come up against. His narrative has been established for many years and has long held a solidified place in art history as a genius while Claudel was placed within the line of student-model/muse-lover like so many of the women who had entered Rodin’s studio before her. The film’s biography turned melodrama carries out the plot as Rodin becoming successful at the price of his beloved’s sanity. This issue is assuredly caused by the tone of the source material: a biography written in 1984 by Reine-Marie Paris, the great granddaughter of Camille’s brother. Titled, Camille: Rodin’s Music and Mistress this book evades any substantial discussion of the family’s role in Claudel’s institutilization and centers as the theme of the book Rodin as the lover turned villain, which sets the stage for the film’s melodramatic tone. The film and book failed to convey that Claudel worked alone and maintained a degree of success for fifteen years after she had distanced herself from Rodin. Just as Paris’ biography glosses over the really tough questions such as Claudel’s position as a woman and skims over its consequences, the plot points of the film took greater precedence over developing the character of Claudel and the complexity of her own life circumstances and the historical time and society in which she found herself. There have since been many discoveries in source material such letters, records from the asylum, and pictures, which have allowed for greater understanding of Claudel. Recent scholarship has endeavored to liberate Claudel’s narrative from readings of her relationship with Rodin in an attempt to assess her achievements within contemporary theories conjoining femininity and genius. . Noted as the most authoritative biography to date Odile Ayral-Clause’s Camille Claudel: A life, provides a comprehensive and objective biography that avoids the romanticized and maudlin storytelling of earlier publications. One issue of note, that is common throughout many writings, is the author’s designation of the artist as “Camille” throughout, while

14 men are acknowledged by their last name. Of course there can be some confusion when an author needs to refer to Claudel and her brother Paul, who is both male and a poet. But one can argue that since Camille Claudel is the understood subject of a book or article that any reference to her family members, regardless of their gender or profession, will be identified by their first name and allow Camille Claudel, the main subject and artist of renown, to be referred to in conjunction with her peers by her last name. To refer to Claudel by her first name, implies a familiarity that keeps her within the realms of female marginalization as a lesser artist when discussed alongside her male peers. Angelo Caranfa’s book Camille Claudel: A Sculpture of Interior Solitude advocates for readers to acknowledge Claudel as having a cognizant awareness of her place in society and her to decision to separate from Rodin was necessary for many reasons--one being her desire and affinity for a more solitary and reflective lifestyle (Caranfa; 1999). Caranfa draws his evidence from Claudel’s letters to her brother, Paul, and their mother and deduces from themes apparent in her art work that support his inklings about her desired lifestyle and the resulting implications that led to her perceived paranoia. Patricia Matthews deals with these concepts even further in her book Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender and French Symbolist Art. Matthew addresses the social confines that defined the social spheres and societal ideologies at the turn of the century in France that disempowered women who showed any intellectual or artistic inclination. Both of these discussions aim to give Claudel a greater power within her life that she was not able to assert for herself. They take into consideration the limitations Claudel was up against while fleshing out her character as a determined, talented genius, passionate, sometimes tempestuous woman who desired to take control of her life and act on her own behalf but was constantly met with a society that was unable to reconcile her talent with her gender. In recent efforts to reclaim Claudel’s narrative as a woman of immense talent, genius and self-awareness, what is sometimes lost is her ultimate humanity for she is more than a case study of how the forces within her world worked against her in every way until she met her tragic end. The most recent film Camille Claudel: 1915 (2013) is set two years after she has been in the asylum at Montdevergues while she waits for the first visit from her brother. The portrayal of Claudel by actress brings a tragic awareness of her humanity and the great sense of loss that took place when her family incarcerated her. The dialogue is minimal and is often direct quotes from Claudel’s letters. The film is shot in stark and dismal vignettes of the lifestyle

15 she was forced into. The effect is tragic. There is a little glimpse into Claudel’s mental state but overall the narrative is a visual and an aural one in the sense that it is not always what is said but what is heard that has the greatest effect. There have been few writings and media portrayals of Claudel’s experience from her point of view, with insights to her psychology as the vehicle for narrative. While her letters offer insight to her character, narratives that offer a glimpse into her world as she observed her life are rare but librettist Gene Scheer and composer Jake Heggie through Camille Claudel: Into the Fire attempt to offer such a perspective.

The Making of Jake Heggie as a Composer Jake Heggie has quickly become one of the most prolific American composers in the last two decades.4 While his compositional career began with the art song and song cycle idiom, Heggie has also proven himself to be a capable composer of dramatic with the recent success of (premiere in 2000) and Moby Dick, (premiere in 2010).5 To have an understanding of Heggie’s background as a composer it is important to note a significant life event that has shaped his experiences. He was born March 31, 1961 in West Palm Beach Florida. Heggie was one of four children, with two older sisters and a younger brother. Due to his father’s job with a laboratory company the family frequently relocated and in 1965, they moved to Bexley, Ohio. Ten days before his eleventh birthday in 1972, his father, after struggling with depression for a number of years, committed suicide (Choate Beasley; 2008, p. 5). This event changed the lives of his family irrevocably, especially because of the stigma associated with mental illness. Suddenly, his mother was a widow at thirty-nine years old with four young children to raise. “My mom was seen like ‘what’s wrong with you . . . what did you do? What’s wrong with your family?. . . I think that was the perception” (Heggie interview with author 14 June 2014). Heggie watched his mother handle the pressures of their new circumstances: she went back to work and school while in Ohio, then moved the family to Martinez, California. She dealt with his sisters’ rebellion while trying to keep a roof over their

4 For a current and comprehensive list of compositions see website: http://www.jakeheggie.com 5 Dead Man Walking has received much attention since its premiere in October 2000 with San Francisco and has now begun to make its premieres in regional opera houses across the United States this year, including Madison Opera, Wisconsin; Des Moines Metro Opera, Iowa, and Central City Opera, Colorado.

16 heads, provide clothes, a sense of opportunity and fun. He attributes his views on feminism to his mother and what he observed following his father’s death. This is reflected in his compositions-- through his choice of themes and texts. Many of Heggie’s works center on telling human stories that reflect common experiences as representative in his songs, which often focus on the transformative and dramatic journeys of women, explore the relationship between parent and child and how they navigate marginalization and discrimination. These themes are also reflective of his experiences as a gay man in America. I just have tremendous sympathy for women . . . also growing up knowing that I was gay too, I knew I was a part of a group that had been marginalized and was subjected to ridicule and discrimination . . . I think it was a sensitivity to what women go through regularly and so I’ve always looked for women that I could empower or sympathize with . . . (Heggie interview by author, 11 June 2014).

This inclination to empower women through his musical settings has become a hallmark of his compositions over the years. This will be further explored later. Heggie began formal composition training after his family moved to Martinez, California in 1977. Here, he met internationally renowned composer through the composers group of the Performing Arts Society of Contra Costa and by 1978 was studying composition with Bacon full time. It was during these lessons that Heggie was introduced to the idea of setting poetry, especially the poems of . (Choate Beasley; 2008, p. 25) After his high school graduation, Heggie moved to Paris to study at the American College in Paris in 1979. After sometime in Paris, he was looking for a more formalized program of study and on a friend’s recommendation moved back to California in 1981 to complete his bachelor’s degree at the University of California in Los Angeles. He agraduated in 1984 with a degree in piano and composition.6 Some of Heggie’s first art song settings were the poems of Emily Dickinson His approach was heavily influenced by the style of Bacon, whose own compositions reflected American idioms such as African-American spirituals, jazz, ragtime and dance music, Appalachian melodies and hymns.. Having studied a variety of musical styles, including the

6 For a more detailed account of Jake Heggie’s biography see: Choate Beasley, Rebecca. The influence of Sister on the life and work of Jake Heggie as seen in the song cycle The deepest desire: four meditations on love. DMA diss. Denton: University of North Texas, 2008.

17 works of composers like Sondheim, Pendercki and Chopin, Heggie developed his own compositional style over the years. His oeuvre encompasses a wide breadth of performance settings and genres, from operas, orchestral, choral and chamber music to over 250 art songs. His music has a versatility that has become emblematic of the “American” sound much like the songs of Copland, Barber and Weill. As a self-professed theatre person, Heggie was inspired early on by singing actresses like Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand and his desire was to compose music that was unobtrusive to the flow of the narrative and presented a very clear understanding of the text.

Relationship with the Art Song Genre Within some of Heggie’s most celebrated songs audiences are able to experience a dramatic and emotional arc of a character in a short, concentrated amount of time. Song cycles for voice and piano that feature a strong and distinctive female narrative include Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia (1999), with texts by Heggie and Edna St. Vincent Millay inspired by Shakespeare’s Ophelia; -Song (1996), with texts by Philip Littel as Eve’s narrative while in the garden of Eden, and a cycle for soprano and mezzo soprano Facing Forward/Looking Back (2007), with texts from various writers that explore the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. Many of the poems and texts Heggie chooses to set are stream of consciousness, casual exchanges; the words reflect the stories of people living in a modern or timeless era, such as Shakespearean characters, whose emotional burdens are just as relevant in the present. These works are unique in the fact that though the texts are written by either male or female writers they offer an uninterrupted female perspective that is experienced within the time frame of one song cycle. These female narratives also explore experiences that link these stories with contemporary audiences--from the unrequited love felt by Ophelia, to the questions from Eve about the mysteries of life and feelings vulnerability to the universal conflict that inevitably resides in every mother-daughter relationship. While the aforementioned compositions were written for the soprano voice, the mezzo- soprano voice maintains a dominant presence in his works. This can be attributed to the fact that the voice type, according to the composer, allows for clarity of words: First of all . . . that’s the voice type that I really respond to because the words are always really clear. It’s in the range, and for some reason . . . you almost always get all the words.

18 I also find I really like, sort of, the earthiness of the sound from the low mezzo voice, you still get these really high notes (Choate Beasley; 2008, p. 81).

Over the years, Heggie has developed many close friendships with performers who debuted many of these works. One of the first of these professional friendships began in 1990, when he met American mezzo-soprano through his job as a director for a private concert series at L’ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills. Since then, von Stade has collaborated with Heggie over the years. His compositions Songs to the Moon (1998) and Winter Roses (2004) were written specifically for her and he has set some of von Stade’s writings to music in the collection Paper Wings, (1997). One of Heggie’s most recent and frequent collaborators, however, is lyric mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, currently one of the most sought after American singers. He speaks highly of DiDonato’s talents as follows: Joyce is a consummate singing-actress and I’ve always felt that her recital performances are lessons in dramatic presentation, as well. She embodies the character and music of a song so this felt like something that would challenge and inspire her (electronic interview with composer, February 7, 2014).

Their mutual admiration for each other and eagerness to collaborate has led to new song cycles written with DiDonato’s dramatic and vocal abilities in mind. Heggie chooses texts that are dramatically complex, challenging and stretching his own compositional style to suit DiDonato’s strengths. In 2002, DiDonato made her New York stage debut at City Opera in the role of Sister Helen Prejean7 in Dead Man Walking. She had such tremendous success that Sister Helen herself said to Heggie “Joyce really ‘gets’ me. Who I am. What I do, She understands.” (Heggie program notes 15 January 2011). When the time came for DiDonato’s debut solo recital at Carnegie Hall she asked Heggie to compose a new piece for her. Knowing that Sister Helen’s life and words resonated so deeply with her, Heggie asked Sister Helen to write new texts just for DiDonato. The song cycle, The Breaking Waves (2011) featured texts that centered around the themes from Sister Helen’s life experiences of self- realization through darkness and water, and the metaphor of the breaking wave as the larger theme in the cycle.

7 Sister Helen Prejean is a nun who has served as a spiritual advisor to inmates on death row in Louisiana’s Angola state prison and has accompanied six men to their executions. She is on the leading voices in the movement to abolish the death penalty. For a omplete overview of the work and ministry of Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ visit her website: www.sisterhelen.org

19 An Exploration of the Collaborative Experience Heggie’s collaborative approach with performer and librettists has been conducive to his affinity for the song genre. As a genre, the song, allows for a more in depth emotional exploration through music, than that accomplished through opera. Rarely in opera is there an opportunity to allow in depth character development without interrupting the momentum of the work as a whole. As one writer commented, “the genre of art song allows for deep emotional exploration, where prolonged internal character development can often inhibit dramatic progression in the context of opera” (Choate Beasley; 2008, p.45). A group of songs when unified by an emotion, story, theme or musical motives is categorized as a song cycle. An extended form of a song cycle is often referred to as a monodrama, implying that there is a larger emotional and dramatic arc experienced from the point of view of a single character within the context of a shorter period of time. In comparison to either a one-act opera or a full-scale production, monodrama allows for intimate and immediate performance opportunities while offering a condensed emotional and dramatic experience. In this way it is an economical genre between the size and scale of art song and opera, as it typically involves few participants: voice and piano or voice and a chamber group. A good example of this is Heggie’s At the of Venus (2005) for soprano and piano with libretto by Terrence McNally. This work focuses on the emotional journey of Rose, an attractive woman, who is waiting in a museum by the statue of Venus, the Goddess of love, to meet a man she has never met. Within the course of six movements lasting twenty-four minutes, an entire scene takes place with musical accompaniment; the character has an emotional and dramatic journey ending in a new state than when they began. When the commission for the Alexander String Quartet came along it sparked Heggie’s imagination as an opportune time to explore the story of Camille Claudel, “it’s such a versatile ensemble, a string quartet-delicate and strong all at once. And each of the members of the quartet is a soloist who melds their sound into a single voice. It felt very natural and right that this be the ensemble for this work” (Heggie electronic interview with author 7 February 2014). Heggie’s desire to delve into Claudel’s narrative along with the ideal ensemble led him to the monodrama genre as the opportunity to introduce Claudel to new audiences. Through his treatment of her, Claudel’s biography would be shared by means of an original libretto, the human singing voice and musical instruments.

20 The Genesis of Camille Claudel: Into the Fire Heggie was first drawn to the story of Claudel after viewing the 1989 French film Camille Claudel and was immediately fascinated with Camille. He found the performances of the actors so inspiring and “extraordinarily theatrical” that he decided the story was something he wanted to one day to explore through music. “I found her fascinating in every way: blazingly talented, controversial, gifted, stubborn, ahead of her time,” he stated in a 2014 interview (Heggie electronic interview with author 7 February 2014). For a long while, Heggie thought that he wanted to write a full-length opera based on Claudel’s life, but it turned out that her story was to be shared in a whole other way. In 2010, Ruth Felt, president of San Francisco Performances, approached the composer with a commission to write a new work celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Alexander String Quartet, a group based in San Francisco. Heggie had first heard the quartet play at the University of California Los Angeles in concert twenty years earlier with soprano, Elly Ameling and recalled their “radiant” performance of Strauss’ Lied Morgen (Heggie program notes 4 February 2012). Heggie asked if he could include a singer, and knowing that he is primarily an opera and song composer, Ms. Felt approved. Heggie called his friend, and world-renowned lyric mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato to join the commission and once she agreed Heggie immediately thought of Claudel’s story. Heggie then introduced his frequent collaborator and librettist, Gene Scheer, to Claudel’s life and works and asked him to consider writing new texts for the cycle. He enthusiastically signed on. Heggie and Scheer had previously collaborated on song cycles based on works of art including, Statuesque (2005), and Rise and Fall (2007), so working together again seemed a natural choice for this commission. All the pieces of the commission fell into place quickly: composer, librettist, singer and string quartet. Instead of a full opera, this new seven-movement theatrical song cycle would be the first musical foray for Camille Claudel’s story. Together, composer and librettist decided on the dramatic scenario for the cycle: Camille’s last day in her studio, knowing she was being taken to an asylum and realizing that she would probably never sculpt again. The cycle's drama would portray a moment of monumental transformation, which forces Claudel to contemplate a future in which the agency of choice is snatched away. The two worked very closely in discussing which sculptures to explore. They were interested in the stories each sculpture had to tell and how each sculpture chronicled different moments in Claudel’s life and experiences. Coming to

21 the project with their many experiences in theatre, Heggie and Scheer wanted to create a dramatically viable song cycle told completely from Claudel’s perspective- the narrative was to be solely hers, her thoughts and emotions as they related to each sculpture. Since Claudel was a genius sculptor Heggie felt it was natural to write song texts based on some of her works but Scheer decided he wanted to explore another layer within Claudel’s story by having her converse with her sculptures. Scheer's libretto is unique in that the texts portray imagined conversations between Claudel and her sculptures. He researched Claudel’s life and found inspiration in her writings, especially the letters to her brother, Rodin and to friends over the years. Though many of her letters were destroyed and those surviving are undated, Scheer was still able to gather a sense of her writing style and her emotions towards those with whom she corresponded. As a result he infused the libretto with Claudel’s own words. The text alternates between a free form, stream of consciousness-like prose and subtle rhyme schemes, and evokes a sense of her fluctuating emotional and mental stability, “I wanted to give the sense of a person who has one foot on the ground an one in the air, [as if] they’re living in . . . both sides of the looking glass simultaneously” (Scheer interview with author 19 June 2014). A sense of duality is essential in understanding and portraying Claudel as a character and a human being; mentally she went to an unknowable place pyschologically and yet she maintained an awareness of “something’s wrong with me and I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how to fix it” (Heggie interview with author, 11 June 2014). It was necessary to find a balance within the text that provided a real and grounded portrayal of Claudel. In composing Camille Claudel, Heggie’s inspiration for the musical arc and pacing came from the dramatic scenario of the text and the sculptures themselves. He studied each sculpture closely, and by considering the impetus for its conception and creation, he tried to discover what Claudel was trying to express in each sculpture. Knowing that Claudel was a staunch friend of Claude Debussy for a time, and knowing that he possessed a copy of one of Claudel’s sculptures, La Valse, Heggie looked to Debussy’s only string quartet Opus 10 in G minor, which influenced the musical language and atmosphere of the cycle. He desired to capture Claudel’s sound world preserving the historical integrity of her story in creating a music that was contemporary to her. Musically, the cycle is tonally based; however, it has a modal quality that is reminiscent of French in music during the early twentieth century. Dance rhythms play a large

22 role in the cycle; a constant undercurrent of three-quarter time throughout creates a sense of motion and momentum within each individual movement. There are also a few recurring themes, most of which are permutations of the initial vocal line in the first movement. Heggie cast his music almost entirely in a minor key, often sounding rather modal. Vocally, Heggie uses the bel canto style of writing to highlight Joyce DiDonato's unique vocal abilities and to bolster the overall musical and dramatic effect. He has been incorporating the style in his compositions as it allows the voice to move and blossom within melismas and coloratura as a means to enlarge the emotional context and content of a single word, moment or emotion, “They’re [melismas] dazzling because they mean something” (Serinus; 2012). Every note within a melisma matters both musically and dramatically. Heggie has the ability to write for the voice in a manner, which emphasizes the natural speech rhythms of the text while incorporating melismas that feel and sound appropriate and dramatically effective. Scheer commented on Heggie’s ability to compose with a vocalism that extends beyond the words “ I’m looking for giving Jake opportunities musically in which words are not necessary . . . I think Jake uses the words as a springboard rather than as an ending” (Scheer interview with author 19 June 2014). In this way Heggie illuminates the words Scheer has written, while using the style of the bel canto vocalism to communicate Claudel's emotion with melismas or extended coloratura.

The Music and text of Camille Claudel: Into the fire There are seven movements within the cycle, with a brief instrumental prelude and one instrumental movement, each being based on one of Claudel’s sculptures.9 Scheer wrote the texts but Heggie determined the order of the cycle and the resulting progression depicts Claudel's life as told chronologically by her sculptures.10 Each movement has its own musical character as each sculpture evokes specific emotions and memories for Claudel. The aim of this portion in the discussion is to provide an overview of the musical and narrative characteristics of the cycle that provides Claudel with a new voice through the genre of a song cycle as a musical monodrama. Since Claudel’s artwork was her life and livelihood, it is important to briefly discuss the characteristics and qualities of the sculptures that have determined the structure of the song cycle.

9 Due to copyright restrictions this document does not provide photographs of Camille Claudel’s sculptures. See Appendix A for an index of illustrations included in a monumental edition of Camille Claudel’s work. 10 See Appendix B for Gene Scheer’s complete libretto.

23 The first movement entitled Prelude: Awakening begins with the short, atmospheric semi-overture, evoking Parisian Impressionism with a crystalline timbre achieved by the use of upper string harmonics. Claudel awakens on the day of her incarceration. Marked slowly and with grace, the prelude begins with an introductory theme: a delicate melody that becomes a fugue theme and moves into a sweeping dance melody which subtlety turns into a passionate swirling dance that leads into the first formal movement, Rodin. The high range of the strings creates a haunting and unearthly quality. The texture of the strings thins out as the voice enters with the main theme of the first movement. Claudel is vulnerable as the voice is lightly accompanied here while she sings her opening lines with a melisma on the word “completely”. Claudel reflects upon her memories of Rodin as she contemplates the bust she sculpted in 1888, six years into their friendship and romantic involvement. There is a sense of longing; she aches in the realization that the Rodin she wanted scarcely ever existed. She sings the beginning text as though she were entranced in a dream and slowly awakes to the harsh reality of her current, tragic situation. She has descended into her reclusion and mental instability, despite momentary respites of clarity. Scheer’s text shifts between Claudel's dreams of the present and her remembrances of the past. The first line of the text “Last night I went to a sleep complete naked” is directly taken from a letter written to Rodin early on in their relationship. She alludes to Rodin’s lack of commitment to her. She longed to know Rodin fully, to have him for herself alone and she wonders whether or not he truly loved her since he did not love her in the way she desired. Even in her creation of his bust, Claudel was unable to discover the man she yearned to know and in the text she asks the question, “was there ever a time you wanted me to find you”. Claudel was painfully aware that he kept a safe distance from her, possibly due to his own insecurities and awareness of his position in society. His emptiness and his lack of commitment are depicted in the lack of definition in the eyes and brow of Claudel’s sculpture; his bust is as hollow as his words and commitments to her. There is a sense of struggle in the words and in the repetition of the text as her questions hang in the air, never to be answered. La Valse, sculpted in 1902, is one of Claudel’s most successful and controversial pieces. Two figures, a man and a woman seem to be twirling though they are ever fixed in bronze. Her sculpture captures rhythm, melody and intoxication, an intoxication that could be love or death. The balance of the figures is unique, as neither appears to be in control. They are perfectly in

24 harmony with one another and they dissolve into a sweeping drape. The tensions in their muscles do not appear to show any strain; both figures are poised and relaxed in the embrace and the motion. Claudel experiences in the text is one of turmoil. All at once she is eager to dance, to be swept away, to be consoled for the loss of her youth. She was young when she was swept up in the perpetual motion of a dance, and somewhere in the midst of it all she lost herself – she does not remember who she was before she became entangled with Rodin. She cannot return to a time of innocence, and of regret, and the beauty she sees now is irrevocably tainted; everything is suspended in pain and regret. Heggie set the second movement, La Valse as a fast and agitated, demented waltz, as if the dancers stumble as the time signature all of a sudden changes from 3/4 to 2/4 and causes the dancers to lose a beat. Heggie recognized that this movement isn’t about the waltz itself, neither as dance nor sculpture, but about what it represents “which is about falling in love, passion, sexuality, sensuality . . . two people blending into one” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). The struggle is depicted in the introduction by staccato strings and syncopation. The 2/4- bar interrupts the waltz rhythm with a rest and abrupt pizzicato. The intensity builds, invoking a passion fused with turmoil as the strings slide in dissonant, contrary motion and finally settles into the A section with the true waltz rhythm being heard in the cello. The vocalism begins within the waltz as the texture thins with only the violin and cello accompaniment. As the narrative changes the meter is augmented to 6/4, the texture and the timbre shifts to the crystalline use of upper harmonics in the second violin with the rest of the ensemble high in their respective registers with bowed tremolos evoking Claudel's altered mental state. Is she reminiscing of a happier time when she felt as though she was able to see and observe beauty in her life, or is she lost in her thoughts that are poisoned and stained with a regret that she cannot sustain but cannot release? The music intensifies through an accelerando leading into section C, which is melodically and texturally similar to the introduction as Claudel ecstatically cries out “Take me to the place for unrepentant lovers!” There is a return to a modified version of the A section with new melodic material and text as Claudel asks, “Where do I abide”. The movement ends with a coda: Claudel cries out in a sustained “ah” as the ensemble whirls into a frenzy ending with a relentless rhythmic gesture recalling the agitated waltz from the introduction. The title of third movement comes from the name of the heroine from a fifth century Hindu drama, Shakuntala, which is also the name of Claudel’s sculpture from 1888. Monsieur

25 Claudel was known to be a great bibliophile so it is likely Claudel could have become familiar with this story through his books. The story tells of King Duchmanta, who fell in love with Shakuntala, a Brahmin girl, and gave her a wedding ring. One day, Shakuntala lost her ring in a lake and a curse wiped out King Duchmanta’s memory causing him to forget Shakuntala as his wife. She was forced to hide in a forest where she bore the King’s child. Years later a fisherman found the ring and brought it before the King, breaking the curse. King Duchmanta searched for Shakuntala and once he found her, he begged for her forgiveness and the lovers were reunited. Claudel’s piece is a life-size marble sculpture depicting the two lovers after their reconciliation. The male figure, the King, is on his knees reaching up to embrace the female figure, Shakuntala, as she leans in to reciprocate his grasp. The story parallels Claudel’s own life as she was made to live at the margin of Rodin’s life as the ‘other woman’. Rodin refused to let Claudel go, but he also was not willing to sacrifice his place in society, or his relationship with Rose Beuret. Claudel’s sculpture implies her own yearning because even though the King is kneeling before Shakuntala, reaching up to her, and there is a strong attraction to go back to him she is fully aware they cannot simply begin their love anew. And while Shakuntala ultimately returned to the King, Claudel had to make her own choice as to whether she would allow Rodin to remain in her life. Inspired by the origin of the Hindu drama, Heggie invokes a Middle Eastern ethos through the use of exotic, modal harmonies, texture, rhythms, and virtuosic coloratura. Heggie speaks to his use of coloratura to express the heightened emotion of the text, “they all come from a cry, this yearning . . . it’s a journey to forgiveness and going back to something that’s gone forever” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). The movement begins with a recitative style invocation of Shakuntala. The vocalism is free within the melismas at first with the vocal range extending into the lower, chest voice for the first time in the cycle signifying an earthy, guttural quality in the expression of the story. The first violin part is the most virtuosic of the ensemble mirroring the timbre of the vocalism with it’s own melismatic passages. The momentum of the dance rhythms are intensified with changing meter between 4/4, 5/8 and 3/8 and within the 5/8 alternating the agogic accents. The open harmonic texture and the use of string glissandos conjure the realm of Shakuntala. A moment of reflection occurs towards the middle of this modified strophic movement, when the undercurrent of motion slows to sustained chords in the ensemble and the vocalism continues with the primary melody and Claudel

26 contemplates what it would mean for her to forgive Rodin, “I forgive him utterly but in doing so have I changed.” Scheer’s initial reaction to an earlier version of Claudel’s sculpture triggered his imagination, as the female figure is putting her arms all the way around the male figure signifying that Claudel was working through the scenario of the story through the body language of her figures. Ultimately, the story of Shakuntala is a journey of forgiveness and the struggle that lies within knowing that you cannot recapture something that is gone forever. Scheer’s text mirrors the Hindu drama in Claudel’s life. If she were to absolutely forgive Rodin, would she have to set aside her anger and her animosity towards him once again giving him the power in the relationship and putting herself at the mercy of his decisions? The last line “I want to take you back, my love, but who I was has died” implies a self-realization: she has changed and she aches for the woman Rodin met and fell in love with, the young and impetuous Camille, who was willing to sacrifice every thing for a man she loved and admired. The spiraling dance of Shakuntala finds Claudel at a pinnacle point in her life. She must decide if she will continue living her life as she always had, within the throes of Rodin’s control, or begin to find herself, independent yet utterly alone. The narrative of this cycle finds her at point where she will no longer be able to live her life as she wants. Claudel was never able to absolutely overcome her connection to Rodin and live her life on her own authority. La petite Chatelaine, a bust of a six-year old granddaughter to Madame Courcelle of Islette, France, was one of four marble versions with the marked differences in the hairstyles, which displayed Claudel’s remarkable skill in carving marble. The timing of its completion (which took two summers and sixty two sittings) in 1895 corresponds to a troubling letter Claudel wrote to Rodin in 1893 (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 146). There is now evidence to suggest that Claudel was with Rodin’s child and had an abortion during that year and she vacationed in Islette to recover, physically and emotionally. It is supposed that Claudel’s delusions began around this time; she could not maintain a sense of control over her actions. She realized that somehow along the way, Rodin became much bigger in her life than she could have imagined. Scheer alludes to this tragedy elsewhere in the text rather poetically, “I did as he said and returned you to clay, oh, how could I bleed such a blessing away? Now I’m forever alone with my children of stone”. There is a mixed metaphor in this line: at once she returned the child to clay and also bled it away, and at the end of it all, she would only be surrounded by her creations,

27 which she sculpted into being. She could only exert control over her art; she did not even have control over her body as evidenced by the abortion and her eventual admittance into the asylum. When one creates a piece of art, especially a tangible one such as sculpture, touch is essential; there is a kinesthetic response in the molding of clay that bends to the will of the artist. There is a sense of personal ownership that occurs: of the ideas, of the product. It is remarkable to create something so astoundingly poetic from a humble beginning of an unassuming ball of clay, and an artist feels a parental responsibility to their art, as they have willed it into its being. Heggie sets La Petite Chatelaine as a delicate lullaby in a waltz rhythm, “it’s her imagining actually seeing the child and saying ‘do you know who I am?’ and the child doesn’t and so the heartbreak is all hers, not wanting to hurt but she’s already hurt the child” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). The movement captures the innocence of the sculpture, the delicacy of her young features with a wide-open brow full of wonder and naiveté. The sung melody is reminiscent of a folk song with a perceived simplicity of sustained notes. Modal, chant-like melismas emphasize significant and colorful words in the text (example: do you know who I am?). The natural accents of the title, La Petite Chatelaine maintain their integrity with the delicate setting of staccato eighth-notes. The texture of this piece is sparse and transparent, leaving the singer absolutely vulnerable. The first violin is in countermelody to the voice. The curious line in the text, “They say I leave at night by the window of my tower hanging by a red umbrella with which I set fire to the forest!!!” (Clause; 2002, p. 146) is set as an ascending vocal line until “tower” and then “hanging from a red umbrella” is syncopated in a descending sequence as if an umbrella is softly floating to the ground, and “fire” is painted with a chromatic ascending melisma. This line came directly from Claudel’s letter to Rodin around the time of her abortion, she is likening herself to a witch who is capable of destroying life. Heggie imagines this line as Claudel telling this story to her child vis-a-vis the sculpture, “isn’t it silly? They say I leave at night hanging by a red umbrella”, he also adds that she would have had an awareness to the fact that people are talking about her and she’s also aware that “something is not right because this was wrenching for her . . . it was after the abortion that she completely broke it off with Rodin” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). When the Valse Triste begins, serving as a contrasting B-section, it the first time in the song cycle where the tonality is absolutely clear. A melody begins in the first violin, which is followed in a canon by the vocal line. The opening melody sung by the voice comes back in a

28 modified A-section or a Coda as the melismas are extended, “can you hear my voice? The voice of your mother?” Claudel talking to the bust of the little girl, asking these questions works on both levels as an artist who has created the bust, is the mother of a lost child, and as a child she would never meet. The harmonies end in a sense of finality but the vocal line ends on a dissonant note: Claudel is full of regret and painful memories, all she has in the world are her sculptures and while she can interact with the earthiness of touching and molding the clay, there is no other way for her creations to respond to her. She is utterly alone; her legacy is the sculptures she chose not to destroy. Les Causeuses (1897), or The Gossips, was one of Claudel’s most innovative works as she began working in a new medium: the miniature sculptural tableaus. This work, carved in green onyx with bronze accents, is an example of Claudel’s new artistic voice, which neither idealized nor eroticized women. The women in the tableau are classically sculpted. They are feminine from their gently sculpted waistlines to their Grecian chignons, Claudel created timeless pieces suspended in a universal occurrence of females sharing secrets in private conversations with great intensity and immediacy. Scheer incorporated lines of text from Claudel’s letters to her brother Paul about the sculptures she had been planning. He sets the text as Claudel’s internal monologue as she observes the business and chatter of the people around her, aware of her isolation and feeling as if people are talking about her. Her mind toils with ideas and she can hardly maintain her composure towards the end of the text. Scheer offers a glimpse into her delusion as Rodin enters her consciousness and continues to plague her thoughts. The lyrics, “The halo rusts | the light is dim | into the fire | is it him?” alludes to Rodin’s fall from Claudel’s pedestal. She had built him up as a monument in her life, but after their artistic and personal separation her opinion of him changed and so his “angelic” halo rusted, grew dim and was thrown into the proverbial fire of Claudel’s condemnation. Heggie sees The Gossips as a metaphor for Claudel’s mental state at the time when she began working in miniatures, “As Rodin’s sculptures got bigger and more vast, hers got smaller so that she wouldn’t ever be accused of copying him . . . I think that’s also indicative of her mindset, she was going from looking up and around to . . . inward and small” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). The rhythmic and polyphonic fury of the strings in “The Gossips” is relentless, Heggie paints the scene of Claudel as she can hardly quiet her mind from observing,

29 dreaming, thinking, “the chatter going on around her . . .it’s all this noise going on around her while through the middle of it all this . . . she knows that something is terribly wrong” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). The voice enters above the busyness of the ensemble, as if on a tightrope of sound floating through space, suspended and isolated as the line ascends asking, “What is in my hands? What is in my head?” Overall, the vocal part is melismatic with disjunct intervals of a third or more, emphasizing the significant words (examples: earth, quakes, laugh, go, cries). A moment of reflective respite occurs in the middle of the movement where the voice is suspended and the texture of the strings thins out as their rhythmic frenzy slows and the mystery of the secret Claudel contemplates is painted by the use of the string harmonics. Claudel seems to experience a moment of inward reflection before the rhythmic and dynamic intensity begins again in the ensemble, this time with mutes (con sordino). The movement finishes with Claudel sustaining, “ is it him” as the ensemble plays out on a continuous diminuendo, her question remains unanswered. L’age mur (1899), or The Age of Maturity, was the last of Claudel’s sculpture Rodin viewed. He felt as though his private life was made public at the hands of Claudel. He must have been shocked, hurt and angry and it is speculated that he used his power and privilege in his artistic community to make sure that Claudel’s commission would never be exhibited thus bringing their relationship to a final and absolute close. Up until that point, Rodin had been secretly supporting Claudel, working behind the scenes to see that she was financially stable, receiving the materials she needed in order to work and saw to it that she would be recommended for commissions. After her commission from the state fell through, Claudel changed her opinion of Rodin, from a friend to a villain intent on destroying her. Claudel came upon financial hardship soon after as the commissions began to fail and it was then that her disintegration truly began. The age of maturity fell hard upon her, as she could no longer sustain herself as an artist. The statue depicts three figures. One of them had appeared years before as L’implore or The Implorer- a young woman on her knees leaning forward with outstretched arms and hands pleading. In the 1902 version of this sculpture the second figure is an aged man being led away from the kneeling woman with one arm reaching for her, and the third is a cloaked figure of ambiguous gender, embracing the old man. The sculpture has often been read with Claudel’s

30 personal struggles in mind with her as the kneeling woman, begging for the aged man, Rodin, to remain with her while he is being torn away by the force of the cloaked figure, Rose Beuret. In the 1989 film, though it may be fictional, as Claudel responds to the assumptions of such a reading with “Non, c’est trois foi moi [No, it is three times myself]”. As the sixth movement in the cycle, L’age mur is an instrumental respite from the previous movements while still serving a narrative purpose, “it’s giving us a sense of time passing, and also communication dropping off. . . the tortuous nature of that isolation” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). Claudel’s voice had fallen silent after she had been incarcerated in the asylum at Ville-Evrard, she was forced to leave her studio, her sculptures, her family has abandoned her and she no longer has any friends. The theme echoes the opening vocal melody from the first movement and begins with viola, which resembles the timbre of the mezzo-soprano voice, and becomes distorted as it mutates through a canon in each string part. The canon has a disorienting effect as it is passed through each string part in various points of imitation. The tonality is obscured with each entrance in the fugue, which is reminiscent of the Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936). Heggie wanted to explore new harmonies from what has been heard in the previous movements and by introducing a subtle change in musical language he has composed a movement that is reminiscent of the music contemporary to Claudel at the time when she was living in the asylum. The sound world of Claudel has shifted from the earlier movements that were inspired by the Debussy G-minor string quartet to the sound of the Second World War, a time of unrest and instability. Claudel herself is in turmoil. While this movement begins with a sense of respite, the turmoil of Claudel’s suffering is illustrated in the chaos of the ensemble, which sounds as if each string part is struggling to come the forefront with its countermelody. After each string part has explored a permutation of the theme and has reached a climax, the fugue begins again with the viola as in the beginning but neither the second violin or the cello play through the theme a second time. The movement ends on a dissonant chord, with the incomplete fugue paralleling Claudel's unrealized potential. The last movement of the cycle is not based on a piece of artwork but features one last memory of Claudel’s during her time in the asylum. Her brother only came to visit her once in 1915 just two years after he had her admitted, and after that they only corresponded through letters. However, her friend and former studio mate from their early days in Paris, Jessie

31 Lipscomb, came to visit her in 1929, while she and her husband were travelling with their family. Heggie and Scheer wanted to find one light-hearted happy moment in the midst of the cycle for Claudel to have a sense of hope, even if the moment was bittersweet, “we needed something positive. We needed to remember something joyful . . .we’re not going to care about her if we don’t see that there is a joyful person in there that’s been shut away and the that’s the tragedy” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). There is evidence in letters from Claudel and her doctors that she was coherent and non-violent during her days in the asylum. The only noticeable shade of paranoia was her belief that the other residents were plotting against her and tried to poison her food, so the staff allowed her to cook for herself: it represented the only point of agency she was granted in her old age. This final movement is the first glimpse of happiness for Claudel in the context of the cycle’s narrative.11 The playful melody in the first violin echoes a folk-like gigue tune in a major mode. The vocal line begins in a recitative style and continues in counterpoint with the first violin throughout. The musical momentum in this movement features a facile and syllabic vocal line over a sparse harmonic and rhythmic texture. Though the vocalism is exposed with little ensemble support, Claudel’s vulnerability gives way and her vibrant enthusiasm shines through in the way Heggie has written the melody and set the text. There are fragments of the motive from the first movement within each string part, alluding to the struggles that have led Claudel to her current situation. In the text Scheer has written Claudel’s responses to her conversation with her friend Jessie and her husband. Glimpses of Claudel’s younger spirit appear with her joyful nature full of vitality and passion until she is suddenly reminded of the painful memories from their days in Paris together, “it’s more heartbreaking because she can remember how beautiful things were and that’s what she wants to remember” (Heggie interview with author 11 June 2014). There is a sense of motion and movement in her sculptures, an inimitable spirit and passion. When Jessie asks her to take a photograph there is a sense that she is unsure how to process seeing her friend in this condition, which is revealed in Camille’s response to having their picture taken, “A photograph? Just me and you. Yes, I understand I must be very still.” The young spirit of Claudel

11 The photograph which inspired this movement can be seen in Ayral- Clause, Odile. Camille Claudel: A life. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002: 9.

32 that is heard at the beginning of the movement talking about “Every dream I ever had was of movement” has now been told she must sit still. The cycle ends just as it began with the music box-like melody from the prelude, after Camille utters the cry, “Thank you remembering me,” a moment of bittersweet happiness as she feels that her life mattered, that she mattered to someone. It is the cry of any human, especially an artist: to be thought of and remembered. As Claudel utters her last thanks the music ends on a seemingly happier impression but there in lies the tragedy, Jessie’s visit was the last happy memory she would have until her death in 1943. The song cycle is indeed cyclical: the main themes return and connect the movements. Heggie and Scheer have created a cycle that dramatically encompasses the character of Claudel, and while the cycle focuses on one dramatic setting, the events of her life are represented in the sculptures and in the memories she shares with them. Heggie’s musical atmosphere is well informed by Claudel’s historical setting and Scheer’s use of texts from Claudel’s letters is a wise use of primary resources created authenticity in her narrative. Both are proud of the work they have accomplished with this cycle, believing that they have achieved a successful work authentic to Claudel and her narrative. Scheer feels her story expresses much universality, “I think the thing people can possibly relate to is her loss: the loss of a relationship, the loss of a child, the loss of possibility, the loss of hope” (Scheer interview with author 19 June 2014). Heggie agrees stating “There is as much a quality of timelessness and universality to Camille’s story as there is in the great heroines of the past or present . . . she’s fascinating, complicated, deeply gifted, passionate woman who is wronged by her family and society: sadly, this is not an unfamiliar story in the world even today (Heggie electronic interview with author 7 February 2014). The struggle for recognition is still present in Claudel’s legacy, however this song cycle provides a new perspective on Claudel through the lens of her sculptures and her experiences surrounding their creation. Heggie and Scheer have given Claudel an authentic voice through music and the power of the human singing voice as Scheer says, . . . the reason we’re doing this is because it’s vocal, because there’s something about the human voice that can really communicate in a way like nothing else. That’s the other thing: not more than something else like nothing else. The idiosyncratic aspects of singing to communicate the emotion and the situation . . I think that is what Jake is so gifted at . . . Jake is letting the voice take the lead . . . at the core of it is brilliant vocal writing (Scheer interview with author 19 June 2014).

33 Their mutual aim to give Claudel a new voice that provides insight to her psychology rooted in the authenticity of her own written words is just one reason that this cycle is a successful representation of reclaiming a lost female narrative. “She was a brilliant, deeply feeling human being who yearned to be respected for her own gifts and identity- but she was a victim of her time and circumstance of her life. Every note is invested with the sense of her passion . . .” (Heggie electronic interview with author 7 February 2014). Together, Heggie and Scheer have extended the realm of Claudel’s narrative through the chamber music and song cycle genre. In terms of their achievements in reclaiming Claudel's narrative together they have explored the deep recesses of her story by delving into primary sources of her letters and the sculptures themselves. They have expanded the conversation of Claudel and created a piece which stands apart as an example of the power of reclaiming a marginalized narrative formally told through the tawdry details of a archetypal scorned woman.

Conclusion and Implications for Further Study The Camille Claudel: Into the fire premiered on February 4th, 2012 in the Herbst Theatre presented by San Francisco Performances which commissioned the work. The piece was well received as critics praised Heggie for his musical achievement. Georgia Rowe, critic for San Francisco Classical Voice wrote the following:

As he has done for singers throughout his career, Heggie has made the cycle a glowing showcase for the vocalist. The writing for quartet — filled with insinuating themes and deft harmonies — sets the stage, but never intrudes. And the vocal parts are brilliant: spare and pristine in several settings, luxuriantly ornamented in others. This is a work that sings, ardently, melodically, and dramatically (Rowe; 2012).

Joyce DiDonato’s vocal and dramatic performance were also heralded: “DiDonato was the ideal interpreter . . . [her] finest moments came in “Shakuntala,” a great aria of regret and remembrance; here, the mezzo’s voice rose in urgent flights as Camille grasps for fragments of her identity” (Rowe; 2012). Just over a year after the debut performance, an album was released entitled Here/After: songs of lost voices featuring recent works by Heggie with lyrics by Scheer (October 2013). It included Camille Claudel: Into the fire with Joyce DiDonato and the Alexander String Quartet. With the release of the album, a wider audience was able to hear the song cycle. Joseph Newsome, who wrote a review of the CD commented, “Mr. Heggie provides melodic lines that

34 dig into the nuances of the language with sounds that are both unmistakably modern and mildly suggestive of the tonal world of Debussy” (Newsome; 2013). He also acknowledged the brilliance of Scheer’s texts and the dramatic arc presented in the six songs stating that “Mr. Scheer’s poetry movingly conveys the uncanny lucidity of Claudel’s insanity as she takes leave of sculptures in her studio” (Newsome; 2013). And finally, Newsome took note of Heggie’s achievement in writing a monumental work for Ms. DiDonato: Mr. Heggie pays homage to Ms. DiDonato’s consummate mastery of Baroque and bel canto repertories by giving her coloratura passages and even a trill—which, as hardly needs to be articulated, she delivers with a display of technique so remarkable that these feats sound no more difficult than breathing. More importantly, Mr. Heggie gives Ms. DiDonato music that calls upon every shimmering color in her voice, inspiring her to a performance of touching restraint and impeccable vocal warmth (Newsome; 2013). Jake Heggie created a dramatic work that has the ability to appeal to wide audiences. He mentioned his wish to one day write a full –length opera of the work, but after spending time writing this cycle and immersing himself in Camille’s paranoia he now feels that to live in that world long enough to compose a full-length opera would be more than he could sustain. He did express his idea to expand the cycle beyond the recital stage by having a dramatic performance with orchestra and perhaps dancers and actors portraying the characters. In terms of the cycle and it’s place in song repertoire, Heggie admits that he simply wanted to share Camille’s story, and did not necessarily think about how this work would fit in with his previous compositions or the genre of American Art songs. Many contemporary composers have written monodramas but they are often intended for performances in large concert hall not the recital stage. By initially composing Camille’s story with a small chamber ensemble, the possibility for performances by professional and amateur performances greatly increases, as the need for large production budgets is not necessary. A recent performance of selected movements included projections of the sculptures displayed behind the singer and pianist, which provided the audience a context for each movement. The cycle is going to have its East Coast premiere in 2015 at Carnegie Hall with Joyce DiDonato and the Brentano String Quartet and later that year a premiere performance of the orchestral version with the Berkeley Symphony will feature American mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. A strong female narrative so sensitively written by two men whose love of drama and human stories is music worth performing, especially when well prepared and informed. There are few well-known compositions like this that explores a singular female narrative through a

35 dramatic emotional journey like Camille Claudel: Into the Fire. There are other compositions that offer one movement glimpses into the emotional narratives of women, but typically include narratives of more than one woman within the span of a song cycle or song set, or the monodramas are staged as chamber operas. The scope of this discussion focused on Jake Heggie’s reclamation of Claudel’s narrative and the manner in which he represented her within his song cycle which serves to empower her story through the complexity of the her character as an individual striving for freedom and validation. By discussing Claudel’s biography and the context of the society in which she lived, it is hoped that the reader gain an understanding of how Claudel’s voice as a marginalized individual and artist deserved attention and fair treatment in a well-informed and authentic narrative, musical or otherwise. The preceding discussion of the song cycle’s genesis and commentary of the text and music has served to provide an overview of his treatment of Claudel. The author acknowledges that further study can be done, which could result in a large-scale harmonic and structural analysis of the song cycle as a means to delve deeper into the psychology of Claudel within the sound world Heggie has create. Another topic to explore would be performance possibilities in certain venues, and considerations for implementing multimedia, staging and/or choreography as a way to further illustrate Claudel’s narrative, and which of the former would be the most effective for audience comprehension. As Heggie has quickly become an extremely prolific contemporary composer, the journey into his works has only just begun and if his recent compositions such as Camille Claudel: Into the fire serve as an indication of his affinity for giving lost voices a place in contemporary recital and concert halls, the genre of and the disenfranchised voices of the past will continue to be shared and sung for years to come.

36

APPENDIX A INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

37 The author has selected the following publication as a resource to reference Camille Claudel’s work: Museé national de beaux-arts du Québec and Musée Rodin. Camille Claudel & Rodin: Fateful encounter. Paris: Hazan, 2005.

Auguste Rodin [Bust of Rodin], 77-79. La Valse, 11-119. Shakuntala, 101-105. La petite châtelaine, 134, 142-145, 148-149. Les causeuses [The Gossips], 236. L’âge mur, 168, 178, 187.

38

APPENDIX B CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE LIBRETTO BY GENE SCHEER

39 2. La Valse 1. Rodin The light of day will fade Last night, I went to sleep completely naked. And shadows will descend I pretended you were holding me No breath can last forever But I woke alone again No heartbreak truly mend Everything burned away In the cruel morning light. Again, again… Console my eyes with beauty Was I dreaming that you loved me Allow me to forget Though you left me far behind? That every dance of love Someone’s there Is mingled with regret Hidden in the shadows You don’t want me to see Take me You don’t want me to find One step closer One step back In the clay One step spins I search with my fingers One step hovers To uncover something true Take me! Rodin! Rodin! Take me to the place for Was there ever a time unrepentant lovers! You wanted me to find you? Is it in the spirit? There’s a secret I have traced Is it in the flesh? In your eyes, your brow, your hair. Where do I abide? Others think they see you Console But, we both know, you’re not there. Oh, console my eyes with beauty Allow me to forget In the clay That every dance of love I search with my fingers Is mingled with regret… To uncover something true Rodin! Rodin! Was there ever a time You wanted me to find you?

Rodin? Rodin?

40 3. Shakuntala 4. La Petite Châtelaine

“Shakuntala! Shakuntala!” Hello, my little one, La petite châtelaine He called my name in a whisper He called my name in a cry Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? Before I was a mother Before I met the king They say I leave at night Before he made his promise By the window of my tower Before I wore his ring Hanging from a red umbrella Before I was forgotten With which I set fire to the forest Abandoned and ignored Before I was denied Hello, my little one, All that I adored La petite châtelaine I did not know who I was. Do you know who I am? “Shakuntala! Shakuntala!” Or the land you come from? Where the earth is stained… After he had learned the truth After all his tears I did as he said and returned you to clay. Begging my forgiveness Oh, how could I bleed such a blessing away? After wasting many years Now I’m forever alone Wishing to reclaim me With my children of stone. Kneeling at my feet He reaches to embrace me La petite châtelaine Will the circle again be complete? Can you hear my voice? I lean and let him hold me The voice of your mother? His lips familiar yet estranged I forgive him utterly But in doing so have I changed?

“Shakuntala! Shakuntala!”

I hear your whispers Your cries Oh, I want to take you back, my love, But who I was has died!

41 5. The Gossips 7. Epilogue: Jessie Lipscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montdevergues Asylum, 1929 What is in my hands? What is in my head? Thank you for coming. I thought everyone had So many ideas, my mind aches. forgotten. So many ideas, the earth quakes! Thank you for remembering me.

People at a table listen to a prayer. Four children? Beautiful…beautiful… Three men on a high cart laugh and go to Off to Italy? Beautiful…beautiful… mass. You will have wonderful things to eat there. A woman crouches on a bench and cries all Here they are trying to poison me. (I see that alone. they don’t. I cook for myself.) What does she know? Thank you for remembering me. Does she know three people sit behind a screen and whisper? Do you remember our studio in Paris? What is the secret suspended in the air? Everything moving. I know. Two young women, so many ideas. Look at me I know. now! Oh, Jessie… Every dream I ever had was of The halo rusts. movement. The light is dim. Touching. Breathing. Reaching. Hovering. Into the fire! Something always about to change… Is it him? Is it him? A photograph? Just me and you. Yes. I Is it him? understand. I must be very still.

Thank you for remembering me. 6. L’Age Mûr (instrumental)

The libretto has been used by permission from Gene Scheer.

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APPENDIX C JAKE HEGGIE ELECTRONIC INTERVIEW, FEBRUARY 4, 2014

43 Lizabeth Malanga: What was the source of inspiration of the text? Jake Heggie: I had wanted to write a piece based on Claudel’s life and work ever since seeing the 1988 movie “Camille Claudel.” I found her fascinating in every way: blazingly talented, controversial, gifted, stubborn, ahead of her time. The way her life transformed into such terrible tragedy also resonated with me deeply. So, when I was asked in 2011 to write a piece for the Alexander String Quartet – I asked if we could include a singer. When Joyce DiDonato agreed to be the soloist, I immediately thought of Claudel again. Joyce was on board with the subject immediately – she was in Paris at the time and went to the Musee Rodin and the Musee d’Orsay to see some of the sculptures. Then, I introduced Gene Scheer to her life and work and he was on board, too. So, we had a singer and a string quartet and the inspiration of Claudel’s life and work. Gene and I had already created song cycles based on artworks (Statuesque, Rise and Fall, A Question of Light) – so it was natural to think of writing songs based on Claudel’s sculptures. But, Gene wanted to explore another layer – Claudel having conversations with her sculptures. Eventually, we decided on a dramatic scenario: Claudel’s last day in her studio, knowing she’s to be taken to the asylum. Knowing she will probably never sculpt again. So, she awakes and sees the bust of Rodin – which then leads her to remember their passion in La Valse. That leads to Shakuntala – the story of a woman abandoned by the one she loved. Then to La Petite Chatelaine, remembering the child she aborted because Rodin said she must. And on to The Gossips, where she realizes the world is changing around her and within her – that she is losing touch with reality. The Quartet then plays L’Age Mur as she gets older in the asylum. And the last song is a happy memory of her youth – based on a visit at the asylum from her childhood friend, Jessie Lipscomb. It was imperative to find a moment of happiness in the scheme of things. LM:How much were you able to collaborate with Gene Scheer on the texts? JH:We worked very closely together in discussing which sculptures to explore – and what about them we responded to. What story they were telling – and how that related to Claudel’s experience. LM: How did you settle upon the overall timing of the narrative, beginning with Camille’s admittance to the asylum? JH: See the above: Her final day in her studio before being taken to the asylum. A dramatic moment of transformation and change where she has to contemplate a future in which she will have no control – where her choices will be limited or taken away completely. Claudel actually destroyed 60% of her work before they took her away – they said because she was afraid Rodin would try to steal her work once she was gone. But, in reality, it seems like a way she could exert some control – to decide on the life and death of these works. LM:The artwork in the libretto, how did you narrow it down to those particular sculptures? Rodin is obviously an important one in Camille’s life, what about the others made them important to the narrative? JH: See the first paragraph. We did narrow down from about 10, though I can’t remember what the others were that were left out. LM: In your words, how does the epilogue serve the narrative from where Camille began?

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JHSee the first paragraph. We were looking for something happy for Camille. The last 30 years of her life were in the asylum with no real sense of hope or connection. This visit from Jessie Lipscomb is a moment of bittersweet happiness for her – to feel that she is remembered in some way – that her life mattered – that she mattered to somebody. It is also the cry of any artist: thank you for remembering me. LM:You mentioned in your program notes that Debussy’s G minor string quartet was a musical inspiration; did you consider the sculptures themselves as inspiration for the music? i.e. The Valse as inspiration for the dance like undercurrent of the ¾ time signature? Did you consider how you would translate the tangible sculptures of Claudel into an aural representation of her art? JH:We took not only the sculptures and their stories into consideration – but Camille Claudel’s life, letters, journals and photographs. We took ALL of it into consideration. The way light plays on the surface of the sculptures definitely influences the music, but also the psychology behind each piece – the motivation for its creation, and what we felt the artist was trying to express in each sculpture. – The Debussy Quartet influenced the musical language, certainly, because Debussy was a staunch friend of Claudel, and kept a copy of La Valse on his mantelpiece. LM:A great coach of mine once said that as singers we must dig deep into the depths of a character and their motivations that will ultimately make the music set before us absolutely inevitable for the character to sing. In that sense, what about Camille’s story inspired you to make her story musically inevitable? JH: Gene and I are both theater people, and more than anything, we wanted the piece to be DRAMATICALLY viable and inevitable – because then I could find a sense of line and pace in the music. She was a brilliant, deeply feeling human being who yearned to be respected for her own gifts and identity – but was the victim of the time and circumstance of her life. Every note is invested with the sense of her passion … at least, that was my intention. LM:The song cycle is a condensed glimpse into Camille’s story and her psychological state at very devastating time in her life, did you both have a clear idea of what you wanted to bring to life musically? If not, how did you and Mr. Scheer come to a decision about the content of the libretto? JH: I think I answered that above. LM: In the program notes you use the phrase “our first foray into the story of Camille Claudel”, do you have still have aspirations to bring her story to opera in the future? Is this song cycle is like a character study, a beginning exploration into the depth of her story? Or, are you satisfied with the song cycle genre as the theatrical musical setting of Camille’s story? JH:I thought for quite awhile that I’d want to do a big opera based on her life, but I have abandoned that idea. The songs are enough. It was a very very difficult and dark journey to write this piece – because I had to live in the world of her mental illness and paranoia. That’s a tough journey to make. She knew she was losing it, too – and that’s a big part of the tragedy: so much is slipping beyond her control in this moment. I think doing an opera on her life would be

45 extremely difficult, because so much of her life was dark and tragic – and there has to be a balance. I don’t think I could live in that world for as long as it takes to write an opera. LM: Did the instrumentation of a string quartet invoke in your mind something larger about the ethos of the Camille’s story? JH: It’s such a versatile ensemble, a string quartet – delicate and strong all at once. And each of the members of a quartet is a soloist whose melds their sound into a single voice. It felt very natural and right that this be the ensemble for this work. LM:Would you have thought to bring Camille’s story to life within this time frame had the commission not come along? I was always on the lookout for a way to tell her story – so if it hadn’t been this commission, it would have been something else down the line. I’m really glad it worked out this way, though! LM: You chose to bring in world-renowned mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato, for the commission. I know that you have written other cycles for her, what about this commission in particular made Ms. DiDonato your ideal and ultimate choice both in voice type and as a performer? Was it Ms. DiDonato’s involvement the catalyst for moving forward with writing Camille Claudel? Had Ms. DiDonato declined the project for any reason, would that have affected the commission and your decision to write the song cycle? JH: You can see some of this in paragraph 1. Joyce is a consummate singing actress – and I’ve always felt that her recital performances are lessons in dramatic presentation, as well. She embodies the character and music of a song – so this felt like something that would challenge and inspire her. She agreed to it immediately. LM: Did you consider the canon of song literature for mezzo-soprano’s when you decided to include Ms. DiDonato? JH: No. I only thought that Joyce was the ideal person and the ideal voice. LM:You have chosen from a wide breadth of texts and inspirations in your songs for women, including texts and stories from singers you’ve worked with and most notably the writings of Sister Helen Prejean. How do you feel the story of Camille fits into your oeuvre of songs for both women and the mezzo –soprano? JH: t traces a transformative and dramatic journey in a woman’s life. But, that isn’t new to my writing. The style of writing, however, was a big leap forward for me. I explored melismatic and bel canto writing in a way I hadn’t done before. Gene and I had done cycles that explored a variety of sculptures and artists, but this was the first one that explored only a single artist. I also think of this as a one-woman opera and I hope one day that we can do a full staging of it, perhaps using a couple of dancers and a choreographer as well. LM: It is noticeable that you have written many songs for women’s voices, do you have a particular interest in the stories and narratives of women? JH: I grew up around strong women and have a great appreciation for them and their journeys. I also love women’s voices – particularly the lyric mezzo voice. Finding stories that make sense

46 for that voice (and for the individual soloists, like Joyce, Flicka, , etc) has led me to the subjects of those pieces. LM: How do you see yourself as a composer progressing American song literature for women utilizing texts and narratives of and by women? I don’t think in those terms. I only think about setting compelling, meaningful, transformative stories and beautiful texts. I want to write things that matter and have resonance – things that these great singers feel good and confident about learning and sharing. LM: Do you find that there is a universal quality to the story of Camille Claudel that is relevant to today’s singers and audiences? Or is it enough that her story be told and shared with audiences through the musical medium of song? JH: There is as much a quality of timelessness and universality to Camille’s story as there is in the great heroines of the past or the present … she’s a fascinating, complicated, deeply gifted, passionate woman who is wronged by her family and society: sadly, this is not an unfamiliar story in the world even today.

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APPENDIX D JAKE HEGGIE INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION, 11 JUNE 2014

48 Lizabeth Malanga: Can you explain where your views of feminism originated? Jake Heggie: With my mom and my sisters. My father died when I was ten, and my mom had four children she had to raise, she was thirty-nine years old. It was 1972 in Ohio, and anything to do with mental illness had a stigma and my mom was seen like “What’s wrong with you?” I think that was the perception . . . LM: It falls on the woman doesn’t it? JH: It always falls on her. “What did you do? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your family?” There were people that were very understanding and lovely but there’s a weird perception out there and also I saw what she had to do: she had to back to work, back to school, she had to deal with my sisters freaking out and getting into drugs and bad crowds and then running away and it was just enough to try and hold everything together and keep a roof over our heads and clothes and still have a sense of opportunity and fun and space as well, and I think that’s when it probably started and I also saw my father’s family because they were very upset they blamed her too, they were yelling at her all the time but she never let us know about that. She wanted us to stay connected with our relatives and so she wasn’t going to be toxic or poisonous against them she was never going to make us choose sides, it was really remarkable. And then I saw over years that was a big period of feminism and then I saw the ERA defeated and just over the years I’ve read about women in hardship and you hear about women internationally, they’re so mistreated the fact that you could stone a woman because she shamed your family and of course you don’t stone the guy, right? It’s always the woman who brought shame on them . . . LM: How women can dress from head to toe with nothing but their eyes exposed and still say, well they were asking for it. The audacity, I just don’t understand . . . JH: Well it’s just ignorance, it’s stupidity and it’s rampant but you know being a woman anywhere but a Western country has got to be hellish, so anyway . . . I think it was born really early on and I just have tremendous sympathy for women and also growing up knowing that I was gay too I knew I was part of a group that had been marginalized and was subjected to ridicule and discrimination and I grew up with all of that as well, so I think it was a sensitivity to what women go through regularly, and so I’ve always looked for women that I could empower or sympathize with and Camille is one of those because her story kills me that the doctors in that asylum wrote to her family and said that she should not be in here, she’s fine, she needs to be with people, she needs her family, and they actually put her in isolation. LM: Yes, I’ve read the letters from her mother saying that “this is our budget, this is how much money we can give you make sure that she lives as comfortably as possible”, what does that mean? JH: And she never came to visit her . . . LM: Her brother came to visit her in 1915 and the last person to visit her was Jessie in 1929, and she lived . . . JH: Until 1943.

49 LM: and then the fact that her brother never came to claim her remains, she was buried in a mass grave that was later dug up for the period of reconstruction after the war and then the only thing she has is a plaque in her little hometown . . . JH: And a room in the Musee Rodin because Rodin himself recognized how powerful and gifted she was. And even thoughshe, because of her paranoia thought he was trying to destroy her he was actually trying to help her and one the things he said was that, because he lived in that place that became the Musee Rodin because it was unheated and so he actually got very very sick but her wanted to make sure that a room was dedicated to her works and when he was dying he asked for his wife who had, I think, just died before him, and they said “ no, she’s dead” and he said “no, the other one” and he meant Camille, so he still thought about her. She must have had an extremely powerful presence. As a young person she must have been overwhelming, first of all she must have been incredibly sexy, energetic, vital, full of ideas . . . LM: I imagined her to be earthy . . . JH: Yes! And she was petite and on fire with ideas and energy and enthusiasm . . . the picture of her that we use on the cover of the cd, you know that classic picture of her when she was eighteen is just so, “I’m ready, bring it on” you can see it in her lips their slightly pursed a little bit, you know she’s just ready . . . ever since I saw the movie in like ’89 I think it was, I was like “I had to do something with this someday, I just HAVE to do something with it” LM: It was such a fantastic film JH: It was dark, dark but so well acted and so powerful and the artwork itself was so beautiful . . . LM: I love the scene when she runs into her studio and she is literally tearing at the clay, that’s what you do- you tear at the clay and you wait for the shape to take hold . . . JH: Yeah, she was amazing in that film, Isabelle Adjani. No, I just knew I had to do something and I that it might be an opera and I had that in mind, and I thought Joyce as Camille Claudel and as Rodin, that that would be powerful but the more I thought about it a) I couldn’t get a company interested because no one really knows who she is and b) to live in that world for the two or three years of writing an opera would be very, very difficult. It was so hard even writing the songs because first of all it’s kind of an unknowable place that she went to, when she went to this paranoid almost schizophrenic place and yet she had an awareness that something was wrong, I thought Isabella Adjani played that really well in the film . . . LM: That duality . . . JH: That duality of going there and then suddenly being where “something’s wrong with me and I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how to fix it” and how terrifying that must be and yet the drug of going there with it, so to try and find the balance of that because it had to be real it couldn’t be just playing crazy and stuff like that it had to be real and grounded so it was a very difficult cycle to write and I wrote about three different versions of “La Valse” the first one I did I played it for Gene and he said “You know, there’s something a little too facile about it, it sounds too easy, it doesn’t sound like, I’m not sure where the struggle is in it” and so I redid it about three times until I came up with the final version.

50 LM: I have a question about that: the sculpture itself, and it’s a question I’m interested for the rest of the movements as well, the sculpture itself has passion and it has motion in it, how did you feel that you could incorporate the psychology of Camille with the idea of that sculpture in mind and come with this demented waltz, it’s essentially how I view it because that 2/4 bar is like “wait, wait I can’t dance” JH: Exactly, that’s one thing that Gene and I talked about, I said “what if it’s a waltz that’s not entirely in three” and he said “there you go” because it’s not really about the waltz itself it’s about what the waltz represents which is about falling in love, passion, sexuality, sensuality you know that two people blending into one and in this context of the cycle, it’s her remembering that and that’s a struggle, there’s a struggle in remembering that. LM: The line “that every dance of love is mingled with regret” JH: Right, but also even getting into it, the first song it’s Rodin and thinking of that sculpture it’s like “we both know that you’re not there” and then at the end, he’s not there, but at the end “Rodin, Rodin” is he there? Is he there? And then the “La Waltz” starting with just “Rodin”, there’s many ways that you could use, or whisper that line, or say that line but “Rodin, Rodin” Is it angry? Or what is it? And so that leads into the feeling of this waltz and also the time they were together and in love, and how vital that was and yet doomed, like a doomed passion. That’s where it came from and it’s also very reminiscent of the Debussy again, the Debussy string quartet is all through this, the influence of it and very much so in this as well. LM: The use of harmonics, I’m really interested-it’s that eerie color, is that what you were going for? Sort of that eerie-something’s not quite right . . . JH: It’s haunting, and it’s also unstable and unearthly something of another place in the world . . . LM: It comes back, it’s woven throughout . . . with Shakuntala, this is obviously the more bel canto-esque of all of them, it’s got all of these virtuosic melismas . . . JH: Which mean something though, they all come from a cry this yearning or this ache and also that’s what that sculpture implies to me with her sort of leaning over and yet you can, if you look at the sculpture you can just feel that it’s a struggle for her to go there even though he’s reaching up there’s this attraction and at the same time it’s like “this is hard, this is really hard” because it’s a journey to forgiveness and going back to something that’s gone forever, and I just find that very, very- a powerful image and also real resonant in her life and experience, that’s why the story is in there because it’s very like her and Rodin and it’s just-I don’t know, the texture felt right, there’s a sort of Middle Eastern kind of texture . . . LM: I was wondering if that was influenced by the story of Shakuntala, herself . . . JH: Totally, I also associate a Middle Eastern sound with a lot of melisma . . LM: So that’s also the modal quality, the characteristic of that . . . JH: Yes. LM: My theory teacher wanted to know “what modes does he use throughout, why don’t you go look at that” and I thought “why? I don’t want to do that”

51 JH: I didn’t think about that . . . LM: So I started, but I don’t know- is it Locrian? Is it Phrygian? Who cares? Isn’t it enough to say that it sounds modal? JH: Right, really? “I don’t care” LM: I don’t want to do that . . . JH: I don’t want you to either, that’s really boring awful work . . . LM: It was terrible. . . JH: Yeah, I know, it’s not that interesting. . . LM: No it wasn’t interesting, I was like, “nope I’m going to stop and say it sounds Middle Eastern modal-esque- end. Period.” JH: Right, with a lot of coloratura. LM: This is my favorite, most heart breaking movement [La Petite Chatelaine]. JH: Oh thank you. LM: It’s just that music box melody and the lullaby, is that going in the right direction? JH: Right, but it’s sort of her imagining actually seeing the child and saying “do you know who I am?” and the child doesn’t and so the heartbreak is all hers, not wanting to hurt, but she’s already hurt the child- have you seen that sculpture? It’s so beautiful . . . LM: It’s the eyes JH: And this wide open brow and total innocence, naiveté and beauty and she sculpted that right around the time she had the abortion LM: And I love that the words come directly from a letter that she wrote during that period, I went searching because I said “you know, these are so bizarre and enigmatic” I just had to know what was going on and it was written when she isolated herself in this little town, away from everything else JH: And I love her telling it as a story like “isn’t it silly? They say I leave at night hanging by a red umbrella” . . . and this is another one where she knows that people are talking about her, she knows that people think she’s nuts and she’s also aware that something is not right because this was wrenching for her, and it was after the abortion that she completely broke it off with Rodin, cause she was raised this very strict Catholic family and first of all she had rebelled against all of that she’d gone to Paris and had this affair, and she really thought he was going to marry her, he had written this letter saying that he was going to and then when she was pregnant she made this letter too of things that he had to do: he had to stop seeing other women, he had to marry her and they had to go to Italy together, and then he said he was going to do all of that LM: He had a plan, he said “we’ll start in Spain, then go to Italy” . . .

52 JH: Can you imagine how wrecked she was when he betrayed all of that, and her as a woman in late eighteenth century suddenly abandoned, LM: with no connections left, she was essentially, with the exception of her father cut off, her mother wanted nothing to do with her, she shamed the family by sculpting, and then her brother JH: And then her brother, her insane brother. You should talk to Gene Scheer because when Gene was at the opera one night with his wife and these friends that took them there, this woman said, who’s elderly and very wealthy said “so what are you working on?” and he goes “I’m working on a piece about Camille Claudel”, she said “Oh, Paul Claudel was my grand father” or great grand father I can’t remember, but related. I think it was her grandfather. she has one of the sculptures, Camille’s sculptures- it’s amazing LM: Did her visit her? JH: He visited her. Her last name is like, not Cartier but it’s like Bulgari or something like that, she married well. LM: Oh ok, the jewelry company . . . JH: Yeah, she married well or came from great wealth. But anyway, I can’t remember the details of the story but he’ll be able to tell you everything but she’s totally related to the Claudel family -her maiden name was Claudel. LM: The fact that there are still connections on this earth to that legacy JH: Yeah. Well, I’m in touch with, I had to get permission to use the photograph, from the Claudel estate and the person that wrote to me wouldn’t say their connection but it’s a relative. Anyway, so that’s why it went right into “The Gossips” after that because the isolation and the feeling of like “people are talking about me”, they say that she’s aware that people are talking about her and then, this is my favorite movement actually because I just love the texture that I found of this busyness and noise around her and I pictured that if it were staged, and I hope one day that it really is with a choreographer and all that stuff, but that there’s all this noise going on and it’s like you’re walking down this column in the midst of all this chaos and observing it, and it’s all around you and feeling more isolated than ever and then the voice just has this long line that’s floating through all of this space LM: I don’t know if this is true or not, but I also felt like there is this train rhythm because I read that she took a train trip and made a lot of her sketches while on that train and I didn’t know . . . JH: That I didn’t know about, I was just thinking about the busyness and the chatter, the chatter going on around her that, you know, it’s all this noise going on around her while through the middle of it all of this is happening and she knows that something is terribly wrong, like “I’m not in reality” LM: So how did you feel like you married that with the sculpture “The Gossips” because that was something, a new niche that she carved out for herself as miniatures? JH: As Rodin’s sculptures got bigger and more vast, hers got smaller so that she wouldn’t ever be accused of copying him, right? And so she was discovering, but I think that’s also indicative

53 of her mindset, she was going from looking up and around to like, really inward and small and I do think “The Gossips” is kind of a metaphor for psychologically where she was at that time LM: I like that. I’ve probably read too much but with Rodin’s sculptures getting bigger, that was the masculine and heroic aesthetic, the fact that she went to the smaller sculptures critics were actually more open to that because they were pretty and they were feminine and they fit within the realm of domesticity. And I thought that was really fascinating that she had started with these big, heroic figures and the critics thought “It’s beautiful but we can’t reconcile that to the fact that you are a woman creating these sexual figures” it was that the sculptures could either be either heroic and non-sexual or she had to be a man. There’s a fabulous book called Passionate Discontent and she delves into the psychology of the society at that time the gender of genius and how it was ok for a men to take on feminine traits, because it was said to be that intuition was a womanly characteristic which Darwin described as being in a lower class of humans, it’s absurd . . . JH: I know LM: But when a woman possessed genius she had to be male-identified and she had to be asexual, it’s astounding JH: And yet there are people who still feel that way today, it still goes on LM: It’s fascinating to read that and wonder why hasn’t more changed? JH: I know. But it has a lot in Western civilization in a lot of ways but still women are still held to a different standard than men. They just are. It’s that whole thing that if a CEO is male and he’s brutal, oh well he’s powerful. But if a woman is like that its “man, what a bitch she’s horrible” It’s unbelievable, I know it happens all the time. It’s like what’s happened with Martha Stewart. Yeah, and maybe she is tough and impossible but if she were a man, they’d be fine with it like “oh well, of course” … LM: With the instrumental movement, “L’age mur”, there’s the motive that comes back and I took that to be her movement into isolation and then it takes on this . . . JH: Well you know what that stature represented- L’age mur, right? And how it upset her family and it upset Rodin LM: So much so that that’s when he said “no more help” JH: “That’s it” He thought she was making fun of him and calling him this old, decrepit pervert and seeing herself as the victim, so that was it. LM: A line from the movie that I thought was really interesting, and I don’t know if it has any truth to it or not but someone, I forget who it was, commented on the statue and asked her “is this autobiographical” and she says, “no I’m every one of them” JH: “C’est trois fois moi” – it’s three times myself. Yes, I know it’s such a great line. They’re assigning characters and she goes “no, it’s all me”, “c’est trois fois moi” LM: The music goes through these permutations, a canon . . .

54 JH: And also, exploring harmonies that are different from what came before and also more in line with what the music was at that time as she was isolated LM: Ok, so Bartok-ian wouldn’t be so far off? JH: No, it wouldn’t be far off at all. LM: That’s what I heard, a Bartok string quartet. JH: No, I’m totally all about the music for strings, percussion and celeste. That’s some of the most beautiful music ever written, that first movement it’s like in my blood, it’s so magnificent. I’ll never forget the first time I heard it, and I was like “Are you kidding me? That is so beautiful!” I listened to it obsessively! It’s sort of, it’s giving us a sense of time passing, and also communication dropping off and also, the sort of tortuous nature of that isolation so that was the idea of doing it purely instrumental. LM: I just love that you begin with the viola, I felt I heard the mezzo color coming back JH: Right. LM: And then you contrasted it with this gigue [the Epilogue]. JH: We needed something positive. We needed to remember something joyful. The whole cycle had been so down and I thought we’re not going to care about her if we don’t see that there is a joyful person in there that’s been shut away and that’s the tragedy. And so, Jessie visiting her and going back and remembering this happier time. I felt like it was essential to the narrative and the storytelling and also the characterization and to leave us, I think it’s more heartbreaking because she can remember how beautiful things were and that’s what she wants to remember and also that line of “Thank you for remembering me” just kills me. LM: And you have other lines about her fear of being poisoned JH: Right, she thought she was being poisoned so she cooked all her own food LM: The other great line was “Every dream I ever had was of movement” I love that line. JH: That’s Gene. LM: It’s so brilliant. JH: But if you look at the sculptures they’re all moving. From La Valse to Shakuntala there’s a sense of motion, there’s a sense of something happening, something changing, like she says “something always about to change” and then she has to say “I understand, I must be very still” LM: That line breaks my heart because it makes it seem that Jessie herself is not quite sure of who is sitting next to her JH: Have you seen that photograph, and she’s holding her hand? . . . and Camille just looks so shut down, and she’s like -forcing a little bit of a smile but at the same time there’s just nothing left that she’s a shell.

55 LM: They’re holding hands but you get the sense that . . . JH: That Jessie is the one doing it. Camille’s just sort of sitting there. LM: She’s docile. JH: It was amazing at the premiere, Joyce finished it and burst into tears she had to turn away from the audience because it overwhelmed her. It was a really powerful premiere; I’ll never forget it. LM: So back to Joyce, chicken- egg, was the commission first and then you asked if Joyce could join or they said you could ask a singer to join? JH: It was a commission for the Alexander String Quartet thirtieth anniversary and Ruth Felt, who’s the head of San Francisco performances asked me if I wanted to do and she said I could have a singer and I was like “yes!” and I immediately thought of Joyce and I was thinking what piece would work and then I thought “Camille!” and then I had to explain it to Gene, cause he didn’t know about Claudel and so I explained it to him and then he was on fire with it cause there’s actually quite a lot of written material that you can find. LM: After 1980. JH: Right, not before! But after 1980 LM: Third wave feminism JH: Exactly. And then Joyce happened to be in Paris when I told her about it and I said “at the Musee Rodin are a bunch of her sculptures” and at the Musee D’Orsay, the big one “L’age mur” is at Musee D’Orsay and so she went and she sent me pictures of the sculptures back so she was excited about it too right away. So, first came the ask, and then sort of the opportunity and I realized this might be the right time and then Gene loved the idea and Joyce love the idea so then it was just a matter of how are we going to do this? How are we going to tell this story? And Gene knew it related to the art work and we had already done a few pieces, we did a piece called Statuesque, which is about sculptures and their inner life and we had done, we hadn’t done Question of light yet, maybe we had? No, we hadn’t we were talking about it and we had done Rise and Fall cycle which is also about sculptures, so we had done a lot with artwork already so it made sense for us to take that approach but then sort of it was what is the dramatic scenario? Why is this happening? And then we came up with the idea that this is the day the awakening is on the day that she knows she’s going to go away. So, then it had dramatic context and it was good but I can remember being so stuck. I was thinking while I was writing it “ Oh this is the worst piece I’ve ever written, this is terrible, terrible, terrible. . .” and then it turned out to be really, really good, I’m so proud of it. I felt like Moby Dick was a turning point -Dead Man Walking, The Deepest Desire, Moby Dick and Camille Claudel are sort of my touchstones for evolving style and deeper psychology in the music and the words. LM: Was it knowing that Joyce was in on the project what led you to include some bel canto? JH: Oh absolutely! But I’ve also developed, there’s more bel canto in Moby Dick than I’d ever used before too and now I’m actually writing a bel canto opera within an opera. But I found a

56 new – it was actually when I was writing Moby Dick was the first time I had heard , he was in the small tenor role at the Met in Lucia and Natalie Dessay was Lucia and it was this moment of “Oh, THAT’S what bel canto is!” Where every note matters, and it’s all a way of enlarging the emotional context and content of a single word or a single moment or a single emotion and I just got swept away with the idea at that point. And I’ve been learning to love melismas and looking for opportunities to use them dramatically where they make sense and really let the voice blossom in those areas and now I’m completely allergic to music that’s one word per note, over and over and over, and I hear it opera’s all the time and I’m like “my god let the voice bloom” let it do what it does and get less words and more emotional content, So I think it started just before that but certainly Joyce was part of it but I remember that performance at the Met particularly and influenced the way that I was going to write Moby Dick and then hearing Joyce, finally hearing Joyce sing a lot of bel canto definitely led me in another direction because I think I heard her Rossini CD as well as her Handel CD, and it was the Rossini CD more than anything and I was like “Holy, I have never appreciated this music so much as I do right now” LM: She’s a champion JH: Well, and also she’s a little bit like the Maria Callas of that world because there isn’t a false note in everything has to mean something, absolutely everything and I think that’s where I got a real sense of how powerful that music is and when you have a great composer writing in that style, like a Bellini, the real masterpiece’s of Bellini are astonishing and the same with Donizetti, but it’s astonishing what can be accomplished but it takes the greatest singers in the world to make it happen. LM: Because everything has to line up, you can’t have it mean something and not have the voice also fall in behind it JH: It requires perfect technique as well as complete authenticity of emotion, which is so hard! LM: I know Natalie Dessay is not singing a whole lot anymore but I do remember watching her Lucia and just knowing that every note was taking something out of her, she was singing with laser sharp intention JH: She was singing as if her life depending on it, there was another singer that sang like that and it was Lorraine Hunt [Lieberson], who I got to play for one time and got to know and heard her a lot but every note was like her life depended on it and that’s, that’s what that music requires LM: Let me make sure, but I think we got everything. JH: Well, great if anything comes up you let me know. LM: Thank you so much! JH: Oh sure, well thank you for doing the piece. And literally let me put you in touch with both Gene and Joyce, because they’ll both want to have something to say about it. LM: I did email Joyce and I think I just caught her at a bad time, becauase she said yes and then I emailed her my questions but I didn’t hear anything back. JH: She’s really, really busy.

57 LM: She said she was busy and she would try and I think that was back in March and she just started doing Clemenza JH: She’s so busy and I’m sure the time just went boom, boom, boom LM: I know, and emails are wonderful but they’re terrible JH: The best way is if you can get her online, like on a skype or a phone call where you can record it that’ll be much easier for her. If you can set up a session with her. Like right now, I think she’s in Europe, I don’t know when she’s back in the States, but send me an email to remind me and I will put you guys in touch if there’s time she could set up for even twenty or thirty minutes, but Gene will be delighted to talk to you about it because he’s very proud of the piece LM: Audrey keeps asking, “What’s your thesis” and I said “ That it’s cool, and I want everyone know about it” and she said- JH: “Not so much” LM: What I appreciate about this piece is it has a through-line, a complete narrative and you’ve got a couple other works like Eve –Song and the Ophelia Songs are like that where you see her go through these changes anf transformations JH: And my opera , is totally because most people initially don’t like Madeline Mitchell who’s the Frederica von Stade role- the mother, and because she’s made really hard choices and she seems disconnected and totally just self-involved and everything and isn’t until the end that you understand why she did what she had and that actually she’s an amazing person to have survived and accomplished what she did in her life and it’s actually her daughter who was most confrontational with her at the beginning who final understands and has great respect for her, at the end after she’s gone. Those journey’s are really powerful, these people are not victims. LM: No, and it’s the chance for a female to take on that role, have that presence and take on that journey, you’re one of the single-most contemporary composers that allow us to have that voice , Libby Larsen does it a little bit with her Try me, good king we get five difference women but it’s not one journey, it’s a little snippet, vignette, into each of them. The only other contemporary monodrama that I really know about it with any kind of weight is ’s Flower and Hawk, about Eleanor of Aquitaine, we see her in one particular scene in time, she tracks an emotional journey- It’s so refreshing to have something you can really dig your teeth into and tell the story and live through her narrative JH: I feel like people need to know about her and they still don’t, it’s just very hard because I mean, in what context would they know about her because it would have to be in art or art history and that’s not in schools anymore LM: In Philadelphia they actually have the largest Rodin collection outside of Paris, and I went and they had four shelves for Camille and most of them were replications and bronze casts, but still she had four shelves, and honestly I was shocked that they had any at all.

58 JH: Well, the fact is that she destroyed so much of her work before she was taken away because she was afraid that is was going to be stolen and that he would take ownership and they wouldn’t be hers anymore and those were her children, her children of stone and so she returned them to earth. If she hadn’t destroyed so much of her work there, she might have a bigger presence in the art world but luckily she has somewhat of a presence and I think it will grow but it Hollywood would make another movie that was actually, that actually had some joy in the middle of it. Like I always thought that if I did an opera it would have to be her early life, and maybe right through the meeting of Rodin, and maybe right up until she quits him and then that’s the end of the opera because there’s so much joy then at the beginning of it LM: I haven’t been able to see it, but Audrey said you could get the disk of the new Juliette Binoche film from Netflix JH: Yeah which is dark, it’s dark! Dark, depressing, totally! LM: No! I feel like she gets into those roles, Juliette! No! JH: Yep, really dark. It didn’t stand a chance of like becoming known . . . LM: It was on limited release in Columbus and I had an inkling to go . . . JH: I think rent it, and when you’re ready for a really dark evening, because it’s in the asylum and they used actual patients for the whole thing and you can see that she doesn’t belong there at all, and it’s just so frustrating. I mean she’s an amazing actress but anyway well I’m glad you’re doing the paper and I think maybe something like that also can give her a presence in life LM: My original desire was to do a lecture recital so people could be exposed to it at the same time of bringing up all these issues but to find an amateur string quartet that would be able to do it justice I thought I’d write this and a performance can come later once I’ve had a chance to digest all this information.

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APPENDIX E GENE SCHEER INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION, 19 JUNE 2014

60 Gene Scheer: How can I help you with your project? What kind of questions would you want to ask?

Lizabeth Malanga: A broad stroke question to begin with to have everyone to miss at all I’m approaching this with a little bit of a fan investment just because of where we on our culture today and help women are having to be validated through a man order to have validation artist for any credibility in the world

GS: in your project you’re taking a feminist perspective on this piece . . . it is clear that this is one of the major strains and a motivator for the whole situation and the fact that she was an artist of comparable genius to Rodin, who was denied a placed an artist to society plus she was a difficult person they were also people like Marceaux who were skilled but who played by the rules end Marceaux was very wealthy she came from a wealthy family and was Monets student she was part of the impressionists she was a little more acceptable Camille was a much more tumultuous person from a more working-class background and I think that she had that against her in other words clearly there’s a sexist issue that will motivate things but I think class was woven into it. Especially because she was a woman from a poor background that also didn’t help there were a few were able to exhibit like Marceaux among the impressionists very successfully. But Camille was different plus I do think and this plays right into your thesis it wasn’t just that she was a woman she was Rodin’s lover he would not allow her to a eclipse him was the whole thing in the film and I think it’s in the biography he was putting together a big dinner for a big kind of artist I can’t remember his name is a wonderful artist known for his pastels I’ll have to find it later anyway he was older than Rodin and he was putting on a big dinner in his honor and she wasn’t permitted to go and the other thing is clearly Rodin had a chip on his shoulder because even after he thought she was ridiculing him he intervened when she was unable to get one of her works cast (L’age mur) it was supposed to be cast by a government grant Rodin intervened clearly he was kind of a bastard in terms of that obviously sometimes when there’s smoke there’s fire that looks like sexism there’s no question that that was going on plus I think because her instability this is the point I was trying to make with Marceaux she was also unable to play by the rules and I think that’s partly because of being from a working class background . the sad thing is had she been less of an artist Rodin might’ve been a lot more comfortable he really must have thought she was a threat to mean just look at her work it’s clearly in terms of quality at his level I definitely agree with your premise -sexism was a big part of it ,it’s still hard but it’s a lot better now than it was back then.

LM:Yes and no I’ve done some reading and the theory of gender genius and looking at what was seen as madness within van Gogh for instance Madness was seen hysteria as it in a woman

GS: Yes I think that -listen I wrote the songs I’m not an expert in that fields of academic study - for me my task is to write texts that are character studies that are motivated and ring true and what you’re saying certainly seems to me to ring true and if anything would drive her even more insane because I think she was being told to calm down and still be so hysterical whereas with van Gogh it was a sign of a genius but even for Van Gogh in his time he was institutionalized with hindsight and people looking back she was described as being a genius until the 1980s people begin to recognize Camille

61 LM: It is so fascinating that with third wave feminism that she even started to become recognized so I think it’s really interesting that the timing with when the film came out people started really delving into her story it lined up quite perfectly

GS: Right also I think in terms of her entrée into recognizing her genius was with the story of her and Rodin which had been kept secret came out it was very intriguing the fact that she was beautiful and talented there was a voyeuristic aspect in the way people were viewing her story of course the other thing to remember that she was kind of forgotten A bunch of our notions of her for a little bit framed by the film I will tell you one thing this is a funny coincidence my wife’s boss as it turns out it’s Camille’s great nephew

LM: What?

GS: He is her great nephew. So when I was writing the piece I actually went to the boss’s mothers he was Pauls Great great nephew because his mother is her niece great-niece Paul Camille’s brother is her grandfather so I went and they have a copy or one of the editions of la petite chatelaine in their apartment in New York City so when I was doing the project I went over and interviewed Dominique who was Paul’s granddaughter so Camille’s grand niece -so the point, is from the family’s perspective they thought that Rodin was an asshole. He was very difficult and they blame him and they blame him much more than they blame Paul but that of course is from the family’s perspective there’s no way of knowing even if in your in the family from generation ago it’s hard to know but it was a very interesting coincidence plus because I got to see la petite chatelaine that was pretty cool it was absolutely since coincidence that had absolutely nothing to do with motivating the story it’s just the way turned out

LM: But the ultimate primary source

GS: Yes absolutely she actually I showed me family photographs she showed me Paul it was sort of clear and she explained that Paul and we know from the books that he was her grandfather a diplomat he was traveling around the country all the way to Washington Park at the idea of institutionalizing her was that there was no one to deal with her literally of course her mother was AWOL so Pahl held responsibility but he wasn’t there he was in China then the US so whatever it is that sexist thread is woven through all of this because the fact is headship and a guy this all would’ve been different so never had the trouble of asserting herself and she wouldn’t have been thought to be so crazy it would’ve been part of her artistic construct it’s definitely part of the story the thing is and I don’t need to highlight the fact that she was so difficult I actually think it makes it much more rich for being a difficult person and also the fact that she’s a difficult person meaning she was high strung or there being a blue thread through her DNA however you want to put it it made her vulnerable to people characterizing her she could’ve been just depressed not crazy but all of these forces that she was up against made her go crazy, made her go nuts . She really was a genius though my god her works it’s just incredible though isn’t?

LM: It is. The closest that I’ve come to her works was that the in Philadelphia which is the largest collection outside of Paris

62 GS: Yes I’ve heard that

LM: So most of them were bronzed recasts and Camille had four shelves

GS: Wow, wow.

LM: That she had four shelves and it’s not a very big museum but they had impressive pieces they had every creation of , the burghers of Calais, that’s as close as I could get for now

GS: The books are great too there’s a wonderful book if you can get your hands on it because it’s expensive there was a actually Jake has a copy and I think I have his copy the catalog from the Detroit show put on by the NEA was this big show that travel from Paris to Detroit to Montréal if I’m not mistaken was a wonderful catalog book that you can probably find it online but it’s going to be expensive because there’s a limited edition and Jake gave me his copy while I was working on the project the one thing and I’m pulling this out because it might be interesting to you that the Shakuntala sculpture it's a great story and we tried to highlight the aspects of that story mirrored her with him when I was writing the piece the thing that kind of triggered it for me was that there were many editions when she was working on it she did a lot of different versions of it until she settled on the final cast and my lyric was really prompted by one of her one of her earlier edition of the sculpture is in that sculpture she’s putting her arms all the way around him and it’s just it just seems very rich to me with a big springboard for that was the story of Shakuntala with that sculpture is just unbelievably stunning

LM: She made it into the heroic size eventually correct?

GS: Right yeah I believe that’s true I think so it’s just an incredible story and and of course Joyce sings it so well

LM: Absolutely that’s really her showpiece, I think.

GS: No it really is that girl can really toot that horn

LM: Along the same lines had I was talking to Jake and he took on the bel canto style taking inspiration from what Joyce does incredibly what was your take on how he took the style to use to express the text

GS: I think he’s miraculous I really do I honestly do not I’ll tell you why I think what Jake and I are both looking for and doing the person who writes the words I’m looking for giving Jake opportunities musically in which words are not necessary really that’s sort of my task. I’m trying to create , you know in the operas I’m trying to create circumstances or scenarios structure scenes that allow that to happen and I think that everything that Jake and I do just not by design but just by inclination is dramatically inspired, it’s just who we are. It’s not surprising to me that he would create these runs in Shakuntala which say as much as the words do about her situation or just the beautiful like in petite chatelaine the sweetness of the tune it’s so heartbreaking because of this person whose only children are stone and she’s gave up the one so he’s able to

63 carve melodies and a vocalism that really extends beyond the words, I think Jake uses the words as a springboard rather than as an ending he’s not only trying to illuminate the words but he’s trying to let words but take the music to a place where it can really connect to people because in the end even though I am the ‘word guy’ lyricist to me the reason we’re doing is because it’s vocal because there’s something about the human voice that can really communicate in a way like nothing else that's the other thing: not more than something else like nothing else the idiosyncratic aspects of singing to communicate the emotion and the situation and I think that what Jake is so gifted at because I think that where people are trying to create the sound world that will communicate the gestalt of an emotion Jake is letting the voice take the lead, it doesn’t mean that the piano part isn’t brilliant he is obviously an incredible pianist, orchestrator all of that at the core of it is brilliant vocal writing. That's why I like working with him so much because we’re trying to create a symbiotic relationship. For me that really it shows itself most in the vocalism, and I think Shakuntala is a good example of that. Also, Even the fact of letting L’age mur as instrumental was Jake’s idea, letting the music tell that story and so it’s the simplicity and the clear conversational aspect of the last song and the drama her whole life was about movement and now she’s being asked to stand still. For the photography it’s very touching and to allow music just to play out while that’s happening seemed like a really good idea.

LM: It’s such a heartbreaking lyric at the end . . .

GS: Yeah, thank you for remembering me

LM: That one and also, I understand I must be very still. There’s a sense that Jessie isn’t quite sure of who this woman is in front of her because of the way Camille responds

GS: It’s a real collaboration between the three of us, and the quartet of course but with Joyce she’s just a rockstar. She’s incredible. She’s so special. She infuses everything. I write the words, and I hand it to Jake, and if I’ve done my job right, he absorbs them in a way that he feels like he wrote them. And then the singer takes what Jake has written and what I’ve written and if he or she is doing their job right, it was never composed it was never written, they’re creating it right there in the moment. And I think that’s what Joyce does so well, there’s an immediacy, I always feel like she’s writing the music. And that’s really what you want. It’s being organically open because the person has a need to express themselves. And that’s what she’s so damn good at.

LM: One of my coaches said ‘Music should make the words inevitable.’

GS: I think that’s true. And the idea is that those words are chosen for that person, that character. More than anything, it’s a question of immediacy. You’re not telling us something that you heard, you’re creating it in the moment. And that could be Schubert song or Jake Heggie song. I think it extends past the words, to the music, so that you have the sense that you’re writing the music as you sing it, it’s that immediate.. Of course it’s hard to do, but it’s so exciting when it happens. I could watch

LM: How did you find Camille’s narrative voice for this?

64

GS: I don’t know how to answer that, I don’t remember exceptions. I read a lot, everything I could get my hands on, there’s not much there. But I read what I could. There’s a few quotes in the piece from her, only 2: the opening line, “Last night I went to sleep completely naked” that’s from her letter to him. And there’s this thing in “The Gossips” the sculptures that she’s planning . . .

LM: There is one more. I came across it in one of her letters in a book, it was from La Petite Chatelaine. The red umbrella.

GS: That’s a great image. I just try to get inside her feelings. I don’t know how else to say it.

LM: It’s beautifully balanced between these moments of clarity for her and then moments where she’s not quite present.

GS: That’s definitely intentional. I wanted to give a sense of a person who has one foot on the ground and one in the air, they’re living in sort of both sides of a looking glass simultaneously. My favorite line, to me the saddest line is “Was there ever a time you wanted to find me.” I really feel that that is when they broke up and things have become rancorous. She didn’t get to that page, but she recognized that he never really wanted to let her in. Just enough. I think he cared for her and I think he recognized her genius, but there was a distance he consciously or unconsciously wanted to maintain. I will say this about Rodin, I don’t think he’s capable of being with anyone including Rose. She was someone he also loved very much, she stuck by him when he was poor and all that, but clearly he was beyond her. He wanted to be a superstar genius, that’s the only kind of relationship he knew. I don’t think there was another kind of relationship where he really wanted to reveal his infinite vulnerability to her. He wanted some sort of distance and she wanted more than that, and I think that was very impossible for him. I do wonder if she had been less crazy… I think it’s complicated, there’s no way of knowing. Obviously she’s a victim of sexism and her DNA. But I don’t think she ever would have accepted a genius like that. It’s hard to know. If she hadn’t been a genius, more acceptable, he might have actually stayed with her. But she wasn’t that,

LM: I get the sense that she wasn’t demure, and wasn’t willing to be dominated in any way.

GS: That was the thing that was not acceptable at the time, and not acceptable to him. It’s just incredibly sad. I think you’re right about that.

LM: Did you want to express a universality through Camille’s story in a musical setting?

GS: I think the issues she confronted, sexism that we talked about, is definitely universal that has been in society for a long time. It’s such a focus in one’s life, the kind of notion of connecting is challenging. I think that’s an aspect of the story that has resonance with people. The big issue is that it’s her life. I think the thing that people possibly can relate to is her loss: the loss of relationship, the loss of child, the loss of possibility, the loss of hope, feeling trapped and that the one person you want to connect to you are unable to connect to. Feel like you’re sort of cut off from the spaceship and floating off in space. You can’t quite reach out and

65 connect, both because it’s hard to do it and also because it’s her existential reality: to die or to break off. The storyline is different than her life? We feel sympathy for her and empathy because we feel a sense of loss. Even though it’s not directly the same story we’re telling, there’s echoes of that when you’re telling a story about loss. The music is so beautiful that Jake wrote that it’s this sense of sadness and loss, and I think that is the thing that people can relate to. There’s just so much possibility in terms of the relationship and her career and what could have happened and her place in art history, not to mention the fact that she was silenced. What could she have done? Not just artistically: could she have had kids? a relationship? could she not have been institutionalized for God’s sake? There’s a sense of all that potential of life and life force that’s squandered. For people as they get older, I think there’s a sense of time and opportunity floating away, they can feel the presence of their own losses. I also don’t want to over-intellectualize it either, in the end I think people are attracted to this story of this woman. I can’t remember who said, “my hope for you is that the only death you experience is when your life is already gone.” you know, that you don’t die before your time. While you’re alive, live.

LM: It seems that the cycle follows the chronology of her life and career -

GS: In terms of pacing, the musical pacing is Jake’s department. He could have said, “Le Petite Chatelaine” is a fast song or “Shakuntala”is a very slow song. You can make observations about the piece that are absolutely valid that weren’t in my head when I wrote it. Hopefully there’s something that will have resonance. If you know everything you’re putting into the text, what you’re hoping for is that there’s some kind of symbiotic jingling of pool balls creating unexpected associations and feelings that have resonance in an unexpected way. You can find things in there that I didn’t intend but that might work, I mean, honestly I don’t know. It’s hardly simple to write these texts, but it’s also not a proof. You’re trying to write words that are descriptive but are also springboards for other thoughts and feelings. That’s when a text is really good, if it says more than it says on the surface - if there’s a feeling that it conjures. That’s what we’re all aiming for. I guess it’s not as calculated as all that.

LM: To me your words look like stream of consciousness prose, free verse style, but then Shakuntala is the only one that has some kind of rhyme scheme which was interesting. I think La Valse has a little bit of a rhyme scheme, but for the most part it’s a true narrative in that way. Can you talk about how you went about choosing which sculptures you found to be most inspiring?

GS: I looked at them all and the idea was to tell the story, not just her life but her story, specifically the story of her relationship with Rodin. I was looking at these sculptures and thinking, ‘what does it trigger in my mind?’ . La Valse had its own story about going backwards and forwards in terms of their relationship, and the opening ‘Rodin’ one had the sense of her trying to explore who he was, understanding the limits of their connection. .The fact that only they understood that she’s making this sculpture that looks exactly like him and he’s not there. There’s something elusive about him that’s by design, he doesn’t want to be found. It’s not just because sculpture can’t illuminate us human beings, but because in this case who he is is on some deep level is being hidden by him and by design. So there was a thought that was connected to each sculpture, L’age mur is pretty obvious in terms of that, her reaching out to him, even though she claims that wasn’t the case,

66 but I’m sure, you know. One of the things I thought of in terms of Shakuntala’s story was this notion that it took so long for the king to realize what had happened and she had wasted all this time, and it was this notion of we are all moving targets? We stay the same person, we’re willing to last for 20 or 30 or 50 years and you’re not the same person you were when you started and when you split, the idea that he comes back together with her but she’s not who she was. I thought that that had an echo of their relationship’s story. It’s like, ‘Do I want you back? I want you back’ and then, I’m not who I was when we were together. But that’s poignant, and I think very human. The Gossips is a direct correlation between what she was sculpting and what’s going on in her head, how she felt that Rodin was watching her. Le Petite Chatelaine was clearly about the child that she gave up because he told her to, and sort of her reflection on what was her legacy? and the heartbreak of that. And the last one is the story where Jesse comes to visit with her husband before they’re off to Italy or where ever they were going, and Camille being sweet but also kind of looney tunes. So I selected the sculptures based on what aspects of their relationship inspired me, honestly.

LM: I found it fascinating that each one really traces through a specific time in her career.

GS: It is important to say, I wrote all the texts and I don’t think the order is exactly how I delivered it to Jake. What you’re saying is I think absolutely right on the money, it was Jake’s doing. To create that kind of musical arc and story arc with the text that I gave him, that was Jake’s doing. I could look back for the version I actually submitted it, and for my old versions, then Jake and I go back and forth, look into our partnership. Clearly Rodin is to start with, then Jesse at the end. I was thinking about chronicling these different moments in her life.

LM: I was checking out his website and I knew that Joyce is doing the east coast premiere at Carnegie, He told me that fact that he’s orchestrating it for an west coast premiere of sorts. Jake talked about considering doing this as an opera

GS: Just to be clear, this whole thing was Jake’s idea. He broached the idea when he saw the movie and said he wanted to do this as an opera for a long, long time. We talked about it at one point, and then when this opportunity emerged through especially with Joyce, then we decided to do this. The idea of doing a female sculpture . . . We did talk about it, but the latest version is this is it. We think we wrote a good piece of this one, the orchestration is just another configuration of these songs. The idea of living with this story, I think Jake said the story is just so sad, he doesn’t want to work with it anymore. I think it could be made into an opera but I think we’re going to do other things. That’s my impression, never say never.

LM: There’s such an intimacy and a vulnerability that I’m almost tempted to say it would lose some of that on a grand scale.

GS: I’m sure someone could do a great job of it. But we’re just very happy with this piece, I know I am very proud of it. It’s really a beautiful piece. It’s a Wonderful Life I think is our next project, a big family opera.

This interview was transcribed my Marie-Thérése Mattingly, M.M. in Performance, The University of North Texas, 2012.

67 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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