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Choir Practice by the Team — in Life As in Art — of Stephen Chatman and Tara Wohlberg

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Choir Practice by the Team — in Life As in Art — of Stephen Chatman and Tara Wohlberg With the premiere a few weeks ago of the Stokes/Atwood collaboration Pauline and the building hype about Weisensel and Koyczan’s forthcoming Stickboy, the Vancouver opera scene is on a roll. Although we will have to wait for it until next year, another new work is underway: the comic opera Choir Practice by the team — in life as in art — of Stephen Chatman and Tara Wohlberg. Choir Practice promises to be a significant event: a major work from one of our pre- eminent composers, and one of the very few comic operas in the Canadian repertoire. Chatman, the senior composition professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music, came to Vancouver in the mid-1970s, and made an international career composing music in almost all the big classical genres. Choir Practice isn’t his first go-’round with opera. There was a 1985 project at the Banff Centre, The Crazy Horse Suite, which got a concert performance but no staged production. Then a couple of projects for Vancouver Opera and Pacific Opera Victoria never got beyond the talking stage. “So I’ve turned down two fairly big opportunities, because I didn’t feel right about them,” says Chatman. “I’ve always wanted to do another opera, but have been waiting for just the right opportunity, because if I don’t believe in it, it won’t work.” From the outset, Choir Practice has been a completely self-directed proposition. “This opera was our joint idea. We’re dealing with UBC Opera, director Nancy Hermiston and conductor Jonathan Girard, and the collaboration is going really well. Since we don’t have the superstructure of an opera company, it’s relatively inexpensive, and the kids are so talented. And we are doing a (record label) Centrediscs/Naxos recording. But creatively it’s our own project, period. We’ve been working on it since 2006.” If this sounds like a throwback to an earlier way of making opera, then so be it. Chatman and Wohlberg have adopted at least one contemporary practice: “We did workshop the libretto, got feedback, and Tara incorporated much of it into the opera.” Of course, writing and producing opera has to be about teamwork, yet I wondered if the idea of a spousal team didn’t bring some additional complications to what’s already a risky business. Not really, thinks Wohlberg. “We’re not exactly newlyweds — we celebrated 20 years together this June. We’ve collaborated many times in a choral context. I’m not a playwright by training, but as a writer and poet, I felt I could make this comic hybrid work. My husband will say, ‘I need an open vowel on the third syllable of this passage.’ It’s not a screenplay, it’s not lyrics, it’s not a play, it’s not a short story. It’s an opera libretto. I adopted a motto from Mozart: ‘The libretto is the obedient daughter of the music.’” Even so, crafting a viable libretto proved to be a significant undertaking. “It took a lot of research. You can’t hang a story on a skeleton that isn’t sound,” says Wohlberg. “Dramaturge Pamela Hawthorn provided considerable advice. We did the workshop to get the story centred and working, and cut out all the stuff that was interfering with that. The only real argument we had was over whether or not to use the word ‘barf’.” Early in the process they consulted with one of the grand old men of the arts in Canada. “We met with the late Mavor Moore in 2006, the last year of his life,” says Chatman, “He gave us some great advice, including having a central character to carry the plot: in this case, it’s a conductor who can’t conduct. Then there are two soloists who are battling, and a choir of crazy characters. You can’t believe how funny a choir practice can be.” Chatman ought to know: his reputation as Canadian choral music’s star composer has made for lots of experience with many, many choirs. Choir Practice isn’t going to explore national myths and archetypes. “We’re not looking backwards to Canadian historical stories. This is not the opera about the Great White North, it is just an entertainment,” says Chatman. “But it is about the Vancouver choral community in 1985, pre-Expo, and incorporates some existing choral compositions.” “Just entertainment” might be just a bit disingenuous. Chatman and Wohlberg have crafted a dramatic arc that promises, if not a moral, then at least a moment of revelation. “Mavor Moore looked at the unfinished libretto, and said that the key to this is the blind character. She can’t see but she can hear and she can sing,” says Chatman. “Once we got that into our minds, everything fell into place. There’s a very dramatic point in the opera when everything that is going wrong gets transformed; the last 10 minutes are very serious. The first 45 minutes are comedy, but then it becomes very dramatic, as the blind woman emerges a heroine.” The work is designed to be practical and effective. “The set isn’t very complicated. It’s a one-act show. Eleven players, with a pianist on stage, 10 in the pit. There are 13 characters: a quartet of main characters, seven men, six women, and a chorus whose size has yet to be determined.” In keeping with current music theatre best practices, the plan is to have projected surtitles, even though Wohlberg’s libretto is in English. .
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