ANALYZING GENDER INEQUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY OPERA

Hillary LaBonte

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

August 2019

Committee:

Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers, Advisor

Kristen Rudisill Graduate Faculty Representative

Kevin Bylsma

Ryan Ebright

Emily Pence Brown

© 2019

Hillary LaBonte

All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT

Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers, Advisor

Gender inequality is pervasive in the world of performing arts. There are far more female dancers, actresses, and singers than there are male performers. This inequality is amplified by fewer numbers of roles for women. This document examines gender inequality in contemporary North American operas, including the various factors that can influence the gender balance of a cast, with focused studies on commissioning organizations and ten works that feature predominantly female casts. Chapter 1 presents the analysis of all operas in OPERA America’s North American Works database written and premiered from 1995 to the present. Of the 4,216 roles in this data, 1,842 (43.6%) are for female singers. Operas written by a female composer or librettist have 48% roles for female singers, operas with a female lead character have 51%, and intentionally feminist or female-focused operas have 53% roles for female singers. Chapter 2 considers ten companies devoted to the creation and production of contemporary opera in North America. Works premiered by these companies have an average of 47% roles for women, and companies with a female executive or founder are more likely to have a higher average. Companies that use language like “innovative” or “adventurous” in their mission statement are more likely to have greater female representation in the casts of their commissioned works. Chapter 3 discusses ten contemporary operas that feature at least 50% female casts in a wide variety of stories, with multi-layered female characters and diverse musical styles. The works profiled are Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum (1998) by Kitty Brazelton, Eve Beglarian, Elaine Kaplinsky, and Lisa Bielawa, Amy Beth Kirsten’s Ophelia Forever (2005), Catherine Reid and Judith Lane’s The Yellow Wallpaper (2008), Ana Sokolović’s Svadba (2011), Errollyn Wallen’s ANON (2014), Kate Soper’s Here Be Sirens (2014), Kamala Sankaram and Susan iv Yankowitz’s Thumbprint (2014), Sean Ellis Hussey’s …for the sake of a narrative closure (2017), Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s prism (2018), and Philip Venables and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (2018). These operas contain the kinds of female characters and female-focused stories lacking from the traditional repertoire. v

For my dad, the original Dr. LaBonte,

my mom, for her boundless support, and David, my favorite answer to the question

“what’s next for you?” vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This document would not have been possible without the help of so many people. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers, for her consistent support and encouragement every step of the way.

The members of my doctoral committee offered invaluable guidance throughout this process. Dr. Emily Pence Brown provided keen insight and helped shape the language of my research. Kevin Bylsma gave unwavering aid and encouragement, and Dr. Kristen Rudisill gave very supportive feedback. Dr. Ryan Ebright was instrumental in defining the path of my research. For this, I am extremely grateful.

My colleagues in the doctoral program at Bowling Green State University have been a source of support, inspiration, and collaboration. I would like to extend my gratitude to them, with special thanks to the head of the program, Dr. Marilyn Shrude, and the members of my year, Mercedes Diaz, Henrique Batista, and Nick Zoulek.

My dear friend Megan Ihnen has given me priceless feedback and aid over the years. I am also thankful to have the support of my family, especially for my sister Anna, my brother

Allan, my sister-in-law Krystal, my niece Penelope, my aunts Liz and Karen, and my grandmother Yukie. I would not be where I am without all of them.

I celebrate this accomplishment in honor of my mother, Beatrice Hawkins, and in memory of my father, Dr. Barry LaBonte, whose love and encouragement are always with me. I am thankful to carry this achievement into the future with my wonderful and caring fiancé David

Wagner. This document is dedicated to them. vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..... 1

The Conversation in Other Media ...... 8

Opera and the Bechdel Test ...... 10

Looking at the Numbers ...... 12

Moving Forward ...... 17

Limitations ...... 18

Chapter Outline ...... 20

CHAPTER 1. DATA SURVEY OF NORTH AMERICAN WORKS, 1995-PRESENT… 22

Methodology ...... 22

Results ...... 24

Key Trends ...... 25

Effects of Female Creators ...... 25

Intentionally Feminist Operas ...... 27

Premiering Organizations ...... 30

Year Subsets ...... 36

Outreach/Educational Operas ...... 37

Voice Part Stereotypes ...... 38

Monodramas ...... 38

Conclusion ...... 39

CHAPTER 2. SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY OPERA COMPANIES ...... 41

East Coast ...... 43 viii

New York ...... 43

Center for Contemporary Opera ...... 46

American Opera Projects ...... 48

Beth Morrison Projects ...... 51

American Lyric Theater ...... 53

Experiments in Opera ...... 56

Other East Coast ...... 57

Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative ...... 58

Guerilla Opera ...... 60

The Midwest ...... 61

Nautilus Music-Theater ...... 61

Canada ...... 63

Chants Libres ...... 63

Tapestry Opera ...... 65

Conclusion ...... 67

Women in Charge ...... 65

Language of Intention ...... 71

CHAPTER 3. FEMALE-FOCUSED CONTEMPORARY OPERAS…………………… . 73

Ophelia Forever ...... ……………………………………………………………….. 76

Here Be Sirens………………………………………………………………………. 79

Svadba……………………………………………………...... 82

p r i s m…………………………………………………...... 85

4.48 Psychosis ...... 87 ix

…for the sake of a narrative closure ...... 90

ANON ...... 93

The Yellow Wallpaper ...... 95

Thumbprint ...... 98

Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum ...... 101

Final Thoughts ...... 104

CONCLUSION ...... 106

What Did We Learn? ...... 106

What’s Missing? ...... 106

How Do We Fix It? ...... 107

Institutions...... 107

Composers and Librettists ...... 109

Performers ...... 110

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………… 112

APPENDIX A. SURVEY OF SELECTED BAROQUE OPERAS……………………… . 121

APPENDIX B. SURVEY OF POPULAR OPERAS…………………………………… ... 122

APPENDIX C. SURVEY OF POPULAR NORTH AMERICAN WORKS ...... 123

APPENDIX D. TEN CONTEMPORARY OPERAS WITH MOSTLY/ENTIRELY

FEMALE CASTS ...... 124 x

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 Comparison of distribution of genders in a sample of ten Baroque operas ...... 5

2 Comparison of distribution of genders in top ten performed operas, 2004-2018...... 6

3 Comparison of distribution of genders in top ten performed North American works,

1991-present ...... 13

4 Distribution of roles in North American works, premiered 1995-present, separated

by category of roles (lead, supporting, comprimario) ...... 24

5 Distribution of roles in North American works, 1995-present, compared with the

top ten performed operas worldwide, 2004-2018, and the top ten performed North

American Works, 1991-present...... 25

6 Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female

composer, a female librettist, or with a female lead character, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied ...... 26 7 Bar chart comparing the percentage of roles for men and women in all operas in data studied versus operas with a female lead character, separated by role category (lead, supporting, comprimario, and total)...... 26 8 Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female composer, a female librettist, with a female lead character, or with an intentionally feminist story, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied ...... 27 9 Bar chart showing the role distribution in intentionally feminist operas, separated by role category (lead, supporting.) ...... 28 10 Bar chart with the number of premiered works in each category of company, as established by OPERA America ...... 31 xi

11 Pie chart showing the number of works premiered by companies in OPERA America’s highest level of Professional Company Members...... 33 12 Pie chart showing the number of works premiered by companies in OPERA America’s second highest level of Professional Company Members ...... 34 13 Bar chart comparing the percentage of female roles in operas from the top three contributing groups ...... 36 14 Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas, separated into five-year subsets ...... 36 15 Bar chart showing the female roles in operas divided by five-year subsets, separated by role category (lead, supporting, and comprimario) ...... 37 16 Bar chart comparing the distribution of roles in all North American works, 1995-present, versus the works by contemporary opera companies...... 68 17 Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female composer, a female librettist, with a female lead character, or with an intentionally feminist story, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied and in works from contemporary opera companies ...... 68 18 Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in works by contemporary opera companies, separated by company ...... 69

1

INTRODUCTION

Traditional opera suffers from a major lack of depth in its female characters.

Additionally, many female characters experience horrific abuse and even death. Most female roles in operatic works are defined by their relationship to the leading man; indeed, most operatic plots center around a heterosexual romantic relationship, and the complications that ensue. There are differing ideas on the consequences of such representation within feminist opera scholarship.

French feminist scholar Catherine Clément states that the music obscures the plot elements that undermine the female roles and eventually lead to their downfall or (frequently) their demise.1

Conversely, Carolyn Abbate argues that opera “so displaces the authorial musical voice onto female characters and female singers that it largely reverses the conventional opposition of male (speaking) subject and female (observed) subject.”2 Although Abbate has a point—giving women the opportunity to voice their thoughts in featured roles does put their strife in the foreground—ultimately, those roles are still developed and identified by their relationships to male characters. Mary Ann Smart made the strongest case for examining opera from a feminist perspective:

…feminist concern with representation and visual objectification has thrown new and urgent emphasis onto the whole visual dimension of opera and onto the staging of the body. Once seen as an art form that excelled at perpetrating—and aestheticizing—crimes against women, opera has begun to reveal itself on the contrary as embodied, a site for multiple interventions and theoretical experiment.3

1 Catherine Clément, “Through Voices, History,” in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera, ed. Mary Ann Smart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 17-28. 2 Mary Ann Smart, “Introduction,” in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera, ed. Mary Ann Smart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 7. 3 Ibid. 2

Clément later stated that her initial theory is furthered in opera’s reliance on voice part stereotypes—“The traditional images of helpless soprano, vulnerable romantic tenor, baritone as law-giver, etc.…”4

She elaborates on the representation of each Fach, noting that the vast majority of soprano roles are victimized in some way: “Humiliated, hunted, driven mad, burnt alive, buried alive, stabbed, committing suicide—Violetta, Sieglinde, Lucia, Brünnhilde, Aida, Norma,

Mélisande, Liù, Butterfly, Isolde, Lulu, and so many others…All sopranos, and all victims.”5

While mezzos have a little more autonomy, they are frequently punished for it. According to

Clément, mezzos possess a quality of freedom and the capability of protest. Despite their protests, mezzos meet fates similar to sopranos in the end. When female roles seek to depart from convention, they are subjected to horrible fates, usually at the hands of men.

Even the women who survive the opera are usually the worse for it. Charlotte Higgins points to the example of Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin—her attempt to express herself fully to Onegin fails when he rejects her, and her confession that she still loves him at the end of the opera shows that she has closed herself off from her truer self:

The ideal feminist ending would be for Tatyana to be wonderfully happy in St Petersburg and to have Moved On, rather than to be husbanding the flame of teenage love in the pomp of her maturity. But that would not quite be tragic enough. Tatyana lives – but she suffers a kind of emotional death.6

The patriarchal representation of gender onstage has parallels in the institutions that perpetuate these operas. Offstage, women are routinely excluded from positions of power in

4 Ibid., 11-12. 5 Catherine Clément, Opera, or The Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 22. 6 Charlotte Higgins, “Is Opera the Most Misogynistic Art Form?,” The Guardian, February 26, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/26/is-opera-the-most-misogynistic-art-form. 3 opera production. For most of the form’s history, men have been the producers, composers, and librettists of opera.7

The area of performance was the only place women could possess any kind of autonomy.

A popular diva can rise through the ranks to gain control of her career, from when and where she will sing, to the kinds of characters she would portray, and even the music used to portray them.

Most recently, the popularity of Renée Fleming (nicknamed “the people’s diva”) has granted her the National Medal of Arts in 2012, significant performances outside opera (on Broadway, at the

Super Bowl in 2014) and positions as an artistic advisor at the Kennedy Center and a creative consultant at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.8 Maria Callas became a household name for her dramatic interpretations of opera’s most famous heroines in the mid-twentieth century, and

Beverly Sills’s meteoric rise at the New York City Opera turned into a position as its general manager in the 1970s. Maria Malibran’s vocal talent, dramatic personality, and family connections catapulted her to fame in the early nineteenth century—until her untimely death at age 28, she was the favorite singer of composer Giacomo Rossini, who wrote several operas for her. Italian singers Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni dominated the London operatic scene in the 1720s, using their public “rivalry” to compete for audience favor, which could award them more stage time, arias better suited to their voices, and their choice of character.

In early opera (approximately 1600 to 1750), casts were usually equally balanced.

Composers and librettists based their plots on Greek and Roman mythology, which are typically

7 There are some exceptions—author Katherine Preston identifies manager Effie Ober of the Boston Ideal Opera Company and philanthropist Jeanette Thurber, among other women who played important roles in American opera companies during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Katherine Preston, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 8 “Leadership,” Renée Fleming, accessed June 27, 2019, https://reneefleming.com/leadership/. 4 balanced between genders. Yet there is limited data on gender-balanced casts in operas from this time. To illustrate the balance of casts in early opera, I selected ten well-known, frequently performed and recorded operas from the Baroque era: Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di

Poppea (1643), Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto (1651), Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Alceste (1674),

John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (1683), Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689), George

Frideric Händel’s Rinaldo (1711) and Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724), Antonio Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso (1727), and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and Castor et Pollux

(1737).9

I chose five Italian operas, three French operas, and two English operas to show variety in national styles (see Appendix A for details on cast and character breakdown). The first chart below (fig. 1-A) shows the distribution of gender for the characters—47% female to 53% male.

Baroque composers often wrote certain male roles for female voices; Cupid (portrayed as a boy or young man) is usually sung by a soprano. This tendency for cross-gender casting shifts the balance, seen in the second chart (fig. 1-B). Sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and contraltos made up

53% of the cast.

The castrato was a male singer whose prepubescent treble voice was preserved through the practice of castration. In Italian Baroque opera, heroes were frequently portrayed by castrati singers, with auxiliary male roles sung by tenors, baritones, or basses. (This practice did not extend to England or France.) In this sample, 36% of the roles were for those lower voices, and

11% for castrati singers.

9 John Blow’s Venus and Adonis has a female librettist, Anne Finch. 5

DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS IN DISTRIBUTION OF SINGERS IN SAMPLE SAMPLE OF BAROQUE OPERAS OF BAROQUE OPERAS

Male, 36%

Female 47% Female, Male 53% 53%

Castrati, 11% A. Distribution of genders in characters in a sample of ten B. Distribution of genders in singers in a sample of ten Baroque operas. Baroque operas. Castrati (male) singers have been separated out to demonstrate the treble-voiced roles that briefly transferred to female singers. Figure 1. Comparison of distribution of genders in a sample of ten Baroque operas. (A) Distribution of genders in characters; (B) Distribution of genders in singers.

Unfortunately, these numbers did not last, but before things got worse, they briefly got better. The decline of castrati contributed to a brief shining moment when women would have outnumbered men onstage; as dramaturg Cori Ellison describes: “The first three decades of the

19th century were mezzo glory days, as the castrati went the way of the dodo, and their flashy lover and hero roles, inherited by the dusky, androgynous voices of mezzos, became the so- called ‘pants roles.’”10

10 Cori Ellison, “Mezzos in the Middle of a Lyric Explosion,” The New York Times, November 7, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/07/movies/mezzos-in-the-middle-of-a-lyric- explosion.html. 6

Imagine entering a theater in the early 1800s to see the hero, the leading lady, and the confidante all played by women! Regrettably, this didn’t endure; Ellison goes on to detail the movement of the hero roles from castrati to tenors:

By mid-century, the emerging, more dramatic Verdian tenors had ended the mezzos’ hegemony. They were still assigned pants roles, but the characters tended to be more innocuous and less important to the plot, like Siebel in “Faust” or Urbain in Meyerbeer’s “Huguenots.”11

It is these operas from the Romantic era that comprise the most frequently performed operas worldwide.

DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS IN TOP DISTRIBUTION OF SINGERS IN TOP TEN TEN PERFORMED OPERAS, 2004-2018 PERFORMED OPERAS, 2004-2018

Female 30% Female 36%

Male 64% Male 70%

A. Distribution of genders in characters in top ten performed B. Distribution of genders in singers in top ten performed operas worldwide, 2004-2018. operas worldwide, 2004-2018. Figure 2. Comparison of distribution of genders in top ten performed operas, 2004-2018. (A) Distribution of genders in characters; (B) Distribution of genders in singers.

11 Ibid. 7

The website Operabase provides statistics on opera performances all around the world, dating from to 2004 until the most recent completed season. The top ten most-performed operas between 2004 and 2018 are W.A. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Die Zauberflöte (1791), Gioacchino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), Giuseppe

Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851) and La traviata (1853), Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1875), and Giacomo

Puccini’s La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904). Only one (Die

Zauberflöte) has an equal number of male and female singers. 12 The remaining nine operas favor male-dominant casts, with male singers making up 64% of the roles (fig. 2-B). The divide is worse for female characters: only 30% of the characters in these operas are women (fig. 2-A). In

Puccini’s Tosca, there is only a single female character in the entire cast, against eight male characters. When compared with operas of the Baroque era the shift toward an unbalanced portrayal is clear.

Like seventeenth- and eighteenth-century operas, Romantic operas continue the tradition of giving equal amounts of time to their leads. However, they reduce the number of primary female characters, and therefore the amount of stage time devoted to female singers. Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia has one female lead in Rosina, versus the three male primary characters of

Figaro, Almaviva and Bartolo. Verdi’s La traviata and Puccini’s La bohème give more time to their female lead characters, but mostly in isolation from other women—the majority of the opera has them interacting with the male characters.

This transition toward unequal representation was two-fold: not only did the number of women decrease, but their treatment onstage suffered. Romanticism’s emphasis on emotional catharsis changed operatic plots. Rather than celebrating epic tales of gods and nobles, the

12 “Statistics,” Operabase, accessed June 7, 2019, https://www.operabase.com/statistics/en. 8 emotive journey of its leads became opera’s focus. Female roles were pared down to their function as love interests, subject to their own mood swings and those of their lovers. Female supporting characters diminished in their frequency, leaving a female lead character to talk only to men. These roles competed not only over stage time or the attention of the leading man, but also audience sympathy. As Suzanne Aspden writes, “For such women, relative gender-role propriety might have become one means of asserting their superiority to their rival, audience favor depending on a woman’s demonstration through her role of greater female virtue.”13

The Conversation in Other Media

Since the 1990s, similar discussions about gender inequality have taken place in the world of film and television—especially concerning the accurate portrayal of complex women.

One such discussion led to the Bechdel test, a standard against which films could be measured to see if they include even the smallest depiction of believable female representation. Using the

Bechdel test on operatic works (from the traditional canon of repertoire, as well as the newly composed) could help in the search for feminist operas.

The Bechdel test came about in a 1985 comic strip titled “The Rule” by cartoonist Alison

Bechdel, as part of her series Dykes to Watch Out For. In the comic, a woman states that she only attends movies in which two women talk to each other about something other than a man.

Bechdel got the idea from her friend, Liz Wallace, and also credits Virginia Woolf, who made related statements in her 1929 novel A Room of One’s Own: “Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men,

13 Suzanne Aspden, The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 71. 9 soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer!”14

With the rise of feminist scholarship, works of theatre and film began to receive similar criticism. A study by Cicely Scheiner-Fischer and William B. Russell III remarked on the importance of using films with more accurate portrayals of women in educational settings: “The fact is that women seldom speak only to men or encounter only men; they should not continue to be represented in such a manner. It is easy to overlook the lack of interactions of females with other females because the male perspective is considered universal.”15

Sometime in the early-to-mid 2000s, the idea of applying the standards from the comic strip to films and plays took hold, and gained a widespread profile as “the Bechdel test.”

Currently, a user-edited website (bechdeltest.com) tracks new movie releases, and assigns each a pass/fail grade.

Many have noted the limitations of the Bechdel test—in terms of true gender representation, it sets the bar very low. Katy Waldman points out that under the original guidelines, the nature of the conversation could still be frivolous, but earn a passing grade.

Meanwhile, two women discussing the merits of a significant philosopher (who happens to be male) would not.16 Melissa Maerz lists several films that rely on sexist stereotypes in their portrayal of female characters, yet manage to pass the Bechdel test, including How to Lose a Guy

14 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, Hogarth Press, 1929. 15 Cicely Scheiner-Fischer and William B. Russell, “Using Historical Films To Promote Gender Equity in the History Curriculum”, The Social Studies 103, no. 6 (September 10, 2012): 222. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.616239. 16 Katy Waldman, “The Bechdel Test Sets the Bar Too Low. Let's Write a New One.,” Slate, January 7, 2014, https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/01/the-bechdel-test-needs-an-update- weve-set-the-bar-for-female-representation-too-low.html. 10 in 10 Days, The Hot Chick, American Pie 2, and How to Marry a Millionaire.17

Some authors have expanded on the Bechdel test in an attempt to raise the bar—for example, both women must be named characters, the conversation must last for at least sixty seconds, et cetera. Feminist scholar Roxane Gay expanded on the guidelines to include women of color, transgender and queer women, as well as realistic portrayals of financial status.18

Opera and the Bechdel Test

Of the most popular operas in the standard canon of repertoire, only a few pass the

Bechdel test, let alone feature complex female roles that defy voice part stereotypes. The most well-known operas to do so are Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Francis Poulenc’s

Dialogues des Carmélites, both of which take place in convents. While both the title character of

Suor Angelica and Blanche in Dialogues des Carmélites eventually succumb to victimization perpetrated by their situations and surroundings (Angelica by suicide and Blanche by execution), both women express a wide range of emotions, and display complex feelings about their circumstances.

Both operas also feature several other women, with backgrounds and desires of their own; the lead characters’ interactions with these other women contribute to their revealed complexity. Lastly, neither opera features a romantic relationship for either lead. This is easily explained by both characters’ status as nuns; however, the “gap” left by the absence of a romantic partner is not filled with a focus on the characters’ faith. Instead, their more human struggles are the primary action.

17 Melissa Maerz, Anthony Breznican, and Nicole Sperling, “Alison Bechdel Reflects on the Cult of Alison Bechdel,” Entertainment Weekly, no. 1361 (May 2015): 38. 18 Waldman, “The Bechdel Test Sets the Bar Too Low. Let's Write a New One.” 11

As with films, there are many operas that subscribe to a sexist view of women and rely on voice type stereotyping, yet still manage to pass the Bechdel test. In Le nozze di Figaro, Susanna and Marcellina have a duet together that does not discuss men—instead, they elaborate on their rivalry over Figaro with an exchange of petty insults (hardly an example of feminist portrayal).

Falstaff includes a brief exchange among the women, but focuses on their revenge plot for

Falstaff. Even Madama Butterfly, which treats its title character’s gender and ethnicity with narrow regard, contains conversations between Butterfly and Suzuki about finances and religion.

Richard Strauss’s Elektra premiered in 1909, and focuses on its title character’s conflict between her need to avenge her father’s murder and her inability to carry out vengeance herself.

This opera features a female character, and passes the Bechdel test multiple times—Elektra converses with her mother and sister about her behavior. Additionally, she resists the typical soprano victimization with her outspoken resistance. In spite of this, Elektra’s identity is shaped by her relations to men—her thirst for vengeance stems from her father, and she spends the majority of the opera waiting for the arrival of her brother so he can complete the action. While this representation of a female character is more nuanced than operatic norms, it is still flawed.

Along similar lines, Puccini’s Turandot (1926) features an against-type lead soprano. The

Chinese princess has dedicated herself to avenging her ancestor’s rape and murder by challenging all potential suitors to a battle of wit, on penalty of death. She is merciless in her command and displays no differentiation in her regard toward anyone looking to foil her goals

(evident in her interactions with both Calaf and Liù). Turandot’s conversation with Liù as she tortures her for information passes the Bechdel test. Nevertheless, like Elektra, the opera is ultimately defective in its treatment of women—in the end, Calaf forces Turandot to submit to him by tearing off her veil, hurling verbal abuses at her, and finally kissing her against her 12 protests. In contrast to Turandot, Liù is submissive, committed to servitude, and repeatedly expresses her unrequited love of Calaf as her primary motivation.

With increased attention on feminist film and theatre, and new efforts to balance the scales within the art world, it follows that perhaps new operas would provide more complex female characters and stories that could pass the Bechdel test (without having to resort to convents). Additionally, these operas could subvert the voice part stereotypes that have been calcified by the traditional repertoire.

Ultimately, the conclusions made about the Bechdel test in its application to other artistic forms hold true for opera. Just because a work passes the test does not necessarily mean it is a feminist work. The added standards of a complex female lead and a resistance to voice part stereotypes severely limit the number of works that pass.

Additionally, new operas reinforcing gender traditions continue to be written and acclaimed—for example, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin only contains one female character, who bears horrific abuse and eventual suicide. Kevin Puts’s Silent Night has two female singers in the whole show (who never interact, and are only viewed in their relation to male characters).

Looking at the Numbers

So how do the numbers of new works compare to those of the standard repertoire? The

OPERA America database includes a list of the top ten most performed works in the database

(listed in Appendix C). The result is marginally better than the top ten operas, with 39% of the roles for female singers (fig. 3-B). There is less room for cross-gender casting; the number of female characters is almost the same (38%, fig. 3-A). While some of the operas provide rich characterization of women (Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe) and another even passes 13

the Bechdel test (Mark Adamo’s Little Women), others perpetuate the damaging stereotypes of

the operatic canon (George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah). Carlisle

Floyd’s Of Mice and Men has one woman in the entire cast (including the chorus), and she is

unnamed—only referred to as “Curley’s Wife.”

DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS IN DISTRIBUTION OF SINGERS IN TOP TEN PERFORMED TOP TEN PERFORMED NORTH AMERICAN WORKS, NORTH AMERICAN WORKS, 1991-PRESENT 1991-PRESENT

Female Female 38% 39%

Male Male 61% 62%

A. Distribution of genders in characters in top ten performed B. Distribution of genders in singers in top ten performed North American works by OPERA America professional North American works by OPERA America professional company members, 1991-present. company members, 1991-present. Figure 3. Comparison of distribution of genders in top ten performed North American works, 1991-present. (A) Distribution of genders in characters; (B) Distribution of genders in singers.

Another recent trend is casts with large numbers of male singers. Jennifer Higdon’s Cold

Mountain (2015) has a large ensemble cast with almost equal numbers of male and female

characters and singers, but this is offset by the exclusively male chorus. Kevin Puts’s Silent

Night (2011) also has a men’s chorus; moreover, there are only two female roles, and one

receives a few minutes of stage time. Joel Puckett’s baseball opera The Fix (2019) has two

female singers in the cast, and Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing (2015, about Walt Whitman)

includes one soprano among three male soloists and an eleven-person men’s chorus.

(Incidentally, the topics rife with rich American stories—war and baseball—are also male- 14 dominant.) These four works were premiered at large and prominent North American houses

(Santa Fe Opera, Minnesota Opera, and American Repertory Theatre, respectively). While it is important these stories be told, it should not come at the expense of opportunities for female singers.

There have been recent conversations regarding gender imbalance in the opera world, particularly from OPERA America. OPERA America is an organization dedicated to the service of North American opera companies. It was founded in 1970 and has grown to include 150 professional companies in its membership. In 2015 OPERA America chartered the Women’s

Opera Network, intended to “increase awareness of and discussion about diversity and gender parity in the field, create action plans to promote the advancement of talented women, [and] become a source of support for emerging female professionals.”19

The group examined data from 25 years of OPERA America’s annual reports and determined a history of very low (an average of 8%) female representation in general director positions at the companies with the largest budgets. Parity improved as the companies got smaller, reaching 38% on average and 49% in 2015 for organizations with annual budgets under

$1 million. However, a study of women in all leadership positions at North American opera companies showed a consistent imbalance, averaging 33% in 2015. A striking similarity to the numbers onstage in opera’s most popular works—women are marginalized onstage and offstage, despite evidence that there are many more women in opera (and the performing arts at large).

Some scholars are using data analysis as a way to raise awareness around this issue.

Actor and theater educator Valerie Weak began the Counting Actors Project compelled by

19 “Women’s Opera Network,” OPERA America, accessed June 5, 2019, https://operaamerica.org/content/about/won.aspx. 15 personal experience:

I kept noticing something was off about the artists I was seeing at auditions and onstage. It seemed like more men were working than women. On a personal level, I’d recently joined Actors’ Equity, my 40th birthday was getting closer, and I just wasn’t getting cast. As someone who’d worked fairly consistently as a younger, non-union actor, I couldn’t work out the reason for the apparent change in my castability.20

Weak cataloged the numbers of working actors, playwrights, and directors in the San Francisco area between 2011 and 2014. The project revealed that 56% of the acting jobs went to men, and majority-male casts were more common (55% of productions). “In the 500 shows counted, women had fewer jobs than men in every category.”21

Data collected by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Completions published the gender imbalance for the top five schools awarding degrees in voice and opera. At these schools (Rider University, The New School, San Francisco Conservatory of Music,

University of Cincinnati, and the New England Conservatory of Music), 68% of the graduates from 2012 to 2016 were women. In an article for Classical Singer, Dana Lynne Varga discovered that from 2006 to 2016, 71% of the voice majors graduated from Oberlin College were women; other prominent music schools had similar numbers. She notes that this disparity has consequences within and beyond academia:

College voice programs end up in bidding wars with each other for the best male singers, and consequently most male singers are accustomed to much more significant scholarships than females. After school, the men are far more likely to find quality singing opportunities and paying work, whereas the women (who have more debt) have a much harder time finding opportunities—especially ones that pay.22

20 Valerie Weak, Not Even: A gender analysis of 500 San Francisco/Bay Area theatrical productions from the Counting Actors Project, WomenARTS: March 2015. 21 Weak, Not Even, 8. 22 Dana Lynne Varga, “Supply and Demand: Gender Disparity in Opera,” Classical Singer, December 1, 2017, https://www.csmusic.net/content/articles/supply-and-demand/. 16

Varga continues that men can negotiate for higher pay, while women must meet increasingly higher standards for less than what their male counterparts may earn, due to the mismatch between supply and demand.

The outcomes can get personal. The #MeToo movement began in 2006 by activist Tarana

Burke and spread virally across social media in 2017. Women in the performing arts shared stories of sexual harassment and assault, as well as the lack of support and even retaliation when they reported these crimes. The Washington Post’s classical music critic Anne Midgette and arts reporter Peggy McGlone revealed many of these stories in the classical music world, including those from opera singers. These women described their strife, either choosing to suffer in silence working next to their abuser, or electing to leave, only never to be hired again by that company—even gaining a reputation as being “difficult to work with.” Mezzo-soprano Erin

Elizabeth Smith expressed the shame and devaluation echoed by countless victims of sexual abuse: “I lost my confidence…the only reason I’m on his roster is that he wanted to sleep with me. It made me doubt my talent.”23

Women across the performing arts world struggle for representation, in the works they perform and the companies that produce them. This imbalance has far-reaching consequences for organizations and individuals alike—as long as opera continues to lag behind, it will continue to be perceived as outdated and irrelevant. We deserve operas that tell stories from all walks of life.

When opera looks like the audience it wants to attract, it will attract that audience.

23 Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone, “Assaults in dressing rooms. Groping during lessons. Classical musicians reveal a profession rife with harassment,” The Washington Post, July 26, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/assaults-in-dressing-rooms- groping-during-lessons-classical-musicians-reveal-a-profession-rife-with- harassment/2018/07/25/f47617d0-36c8-11e8-acd5- 35eac230e514_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ab1d616e1a4e. 17

Moving Forward

Suzanne Cusick: [So] you think opera can help resist rape culture? Kamala Sankaram: Yes.24

How can we address the issues of opera in newly composed works? How can we enact real and lasting change? How can we improve representation not just of women, but of all marginalized and silenced groups? These questions involve a much larger conversation, one that reaches far beyond the capabilities of this document (and certainly its author’s). What I offer is a piece of the puzzle—some clarity into how new works are functioning within the world of opera and how they correspond to the greater conversation that these questions reference.

When the major North American opera houses published their 2018-2019 season announcements, Anne Midgette responded to their largely white, largely male, largely conservative offerings with a Tweet devising a season of contemporary operas by female composers. This list included works by Jennifer Higdon, Kate Soper, Missy Mazzoli, Lori

Laitman, Thea Musgrave, Laura Kaminsky, Meredith Monk, Kaija Saariaho, Dame Ethel Smyth, and Du Yun. The Tweet received 45 retweets and 168 likes, with many responding with their own additions.25 Midgette followed up with an article in the Washington Post, where she considered how companies might change how they program:

I was much more excited about my hypothetical season as a whole than I might be about encountering any one of these works on its own in the context of a “regular” season, framed by “Carmens” and “Butterflies.” There may be a fundamental weakness in the way opera companies present new work: There is so much pressure on each single piece

24 Suzanne G. Cusick, “‘Women in Impossible Situations’: Missy Mazzoli and Kamala Sankaram on Sexual Violence in Opera,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71, no. 1 (2018): 248. 25 Anne Midgette (@classicalbeat), “All these season announcements (and @JDavidsonNYC's comment to @zwoolfe) made me fantasize about what kind of opera season I'd like to see. Something ranging across a palette of styles and tastes and eras – like this, perhaps:,” Twitter photo, February 15, 2018, https://twitter.com/classicalbeat/status/964203687299223552. 18

to get white-bread eaters to magically develop a new palate that it becomes somehow less appetizing. What stimulates the appetite is the sight of a rich assortment of different kinds of flours and seeds and rolls, sweet and savory — what you see when you go into any bakery.26

Examining companies that specialize in new works may provide answers about who is fostering true change. Identifying works with the kind of representation we desire can aid producers and performers to make those necessary changes in their own repertoire. And confronting organizations with the power to enact widespread change with a number makes the need for that change irrefutable.

Limitations

The main source of this data will be OPERA America’s North American Works

Database, which is not exhaustive. As a result, this study will focus on operas premiered in North

America. To capture a timeframe most would consider contemporary while still gathering enough data, I will examine works written from 1995 to the present.

This also means that I am only counting the premieres of works. The data reflects the initial performance of each work. Many of the houses and companies referenced in this document present contemporary works of music theater in every season; however, these are performances of works that were premiered elsewhere, either outside the timeframe or geography of this study.

I will not be considering why there is an imbalance in the number of female singers versus male singers, nor will I examine the history of why there are more male characters than female characters in opera. I will relate this data survey to the broader conversation of gender

26 Anne Midgette, “The trouble with opera,” The Washington Post, February 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/02/16/the-trouble-with- opera/?utm_term=.0219f6aa01c6. 19 inequality in the arts, but it is not my intention to delve too deeply into music and feminist theory.

I acknowledge that my methods adhere to a female/male gender binary. The classification of voice types in opera is strongly gendered—historically, sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and contraltos are regarded as female voices and tenors, baritones, and basses are male. Most of the time, the higher voice parts perform female characters and the lower voices perform male characters. This is a flawed system when considering gender-diverse people.

Aiden Feltkamp wrote a series of articles for NewMusicBox on the gendering of voices, and proposed a new system in which voice type is not so strongly tied to gender and instead assessed on the voice’s qualities, rather than the body that houses it.27 Brian Kremer and Liz

Jackson Hearns recently published the book The Singing Teacher’s Guide to Transgender

Voices, in which they discuss ways that existing organizations can alter the wording of their audition notices, choral part identifiers, and language around the gendering of voices to be more inclusive. Their calls for further change echo Feltkamp’s: “The systems that are in place in the industry today cannot support gender-diverse singers…A person’s gender identity does not alter the quality and range of their singing voice, unless that person chooses to do so through the process of their transition. Perhaps it is time to reimagine a voice classification system that does not delineate genders and to do away with gender-dependent voice categories.”28

I agree that the old systems of classification deserve rethinking and even overhaul. I also think this consideration will lend itself to better gender balance in casts, and promote the telling

27 Aiden Feltkamp, “Does Opera Need Gendered Voice Types?,” NewMusicBox, January 7, 2019, https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/does-opera-need-gendered-voice-types/. 28 Liz Jackson Hearns and Brian Kremer, The Singing Teacher’s Guide to Transgender Voices (San Diego: Plural Publishing, 2018), 44. 20 of more diverse stories in contemporary opera.

However, the operas that allowed for fluid voice type (to be sung by any voice part, or soprano/tenor or mezzo/baritone) were few and far between—in fact, I have only come across one (Cullyn Murphy’s Agony).29 The majority of analyzed operas had female characters portrayed by sopranos, mezzos, and contraltos, and male characters as countertenors, tenors, baritones, and basses, and thus warrant classification under these terms.

Chapter Outline

In Chapter 1, I will use the OPERA America North American Works database to examine the gender balance of casts in operas composed and premiered since 1995. I will analyze the operas to determine the factors that may affect the gender balance of a cast, including the presence of women on the creative team (composers, librettists), or in prominent positions within the work (female lead character, female-focused story). I will also identify the gender balance of casts in works premiered by the United States’ largest opera companies, as well as look at subsets of years to observe any change over time.

Chapter 2 narrows the focus to companies devoted to contemporary opera. These companies often have a smaller audience than the larger opera companies, yet they are on the front lines of creating new works. Many of them offer educational initiatives to prime composers and librettists for opera creation, some of whom have gone on to receive commissions from those larger companies. I will examine the mission statements of these companies, as well as the gender balance in their output since 1995, to see how they compare against the larger picture of

29 Murphy achieves this with vocal writing primarily based in speech; some moments of notated pitch happen, but the performer is not expected to match pitches exactly (octave displacement is approved), nor do the performers sing pitched material together. Additionally, the performers portray a variety of characters and genders, switching frequently throughout the piece. 21 new works in North America.

After analyzing new operas for gender balance in casts at different levels, I will profile ten operas that feature at least 50% female casts in Chapter 3. In addition to having more female roles in their casts, these works portray a wide variety of stories, with multi-layered female characters and a diverse array of musical styles. I will discuss how these works correspond to the problems present in the traditional opera repertoire, and how they give voice to the kinds of stories and heroines previously excluded from the canon.

22

CHAPTER 1. DATA SURVEY OF NORTH AMERICAN WORKS, 1995—PRESENT

When deciding how to examine contemporary opera casts for gender balance, OPERA

America’s North American Works database was an ideal source. While it is not comprehensive, it encompasses a wide range of producing organizations, it contains entries going back to the early 20th century, and its listings often include details about available roles. I wanted to be sure I could get a clear view of opera throughout North America, in academic and professional institutions alike—operas written for students or young artists, as well as those higher-profile ones marketed to a company’s subscribing audience. What kinds of operas are commissioned for educational outreach? For regional companies, especially those farther from major coastal cities?

For the mainstage of the largest companies in the United States and Canada?

Moreover, what are the factors that contribute to more balanced casts? There are some recent initiatives to elevate the voices of female composers. Does having a female composer or librettist result in a more balanced cast? Last, can plot elements contribute to the balance of a cast—for example, does having a female lead character help? Some opera creators cited a motivation to treat their female characters with more complexity than the average opera heroine.

Did this intention make a difference?

Methodology

The North American Works database on OPERA America’s website holds N = 1,649 records. The database is “open to opera/music-theater works written by a composer and/or librettist who is a citizen or permanent resident of North America.”30 Only organizational members of OPERA America can submit entries (however, there were many discrepancies,

30 North American Works Directory. 23 detailed in the section “Premiering Organizations”). To get a clear assessment of recently written operas, I analyzed all entries from 1995 to the present—n = 700 entries, 42% of the database.

In this study, I applied several qualifications to the available data. Some entries did not include complete dates of the premieres. If the entry was missing the day or month, I defaulted to the 1st or January, respectively. Many entries in the OPERA America database did not include roles or a cast list, so I compiled this information using other sources. If this information could not be easily found from the composer’s website or the site of the producing organization, the entry was rejected.

Inconsistencies in these available data led to further criteria. Some entries provided a breakdown of role categories (leading, supporting, and comprimario). Leading roles receive most of the stage time and figure heavily in the opera’s story, while supporting roles appear for less time and may only supplement the leading character’s arc. Comprimario (Italian for “with the primary”) roles are small, with minimal appearances and usually no arias. I found the breakdown of roles for 212 entries (34%). Others did not include that distinction. If that information could not be readily found, all roles were included in the “leading” category (n = 410, 66%). The operas ranged in length—from the shortest being four minutes to the longest at three and a half hours. (If this information was not included or easily accessible, I recorded as “not available.”)

Some of the operas listed are in progress, and others had duplicate entries for their workshop versions and their premieres. In these cases, I logged the most recent version of the opera. In my examination of the companies profiled in Chapter 2, I found additional operas and included them if all criteria could be found. This brought the total size of my database to n = 622 entries. 24

I recorded the following categories of data: Premiere Date, Composer, Title, Librettist,

Premiering Organization, Company Level (referring to the category of membership within

OPERA America), Length, Accompanying Forces, Number of Lead Roles, Number of Female

Lead Roles, Number of Supporting Roles, Number of Female Supporting Roles, Number of

Comprimario Roles, Number of Female Comprimario Roles, and Description. I also included five yes/no questions: Female Main Character, Outreach, Intentionally Feminist, Female

Composer, and Female Librettist.

Results

Of the 4,216 roles in this data, 1,842 (43.6%) are for female singers. When analyzed by category, 45% of all lead roles, 40% of supporting roles, and 33% of comprimario roles are for female singers (fig. 4).

Role Distribution of All Data

Total Roles 56% 44%

Leading Roles 55% 45%

Supporting Roles 60% 40%

Comprimario Roles 67% 33%

Men Women

Figure 4. Distribution of roles in North American works, premiered 1995-present, separated by category of roles (lead, supporting, comprimario.)

Comparing these data against the averages of the top ten most performed operas, these numbers are slightly higher—44% compared to 36% (fig. 5). However, the number of male roles as compared to female roles is still unequal, and does not reflect the global population balance of 25

49% women to 51% men. Additionally, these statistics do not approach the current demographics of opera singers.

Distribution of Roles

64% 61% 56% 44% 36% 39%

Top Ten Performed Operas, Top Ten Performed North North American Works, 2004-2018 American Works, 1991- 1995-present present

Male Female Figure 5. Distribution of roles in North American works, 1995-present, compared with the top ten performed operas worldwide, 2004-2018, and the top ten performed North American Works, 1991-present.

Key Trends

Effects of Female Creators

I examined whether having a female presence in the creative team made a difference in role equality. There were 129 operas written by female composers, 191 operas written by female librettists, 262 operas with a female lead character, and 30 operas that were intentionally feminist

(more details on these are in the next section). Operas with a female composer or librettist had more equal gender representation than the overall average, with 48% of roles going to women

(fig. 6). Operas with a female lead character had a greater change from the overall average, with

51% female roles. Having a female lead character—something tied to the story being told—has a greater effect on the gender balance of a cast than the gender identity of either major creator. 26

Percentage of Female Roles: Female Creators

51%

48% 48%

44%

Total Data Set Female Composer Female Librettist Female Lead Character

Figure 6. Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female composer, a female librettist, or with a female lead character, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied. Role Comparison: All Operas vs. Operas with a Female Lead

67%65% 60% 55% 54% 56% 56% 49% 51% 46% 45% 44% 44% 40% 33%35%

Male Leading Female Male Female Male Female Total Male Total Female Roles Leading Roles Supporting Supporting Comprimario Comprimario Roles Roles Roles Roles Roles Roles All Operas in Data Set Operas in Data Set with a Female Lead

Figure 7. Bar chart comparing the percentage of roles for men and women in all operas in data studied versus operas with a female lead character, separated by role category (lead, supporting, comprimario, and total.)

Looking closely, this difference appears in all categories of roles. Figure 1.4 shows the distribution of roles (lead, supporting, comprimario, and total) in operas with a female main 27 character, compared against the same totals for the whole data set. The operas with a female lead improve gender parity in all categories, with the total number of roles coming close to equality

(51% roles for women, 49% roles for men). The largest improvement shows in leading roles, with a 9% shift in favor of women. Comprimario roles still heavily favor male characters, but operas with a female lead reflect slight progress by 2%. (Though this barely moves the needle, recall that comprimario roles are often young artists’ debut vehicles. That 2% difference could mean a significant step in a young woman singer’s career.)

Intentionally Feminist Operas

Percentage of Female Roles: Female Creators + Intentionally Feminist Operas

53% 48% 48% 51% 44%

Total Data Set Female Composer Female Librettist Female Lead Character Intentionally Feminist

Figure 8. Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female composer, a female librettist, with a female lead character, or with an intentionally feminist story, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied.

Thirty (5%) of the operas analyzed in this study were intentionally feminist or female- focused, per statements made by the composer or librettist. For example, composer Aaron

Gervais says about his opera: “With a fierce heroine battling overwhelming odds, Oksana G. challenges operatic conventions and offers an uncompromising portrayal of human trafficking.”31 Alice Shields’s website for her opera Criseyde shows a picture of a muscular,

31 Aaron Gervais, “Oksana G. World Premiere,” Aaron Gervais, accessed June 18, 2019, https://aarongervais.com/performances/oksana-g-world-premiere/. 28 tattooed woman flexing her arms, surrounded by words like “heroine”, “sexual trophy”,

“feminist”, and “treacherous whore”.32 All but one of these operas feature a female lead; on average, female roles make up 53% of the cast (fig. 8).33 This is a marked difference from the overall average, as well as the previously studied categories.

Role Distribution in Intentionally Feminist Operas

Male Female

Total Roles 47% 53%

Lead Roles 41% 59%

Supporting Roles 60% 40%

Figure 9. Bar chart showing the role distribution in intentionally feminist operas, separated by role category (lead, supporting.)

The supporting roles in these operas are overwhelmingly male—in fact, it is almost a reversal of the lead role balances (fig. 9). This may be because most of these operas have female lead characters, and many (following in operatic tradition) feature their typically heterosexual romantic relationships as part of the plot.

Within these operas, we can see three main trends. Fifteen are “portrait” pieces, focusing on a well-known accomplished woman: Eleanor Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Alexandra David-

Neel, Isabelle Eberhardt, Frida Kahlo, George Sand, Phoolan Devi, and Dora (of Freud’s

32 Alice Shields, “Criseyde,” Alice Shields, accessed June 18, 2019, http://www.aliceshields.com/criseyde/index.html. 33 Ana Sokolovic and Paul Bentley’s The Midnight Court, which examines antiquated ideas of marriage. 29 studies), among others. Only ten of these have casts of at least 50% women. These operas mimic a trend seen in contemporary opera as well as traditional repertoire in which a famous individual’s life appears onstage in variously realistic or abstract scenes, like Philip Glass’s

Einstein on the Beach (1976), Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1874), and Mason Bates and Mark Campbell’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2017).

Five operas involved rewriting history or a famous literary work in a way that centralizes and deepens the lead female character’s experience. Nora in the Great Outdoors (2011), a monodrama by Daniel Felsenfeld and Will Eno, looks at the aftermath of Nora’s actions at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Alice Shields and Nancy Dean’s Criseyde (2008) is a retelling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary

Magdalene (2013) gives the title character’s view of Jesus. For Beatrice Chancy (1998), James

Rolfe and George Elliott Clarke transferred the true story of Beatrice Cenci to a slave plantation in 19th-century Nova Scotia. Grethe Barrett Holby of American Opera Projects commissioned four female composers to remake Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum using electronic music.

The result? Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum (1998), by Eve Beglarian, Lisa Bielawa, Elaine

Kaplinsky, and Kitty Brazelton.

A third category of five operas examined female oppression or violence against women using original stories. Aaron Gervais and Colleen Murphy’s Oksana G. (2017) addresses human trafficking, Thomas Pasatieri and Daphne Malfitano’s The Family Room (2011) is about women held in captivity, and Nico Muhly and Stephen Karam’s Dark Sisters (2011) concerns female oppression in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Ellen Reid and

Roxie Perkins’s prism (2018) examines the aftereffects of trauma, and Brian Current and Marie 30

Clements wrote Missing (2017) about the disappearance of First Nation women in Canada. All of these operas had casts of at least 50% female characters; in fact, the overall average was 71%.

The remaining five operas vary in content; two did not have at least a 50% female cast.

Adamo’s Avow (1999) was inspired by Samuel Barber’s A Hand of Bridge, which examined the inner lives of two married couples, revealing the cracks in their outwardly polished partnerships.

Adamo’s work takes a similar view of a conflicted couple on their wedding day. Bernard Rands and Leslie Dunton-Downer reference the complexity and strength of their five female leads in

Belladonna (1999); however, the rest of the cast is comprised of the men in their lives.

(Additionally, one of the lead female characters is portrayed by a countertenor.)

Paula Kimper and Wende Persons adapted Patience and Sarah (1998), Isabel Miller’s novel about a lesbian relationship in 19th-century New England. Matricide (1998) by Elena Kats-

Chernin and Kathleen Mary Fallon is an opera for six female singers inspired by the Parker-

Hulme murder case from New Zealand. Last in this group is Ana Sokolovic and Paul Bentley’s

The Midnight Court (2005), based on a comic Gaelic poem about a man who dreams of being persecuted by a group of fairies for resisting marriage. Of all thirty intentionally feminist operas, this is the only one that does not have a female lead character.

Premiering Organizations

Figure 10 shows the number of operas presented under a given level of premiering organization. The percentage above each bar reflects the percentage of the total data set for that level. These levels are established by OPERA America according to a producing organization’s budget, non-profit or academic status, or other affiliations. The categories marked “PCM” refer to the Professional Company Members at five budget levels. 31

Breakdown of Data Set by Premiering Organization Level 180 25% 160 140 19% 120 100

80 11% 10% 9% 9% 60 6% 40 5% 5% Number of Premieres 20 1% 0

PCM 1 PCM 2 PCM 3 PCM 4 PCM 5 Opera.ca Associate Independent Educational

Educational Non-Member

Figure 10. Bar chart with the number of premiered works in each category of company, as established by OPERA America.

To qualify for PCM membership with OPERA America, the company must have 501(c)3 status, produce and perform at least one staged or semi-staged work per season for a paying audience, employ at least one full-time management role, and pay professional performers.

These companies must prove ongoing performances for at least three seasons, including the current season. PCMs must complete one full year of membership before gaining eligibility for

OPERA America grants.

If a company wants to gain OPERA America membership but does not meet these requirements, they can apply for membership at the Associate level.34 Educational institutions can apply for Educational Producing Affiliate membership—unlike Associates, these members can apply for OPERA America grants. Opera.ca refers to the Canadian national association of

34 Individuals can become members; however, this does not grant editing access to the North American Works Directory. 32 opera companies, which partners with OPERA America. For the purposes of this survey, all non- member educational organizations were categorized under the label “Educational Non-Member”, and all other non-member organizations were labeled “Independent” I examined the top three contributors to determine who were contributing the most works.

One quarter of the operas in this data set came from independent, non-OPERA America- member sources. The “independent” category (my term) includes all operas produced by an organization without an OPERA America membership. These independent organizations were primarily small theatres, opera companies, ensembles who also performed non-theatrical works, and festivals. No more than five works were premiered by a single independent institution; most of these producers only appeared once in the database.

Nineteen percent of the operas were produced by PCM 1. PCM 1 includes the largest opera houses, with annual budgets over $15,000,000. There are currently ten members at this level, all represented in the data set of this study. (The eleventh house, New York City Opera, filed for bankruptcy in 2013.35) Figure 11 shows the breakdown of the houses by the number of operas they commissioned in this data set.

Washington National Opera claims the largest number of commissions, with Houston

Grand Opera in second place. Most of the entries for Washington National Opera come from their American Opera Initiative, a program that commissions short operas from upcoming composers and librettists. It is the only program of its kind among the PCM 1 organizations.

(This program and the works it has produced are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2.)

35 The 2008 recession caused major shifts in opera companies’ budgets, and the closure of several organizations. Historical data detailing house levels from 2006 provided the information for those works premiered before the closing of those companies. 33

PCM 1 Michigan Opera Theatre Seattle Opera 2% 2% Metropolitan Opera 3% Washington Dallas Opera National Opera 5% 24% New York City Opera 6%

Lyric Opera of Chicago 7%

Los Angeles Opera 8%

Houston Grand Santa Fe Opera Opera 9% 23%

San Francisco Opera 11%

Figure 11. Pie chart showing the number of works premiered by companies in OPERA America’s highest level of Professional Company Members.

Some of the other PCM 1 houses are introducing programs to “update” opera—San

Francisco’s Opera Lab operates in a smaller theater and produces unconventional works, like a

staged version of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise and Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba (2011), a Serbian

opera for six unaccompanied female voices.36 Los Angeles Opera has a working relationship

with contemporary opera producer Beth Morrison Projects and has produced several works that

originated at BMP, including Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar (2012) and David Lang’s

anatomy theater (2016).37

36 Erikson, “Director Puts Her Stamp on New SF Opera Lab.” 37 “Beth Morrison,” LA Opera. 34

Palm Beach Opera PCM 2 1% San Diego Opera Seattle Opera Arizona Opera 1% Opera Theatre of Saint Virginia Opera 1% 1% 3% Louis 13% Utah Opera Company 3% Pittsburgh Opera 3% Florida Grand Opera 3%

Florentine Opera Minnesota Opera 3% 12%

Cleveland Opera 3%

Central City Opera 3%

Boston Lyric Opera 3% Glimmerglass Opera 9% Skylight Music Theatre 4%

Opera Omaha 4%

Lyric Opera of Kansas City Opera 7% Colorado 4% Cincinnati Opera Opera Philadelphia 6% 6% Fort Worth Opera 6%

Figure 12. Pie chart showing the number of works premiered by companies in OPERA America’s second highest level of Professional Company Members.

There were 22 companies at the PCM 2 level who contributed a total of 69 premieres.

This level of membership includes companies with annual budgets between $3 million and $15 million. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) and Minnesota Opera had the most premieres, with the majority happening since 2007 (fig. 12). Both companies reference a forward-thinking attitude in their mission statements. OTSL points out their premieres early in their company biography, and even claims it “may be the highest percentage of new work in the repertory of 35 any U.S. company.”38 Commissions from their New Works, Bold Voices series include Terence

Blanchard’s Champion (2013) and Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown (2016). OTSL cites their revivals of other contemporary repertoire including Tobias Picker’s Emmeline (1997) in 2015 and Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath (2007) in 2017.

Minnesota Opera’s recent premieres include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Silent Night

(2011) by Kevin Puts and Paul Moravec’s The Shining (2017), both with libretti by Mark

Campbell. Minnesota Opera’s commissions are mostly adaptations of recognizable works: Silent

Night is inspired by a film based on a true story from World War I; The Shining is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel; other premieres from their New Works Initiative include adaptations of the novel The Manchurian Candidate (Kevin Puts, 2015) and the play Dinner at Eight (William

Bolcom, 2017). Minnesota Opera cites inclusivity as one of its values; however, only two of their premiered works included casts with at least 50% female roles.39

Examining the output from each company level reveals something notable. Operas from independent sources conformed to the overall male-female role average of 44% (fig. 13). The operas from PCM 1 companies had 42% female roles, and the operas from PCM 2 companies only had 40% female roles. This indicates that despite having limited access to funding and institutional support, independent sources were more likely to produce operas with roles for women than some of the largest companies in the United States.

38 “About,” Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, accessed May 16, 2019, https://www.opera- stl.org/about. 39 “Mission, Vision, Values,” Minnesota Opera, accessed May 16, 2019, https://mnopera.org/mission-vision-values/. 36

Percentage of Female Roles: Top Three Contributors

44%

42%

40%

Independent PCM 1 PCM 2

Figure 13. Bar chart comparing the percentage of female roles in operas from the top three contributing groups.

Year Subsets

Percentage of Female Roles: Year Subsets

46% 44% 43% 43% 42%

1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014 2015-current

Figure 14. Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas, separated into five-year subsets.

I also organized the data into subsets of approximately four-year groups to see if any major shifts occurred. Figure 14 shows the percentage of female roles in the operas from the years 1995 – 1999, 2000 – 2004, 2005 – 2009, 2010 – 2014, and 2015 to present. The 2010 – 37

2014 operas show a slight increase in the number of female roles, raising to 46%. The other year subsets remain relatively stable.

There is an increase in the number of female supporting and comprimario roles in 2000 –

2004 and 2005 – 2009 (fig. 15). Andrew Earle Simpson’s The Furies (2006), Daron Hagen’s

Vera of Las Vegas (2003), Howard Shore’s The Fly (2008), Stewart Wallace’s The Bonesetter’s

Daughter (2008), and David Carlson’s Anna Karenina (2007) all happen to include several smaller roles, many of them for women. The operas from 2010 – 2014 show a sharp drop-off of female supporting and comprimario roles; the numbers rise again in more recent years.

Role Subcategories, Divided by Year Subsets

Lead Supporting Comprimario

1995-1999 289 51 8

2000-2004 215 83 18

2005-2009 310 65 34

2010-2014 380 41 6

2015-current 257 70 16

Figure 15. Bar chart showing the female roles in operas divided by five-year subsets, separated by role category (lead, supporting, and comprimario.)

Outreach/Educational Operas

5% of the operas in the data sample were written for educational purposes. Of these operas, only one was intentionally feminist: French Friends (1997) by Persis Vehar, written for

English-speaking learners of French and featuring Henriette de la Tour du Pin, a real-life French emigré to North America. Instead, the educational/outreach operas fell into three categories: historical reenactments (for example, Bruce Adolphe and Carolivia Herron’s Let Freedom Sing:

The Story of Marian Anderson, 2009), morality plays targeting children’s issues (like bullying, 38 diversity, healthy eating, etc.), and adaptations of fairy tales.

Voice Part Stereotypes

Several operas in the sample carried over the stereotypes and archetypes for each voice part, or continue the plots of popular operas from the Classical and Romantic eras. Many of them carry over the typical cast breakdown of one role per voice part—an ingénue light soprano, a leading lady lyric soprano or mezzo, a character mezzo, a romantic tenor, a villainous/intelligent baritone, and a comic bass. These operas usually include one more low male voice in a comprimario role, putting the casts at 43% female, 57% male.

Thomas Pasatieri’s Signor Deluso (1974) is one such opera; Bruce Trinkley’s Golden

Apple (1999) uses the same stereotypes. Michael Ching’s Buoso’s Ghost (1997) continues the plot of Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, with the same cast. Peter Hilliard’s The Filthy Habit

(2004) and Brad Carroll’s Cio Cio San (2005) are updates of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, respectively. Patrick Soluri’s Figaro’s Last

Hangover (2001) references Figaro, Carmen, Romeo, and Juliet in an updated setting.

Composers may rely on these casting stereotypes for several reasons: they studied traditional operas to prepare for their commissions and are repeating what they have seen; they intend to reference the history of these stereotypes by including them in their work; or perhaps it never occurred to them to think outside these boxes.

Monodramas

One trend that revealed greater parity for female voices was that of the monodrama.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung (1924) and Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine (1958) are two examples that have entered the traditional canon of repertoire, and composers like Thomas

Pasatieri (Before Breakfast, 1980) and Dominick Argento (Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night, 39

1979) continued the practice. There are some examples for male voice; however, there are many more for female voices, particularly soprano. Like the “intentionally feminist” operas in the data sample, these typically focus around a famous female subject. Recent examples include Kaija

Saariaho’s Émilie (2008) about physicist Émilie du Châtelet and Stephen Paulus’s Hester Prynne at Death (2004). Jeremy Beck’s Black Water (1995) and Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (2016) are more abstract, eschewing the “famous lady” centerpiece for meditations on death and philosophy, respectively.

This survey included 23 (n = 4%) monodramas for female voice.40 Most of these featured a significant woman from history or literature. Characters featured included Josephine Baker, the character of Nora from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Lot’s unnamed wife, Medusa, and Lady

Macbeth. Michael John LaChiusa’s Send (who are you? I love you) (2008) was written as a companion piece to La voix humaine for soprano Audra McDonald.

Conclusion

The results of this investigation demonstrate that while contemporary operas are closer to gender equality than the traditional repertoire, the field has not yet achieved parity. Moreover, most of the works in this data set have not received performances past their premiere run. While some feature valuable female-focused narratives, told with the voices of women, these are not the operas playing regularly in companies around the country.

It is also significant to identify the factors that influence gender parity in casts.

Discovering what contributes to greater equality can help lead to greater change. There have been many efforts to raise up female creators and administrators in the opera world. This change is necessary to the growth of this art form; yet it is important to note that while it is important for

40 There were 18 monodramas for male voice in the data set. 40 female composers and librettists to receive support and opportunities in opera, their involvement does not necessarily trigger a “ripple effect” into their works. In fact, many of the intentionally feminist works found in this data set had male creators.

Intention plays a major part in change. Who is seeking to change the face of opera, and what kinds of stories do they intend for audiences to experience? In Chapter 2, I examine the

North American companies devoted to contemporary opera and in Chapter 3, I profile operas featuring predominantly female casts.

41

CHAPTER 2. SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY OPERA COMPANIES

Whereas Chapter 1 focused on determining the factors that influence gender-balanced casts and identifying the major producers of contemporary opera, Chapter 2 examines and compares the different North American companies devoted to contemporary opera.

There are several elements to consider in the makeup of a contemporary opera company.

Geography is one—grouping companies by region gives a picture of the unique trends in opera productions in different areas of the continent, as well as the differences between Canadian companies and companies in the United States. Origin and the presence of a “backing” institution reveals another: some companies are founded by people on the producing side, others are founded by composers or performers who take on the role of producer, and still others are formed by a preexisting opera company looking to expand into the world of contemporary repertoire. This distinction allows the larger house (the “backing” institution) to maintain their season of standard repertoire, while still contributing to the contemporary scene without risking the alienation of their subscribing audiences.

Houses like the Washington National Opera, Fort Worth Opera, and Los Angeles Opera have developed this “secondary season,” included in their marketing materials under a slightly different name. For example, Los Angeles Opera’s “Off Grand” season (so called because the satellite venue is off Grand Street) includes productions in collaboration with Beth Morrison

Projects, screenings of classic films with newly commissioned scores played live, and performances of Baroque operas with period instruments.41

Conversely, other companies have humbler origins—these are companies started by performers, composers, or other “grassroots”-type origins. Some of these groups maintain a

41 LA Opera, “LA Opera,” accessed May 16, 2019, https://www.laopera.org/. 42 physical space, but most do not, instead relying on event-specific venues. These companies, such as Beth Morrison Projects, Experiments in Opera, and Guerilla Opera, are typically devoted to producing and performing seasons of entirely contemporary repertoire, and frequently engage with composers to premiere new works.

These demarcations provide a different filter from the Professional Company Member levels established by OPERA America. The PCM levels depend on budget, which gives one useful slice of information. But when it comes to new opera, intention is key. What is a company trying to say? How do they support the creation of new works—is it through commissions, developing projects through various stages, workshops, or full-fledged productions? What kinds of artists do they support? And how do they engage with their community, whether it is the saturated field of New York or the decidedly sparser field of the Midwest?

My analysis of the North American Works database in Chapter 1 assessed the different factors that could contribute to gender balance in casts, like the involvement of female composers or librettists. But these are not the only creators of opera. In the past several years, there has been increased attention toward the number of female executives in opera companies, similar to the new initiatives to support female composers and librettists. Could the presence of a woman in an executive position affect the operas it commissions?

These companies vary widely in the scale of their productions; this variance is linked to the difference between those that maintain a physical space and those that do not. Last, these companies differ in the ways they support the creation of new operatic works (intrinsically linked to the resources each company has). Some support through commissions and premieres, others through workshops and readings. I will discuss these grouped by region, looking at the collections of companies in the East Coast (separating out New York City), the Midwest, and 43

Canada. For each group, I will give an overview of each company, discuss how their mission statement is reflected in their work, look at the people steering the company, and how they fit into the surrounding region.

East Coast

New York

New York City is still the de facto center of American classical music, and it contains the greatest number of companies devoted to contemporary opera in North America. The New York field of contemporary opera reflects the city’s larger art scene: diverse and saturated.

The major player is the Metropolitan Opera (“the Met”). The Met is recognized internationally as setting the standard for grand opera—its productions are often lavish and substantial, as is the house in which they play. Though the Met has an extensive season, very little of it is dedicated to contemporary opera. The company’s premieres are few and far between, and the emphasis is still heavily on the operatic canon. In the description of their company, they discuss the U.S. premieres of works by Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss,

Giacomo Puccini, and Giuseppe Verdi before mentioning their world premieres. Between 1967 and 1991 the Met did not premiere any new works; there have only been five world premieres at the Met since 1991.42

This is not without trying. In 2006, the Met announced a commissioning partnership with

Lincoln Center Theater to develop new works. Artists receive $50,000 to create works of music theater, this language intentional to leave space for less traditional forms. The Met or LCT could elect to produce the completed work, or both companies could pass on the project. In thirteen

42 John Corigliano and William Hoffman’s The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), Philip Glass’s The Voyage (1992), John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby (1999), Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, and Tan Dun’s The First Emperor (2011). 44 years, however, only one work came out of the program—Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, premiered at the Met in 2013. Journalist Anne Midgette points out the myriad problems of the program: established composers who could draw an audience are too busy to write something that may never be produced, the Met exercised strict control over the choice of subject matter, and LCT never opted to produce any of the works.43 As a result, there is extensive room for innovative opera in New York.44

For several decades this lacuna was filled most visibly by New York City Opera (NYCO) and Gotham Chamber Opera. Within the first eight years of its existence, NYCO presented two world premieres, and between 1958 and 1960 produced two seasons and a tour of American operas with financial assistance from the Ford Foundation.45 When Ford offered grants to four

American companies for the commissioning and premiere of American operas, New York City

Opera emerged as the strongest supporter, producing eleven new operas in ten years. (The other companies’ contributions—two from the Met and one each from San Francisco Opera and the

Lyric Opera of Chicago—paled in comparison.) Arts critic Heidi Waleson remarks: “Through the combined efforts of Rudel and Ford, the New York City Opera became the only American house where twentieth-century opera was regularly premiered, revived, and celebrated. It was a

43 Anne Midgette, “Et tu, Golijov? The Met’s bumpy road with new opera,” The Washington Post, November 30, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2016/11/30/et-tu- golijov-the-mets-bumpy-road-with-new-opera/?utm_term=.42230d6d4684. 44 There is hope yet for the Met: in 2016 they produced their second work by a female composer, Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin (Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald in 1903 was the first). In September of 2018 they announced a commission from Missy Mazzoli and plans to stage Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded. And Lincoln Center Theater will produce their first work from the new works partnership in 2020—Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel. 45 The early premieres were William Grant Still’s Troubled Island (1949) and David Tamkin’s The Dybbuk (1951); the 1958 season was comprised of Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956), Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (1955), Leonard Bernstein’s one-act Trouble in Tahiti (1952), Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars (1949), and the world premiere of Robert Kurka’s The Good Soldier Schweik. 45 company of the present.”46

Gotham Chamber Opera, which formed in 2001, sought to excite audiences with operas from off the beaten path, programming Baroque and new works with rich, interesting productions. A 2010 performance of Joseph Haydn’s Il mondo della luna (“The world of the moon”, 1777) took place at the Hayden Planetarium.47 However, both these companies took considerable hits with the recession in 2008; NYCO closed in 2013 and Gotham Chamber Opera in 2015.48

While the Met, NYCO, and Gotham engaged with new opera in different ways, there are several New York companies dedicated to this form. This category can be viewed in three tiers: the two senior companies with a lengthy history of premieres and various methods of supporting composers (American Opera Projects and the Center for Contemporary Opera), the two companies responsible for the more avant-garde and larger-scale projects (Beth Morrison

Projects and the American Lyric Theatre), and a company founded by composers who do smaller-scale projects (Experiments in Opera).

American Opera Projects and Beth Morrison Projects operate on Level 3 of OPERA

America’s budget levels, American Lyric Theater and the Center for Contemporary Opera are at

Level 4, and Experiments in Opera is at Level 5.49 Between these companies, a richly varied body of work has developed over the years.

46 Heidi Waleson, Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2018, 37. 47 “Il mondo della luna,” Gotham Chamber Opera, accessed June 25, 2019, http://www.gothamchamberopera.org/production/detail/il_mondo_della_luna. 48 New York City Opera “revived” in 2016 under new management. 49 For more information on the OPERA America Professional Company Member budget levels, please refer to Chapter 1. 46

Center for Contemporary Opera

The oldest New York company devoted to new opera is the Center for Contemporary

Opera (CCO). Founded in 1982 by artistic director Richard Marshall and composer Robert Ward as the board president, the CCO states their mission as “[producing] and [developing] new opera and music-theater works, [reviving] rarely seen American operas written after the Second World

War, [promoting] an interest in new operatic and music-theater culture among the public, and

[producing] contemporary opera outside of our borders. 50

During Marshall’s tenure as artistic director, CCO presented 43 fully staged works by composers such as Henry Mollicone, Seymour Barab, Ned Rorem, and Dominick Argento. CCO divided its performances between premieres and subsequent performances of previously performed operas. Marshall retired in 2008, and Jim Schaeffer was appointed his successor.

Schaeffer established some development efforts, including a composer-in-residence position. In

2018 Schaeffer resigned, and conductor Sara Jobin assumed the role of Artistic Director.

The CCO Development Series includes libretto readings, “Ateliers” in which the operas or excerpts are performed with piano, and concert readings with orchestra.51 Their composer

“support system” comes from another important New York theatrical institution:

…all these programs evolved out of CCO’s history of staged readings into something that was modeled closely on The Actors Studio’s “playwright-directors” workshop, where works (or segments of works) are presented in a “safe” context, followed by a panel of professionals: directors, composers, librettists, conductors, with a moderator who keeps the discussion on track and can solicit questions and comments from the audience. The creative team, after noting these comments, goes back to the drawing board and returns to repeat the process. While the audience may be asked to fill out questionnaires regarding

50 “About CCO,” Center for Contemporary Opera, accessed March 20, 2019, https://centerforcontemporaryopera.org/about-cco/. 51 From 1999 until its 2013 demise, New York City Opera had a similar series called VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab. 47

the performance, they are typically not asked to participate in the discussion. Again, critics are sometimes invited, but are asked not to review the results.52

It seems CCO’s greatest resource that distinguishes them from the other New York companies is its orchestra. Hearing a work fully realized with the complete orchestration gives an audience a completely new impression, and something that may not be possible with other companies. CCO’s earlier years established their mission to further the life of American contemporary operas, giving performances to works that may not have had runs past the premiere. In doing so, CCO may have hoped to contribute to the development of an American opera canon, or at least helped to further the careers of prominent American opera composers.

Indeed, CCO has produced multiple works by the same composer; in their collaboration with composer-in-residence Eric Salzman (a co-founder of the now-defunct American Music Theater

Festival in Philadelphia), they have performed five of his works.

The current season (2018-2019) includes three mainstage operas (Andrew Rudin’s

Purewater, Richard Alan White’s Hester, and a double bill of Judith Shatin’s Marvelous

Pursuits and Jorge Martin’s The Glass Hammer) and three operas from the Development Series

(Laura Schwendinger’s Artemisia, Peter Westergaard’s Twelfth Night, and Joanna Marsh’s My

Beautiful Camel).53 The first act of Hester was performed in a workshop in 2017. The

Shatin/Martin double bill features two concert works; the Shatin (for vocal quartet) was

52 “About CCO: Programs,” Center for Contemporary Opera, accessed March 20, 2019, https://centerforcontemporaryopera.org/about-cco/programs/. 53 Artemisia had its performance by the time of this writing; however, the rest of the season seems to be in limbo. There is limited information about the Rudin, Westergaard, Marsh, and White on CCO’s website, and their Facebook page has not posted any events since Artemisia. The Symphony Space website shows a workshop performance for the Marsh in Fall, 2019. This tenuous state may be due to the recent change of artistic director. 48 premiered in 1988, and the Martin (a cycle for baritone) was premiered in 1995.54

The 10 premieres listed in the OPERA America database show CCO’s female representation falling just below average, with 42% of these roles for women. CCO’s focus seems to be less on the content of the operas they premiere, and more on supporting the composers they perform. For example, Mr. White was 82 years old at the time of the workshop for Hester, and this opera is his first.55 Many opportunities for emerging composers have age limits, excluding artists past their twenties and thirties; it is refreshing to see the idea of

“emerging” uncoupled from age. It is also of note that half the composers on the 2018-2019 season are female; though not a part of their mission statement, this seems to be an effort to engage with underrepresented composers.

American Opera Projects

The other company of the New York contemporary opera “old guard” is American Opera

Projects (AOP). AOP was founded in 1988 by Grethe Barrett Holby, a director and choreographer who led the company until 2001. Charles Jarden and Steven Osgood then took over in the respective positions of General Director and Artistic Director. Osgood left AOP in

2008, and in January of 2019 AOP announced another leadership transition: Jarden will move into the role of Director of Strategic Partnerships, current Producing Director Matt Gray will become the General Director, and Mila Henry will step into the Artistic Director position (which has remained vacant since Osgood’s departure.)56 Henry is one of several female leaders moving

54 Judith Shatin, “Marvelous Pursuits,” Judith Shatin, accessed March 20, 2019, https://www.judithshatin.com/marvelous-pursuits/; Jorge Martin, “The Glass Hammer”, Jorge Martin, accessed March 20, 2019, http://www.jorgemartin.com/?page_id=291. 55 Corey Kilgannon, “A Composer’s Debut, at 82,” New York Times, September 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/nyregion/a-composer-richard-alan-white-hester.html. 56 Unlike CCO, AOP has outwardly maintained a smooth transition: they continue to provide updates to their website, and have several upcoming scheduled events. 49 into prominent executive positions in recent years, particularly among the companies discussed in this chapter.

While CCO’s focus remains on supporting composers, AOP is more invested in breaking the boundaries of the operatic form. Their mission statement targets “innovative works of opera and music theater,” and they seek to “engage our audiences in unique and transformative theatrical experiences.”57 Their premieres take many different shapes and appear at a wide collection of venues, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, the Irondale

Center, and the HERE Arts Center. AOP has premiered several works outside New York and even outside the country.

AOP is also a frequent co-producer with outside companies. Recent collaborations included Daniel Sonenberg’s The Summer King, co-produced and premiered at Pittsburgh Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre in 2017; Gregory Spears’s Paul’s Case, premiered at UrbanArias in

Washington, DC in 2014, with a later performance run in New York; and the New York premiere of Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon with New York City Opera in 2011.

AOP also collaborates with other New York contemporary-focused companies—some of their development projects premiere on the PROTOTYPE Festival run by Beth Morrison Projects and the HERE Arts Center (discussed later in this chapter.)

Their development initiatives include the First Chance workshop program, where new works are performed before a live audience. This allows the composers and librettists to receive valuable feedback, as well as AOP to showcase the work to potential venues.58 The other

57 “About American Opera Projects,” American Opera Projects, accessed March 20, 2019, http://aopopera.org/about. 58 “First Chance,” American Opera Projects, accessed March 20, 2019, http://aopopera.org/firstchance.html. 50 development program is the “Composers and the Voice” series, a two-year residency for composers and librettists. This began in 2002 with Osgood, and includes one year of working with AOP’s artistic team and one year of project development. AOP connects resident artists with established professionals, including Mark Adamo, John Corigliano, Tan Dun, Daron Hagen,

Jake Heggie, Lee Hoiby, Libby Larsen, John Musto, Richard Peaslee, Tobias Picker, Kaija

Saariaho, and Stephen Schwartz.59 Additionally, AOP works in conjunction with New York

University (NYU) and Hunter College on an opera writing training program.

AOP’s most performed opera to come out of their development programs is Laura

Kaminsky’s As One. Premiered in 2014 as part of AOP’s season, this one-act chamber opera about the experiences of a transgender woman is now the “most produced opera written in the

21st Century with over two dozen separate productions.”60 Other recent premieres include

Douglas Cuomo’s Savage Winter (2018), Nkeiru Okoye’s Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed

That Line to Freedom (2014) and Mikael Karlsson’s The Echo Drift (2018).

AOP’s season is built around its development efforts, rather than a typical presenting model. Their events happen in the spring and summer, and include previews of operas developed in their workshops, premieres of commissions (usually by alumni of their residency), and events to support their academic training programs at NYU and Hunter College. This season includes a concert to support the Composers and the Voice residency with the Chautauqua Opera Young

Artists, a preview of an opera by current resident composer Pamela Stein Lynde, and the world premiere of Today It Rains—an opera about Georgia O’Keeffe by Laura Kaminsky. It also includes performances of Paula M. Kimper’s Patience and Sarah at Hunter College, premiered

59 “Composers and the Voice,” American Opera Projects, accessed March 20, 2019, http://www.aopopera.org/composers_voice/. 60 “About American Opera Projects.” 51 by AOP in 1998, and Kaminsky’s As One in the Merkin Concert Hall as part of a 50th anniversary honoring the Stonewall Riots. AOP has also commissioned four short operas from their NYU writing program about the Riots, to be performed at Stonewall. These works demonstrate AOP’s commitment to furthering the careers of their program graduates, and their mission to provide “transformative theatrical experiences” for their audiences. All events on this year’s season include some link to their development efforts, and many of them address gender and sexuality stories.

With this commitment to innovation and audience engagement, AOP does far better than

CCO and the overall average when it comes to operas with female roles. There were twenty operas in the database presented by AOP, with an average of 53% female roles. Three of these operas were monodramas for women, and one had a cast of four women. This opera, Hildegurls

Electric Ordo Virtutum, is discussed in Chapter 3.

Beth Morrison Projects

Founded in 2006, Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is a producing organization responsible for several highly recognized new operas. The company does not have a physical space, instead partnering with different venues for each project. Presenting venues have included La MaMa

Experimental Theatre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Roulette, Performance Space 122, (le) poisson rouge, and the Kitchen. Frequent collaborators include director James Darrah, conductor

Julian Wachner, and his groups Novus New York and the Trinity Wall Street chorus.

In 2013, BMP co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts Center. The festival is held annually in January, and aims to showcase new works of music-theatre for visiting regional directors. 2014 saw the expansion of BMP to Los Angeles, in a partnership with the LA Opera. Ellen Reid’s p r i s m, the most recent large-scale production to generate acclaim, 52 had a “double-premiere” first at the LA Opera’s Off Grand series, and then at the PROTOTYPE

Festival. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Other recent productions have had premieres or performances at venues in New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Germany, Poland, and Hong

Kong.

Beth Morrison Projects receives funding from multiple sources, including private donors, charitable organizations, and various grants. These include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), the BMI Foundation, Inc., the Mid-

Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the New York

State Council on the Arts, OPERA America, and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

In their mission statement, Beth Morrison Projects outlines the two aspects of the company that makes it distinct from the other New York-based organizations. First, the way in which BMP supports composers is to see a project through from start to finish—“the commission, development, production and touring of their works.”61 Second, BMP’s view of the operatic form is considerably more expansive, encompassing “music-theatre, opera-theatre, multi-media concert works and new forms waiting to be discovered.”62 Unlike American Opera

Projects and American Lyric Theater, Beth Morrison Projects does not have a development program for composers to apply to. Instead, all commissions and projects are curated by the artistic team, which consists of President and Creative Producer Beth Morrison, Executive

Director Jecca Barry, and Associate Producers Mariel O’Connell and Christopher Mode.

One can get a glimpse into BMP’s aesthetic by looking at their offerings in 2016. Among their most high-profile projects, Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone shines brightly. This opera, which

61 “About,” Beth Morrison Projects, accessed March 20, 2019, https://www.bethmorrisonprojects.org/about. 62 Ibid. 53 combines elements of classical and pop music and tells a visceral allegory of human trafficking, premiered at the 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2017.

David T. Little’s post-apocalyptic Dog Days premiered in 2012 as part of Montclair State’s Peak

Performances series, and has received subsequent performances at Fort Worth Opera, Los

Angeles Opera, and on the 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival. Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, based on the Lars von Trier film, premiered at Opera Philadelphia that year to instant acclaim.

Angel’s Bone, Dog Days, and Breaking the Waves all have libretti by Royce Vavrek. And David

Lang’s anatomy theater shocked LA Opera audiences with its graphic depiction of a woman’s post-execution public dissection.63

Regarding roles for women, BMP performs slightly higher than average—of the projects analyzed for this document, 45% of the roles are for women. This number is skewed a bit by three monodramas for male singer and one cast of 3 men. 10 of the 20 projects contain at least a

50% female cast, and 3 express an intentionally feminist mission. (Two of these operas—Ellen

Reid’s p r i s m and Kamala Sankaram’s Thumbprint—are discussed in Chapter 3.)

American Lyric Theater

American Lyric Theater (ALT) is the last of the four major contemporary opera companies in New York profiled in this document. ALT was founded in 2005 by Lawrence

Edelson, who remains Producing Artistic Director of the organization. Their mission statement references their commitment “to build a new body of operatic repertoire for new audiences by nurturing composers and librettists, developing sustainable artistic collaborations, and

63 Oni Buchanan, “‘Where Is Evil?’ (A Reaction to Anatomy Theater),” NewMusicBox, February 22, 2017, https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/where-is-evil-a-reaction-to-anatomy-theater/. 54 contributing new works to the national canon.”64 Like Beth Morrison Projects and American

Opera Projects, ALT does not have a traditional season, but instead presents events related to its development efforts.

Performances include presentations of the workshopped operas, works of alumni artists, and libretti readings. There is an emphasis on interaction between the artists and the audience, with moderated discussions and informal receptions after the performances. American Lyric

Theater receives support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Howard Gilman

Foundation, OPERA America, New Music USA, the City of New York Department of Cultural

Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to many individual donors.

ALT’s commissioning efforts center around their Composer Librettist Development

Program (CLDP), a year-long residency inspired by the Young Artist Programs for emerging singing professionals. Interested emerging composers and librettists can apply, and ALT recently added a component for emerging dramaturges. According to their website, all artists are required to live in, relocate, or commute to New York City, and the residency includes bi-weekly classes and week-long intensives throughout the year.

The program began in 2007, and ALT purports it to be “the only full-time professional mentorship initiative for operatic writers in the country.”65 Participating artists work closely with

ALT’s select faculty, including composers Mark Adamo, Anthony Davis, and Daniel Catan; librettists Mark Campbell and Michael Korie; and dramaturge Cori Ellison. ALT partners with

64 “About American Lyric Theater,” American Lyric Theater, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.altnyc.org/about-american-lyric-theater. 65 “Composer Librettist Development Program,” American Lyric Theater, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.altnyc.org/composer-librettist-development-program. 55 the Metropolitan Opera and other leaders in the opera world to give their artists greater insight into the production process, as well as networking opportunities. There have been 38 graduates of the Composer Librettist Development Program.

The most significant project to come from American Lyric Theater is the opera JFK.

Composed by David T. Little with a libretto by Royce Vavrek (a CLDP graduate), JFK premiered in 2016 and was a co-commission with Fort Worth Opera and Opéra de Montréal. The opera is a surreal look at the last day of President John F. Kennedy’s life, contextualized in greater questions of mortality and fate. 2014’s The Poe Project commissioned two teams from the CLDP to create one-act operas inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The double bill received a premiere at Fargo-Moorhead Opera and a subsequent production at Fort Worth Opera.

The 2018-2019 season includes three iterations of ALT series, all stemming from the

CLDP: The Living Libretto, a public libretto reading; InsightALT, a concert reading; and ALT

Alumni, a showcase of works by CLDP graduates. Both include post-performance audience feedback sessions. In February 2019 ALT co-produced an opera in progress with Chicago Opera

Theater, written by artists from the CLDP about Alan Turing. The final production of this season was Murasaki’s Moon, a co-commission with On Site Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of

Art with support from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers.66 The opera was composed by Michi Wiancko with a libretto by CLDP alumna Deborah Brevoort and profiles the tenth-century Japanese writer Lady Murasaki.67

ALT’s current season reflects a strong dedication to their development efforts. Every

66 Deborah Brevoort, “Deborah receives opera commission,” Deborah Brevoort, accessed March 21, 2019, http://www.deborahbrevoort.com/news/deborah-receives-opera-commission/. 67 On Site Opera is a New York-based company dedicated to site-specific performances. Murasaki’s Moon will be performed in the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 56 performance involves someone who went through the Composer Librettist Development

Program. ALT’s operas tend to center around significant people, directly and indirectly—rather than just setting Poe’s stories, The Poe Project challenged the artists to think about what made his work distinct and to evoke that in their own stories. And the one-act operas created in the

CLDP reflect the composer-librettist team’s unique views, creating a wide variety of narratives.

Contrasting BMP and AOP, ALT’s mission statement does not reference a commitment to innovative stories or story-telling, suggesting a more conservative view of the operatic form.

An analysis of 25 operas commissioned by them nets 42% female roles, and none of the operas in this set have completely female casts. Sixteen of the CLDP one-act operas are for three singers, but only seven have two women and one man (the rest are for two men and one woman or three men.)

Experiments in Opera

The youngest company profiled here is Experiments in Opera (EiO). Founded in 2010 by composers Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, and Matthew Welch, the group claims 64 works commissioned in seven years from 41 composers. EiO announced the appointment of Kamala

Sankaram as co-Artistic Director with Cady in December 2018.68

Performances happen in different venues around the city and the company frequently collaborates with New York ensembles. Their mission combines experimental music with storytelling with “unconventional mediums [and] a range of durations and production scales.”69

They also note the value of using these mediums to expedite the process from idea to

68 Experiments in Opera (@Expinopera), “Big EiO news! @kamalasankaram has joined EiO as Co-Artistic Director. Our core vision of a composer-led opera is alive and kicking!,” December 4, 2018, https://twitter.com/Expinopera/status/1069974960175804417. 69 “About,” Experiments in Opera, accessed March 23, 2019, http://experimentsinopera.com/about/. 57 performance:

We bring new operas to the stage as quickly as we can, marking the urgency of artists with something important to say and the desire of audiences to be a part of the excitement of risky and rewarding work.70

Like CCO, EiO commissions composers multiple times, including the three founders.

Experiments in Opera is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York

City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Casement Fund, and private donors.

This season offers “Modularias”, which consists of four new works for voice and synthesizer by four composers; Buick City, 1:00 AM, a serial podcast opera by Jason Cady; and

Off the Ground, workshop performances of three operas in development. The three works are

Chunky in Heat in partnership with Contemporaneous, Rainbird by Mallory Catlett and Aaron

Siegel in partnership with Restless NYC, and Warka Vase by Rick Burkhardt in partnership with the International Contemporary Ensemble. Later in the season EiO will premiere Chunky in

Heat, written by multiple composers on a story by A.M. Homes about a girl’s coming of age in

Los Angeles. There were nine operas available for analysis. 52% of the roles in these operas are for women, and all but two have at least 50% female casts.

Other East Coast

No music community on the East Coast is quite as saturated as New York. There are, however, a few companies worth mentioning. Opera Philadelphia’s American Repertoire

Program has brought several contemporary operas to the company since it began in 2011, eight of them commissions or co-commissions with other regional opera houses.71 Starting in 2017,

70 Ibid. 71 These co-commissions include Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Elizabeth Cree (2017), Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s We Shall Not Be Moved (2017), Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves (2016) and Jennifer Higdon and Gene 58

Opera Philadelphia adopted a festival format to open their season, with multiple productions happening over eleven days. The festival emphasizes the new, including world premieres and new productions of lesser-performed operas (for example, the 2019 festival includes performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges). Festival performances take place in different venues around the city, similar to the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York.72

As their focus continues to turn toward contemporary opera, they may prove to be an impressive contributor to the field.

I have singled out two companies on the East Coast outside New York City with sizeable contemporary operatic output. Like the New York companies, they contrast in scope and budget:

Boston’s plucky Guerilla Opera and Washington National Opera’s distinguished American

Opera Initiative.

Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative

The first is the American Opera Initiative at Washington National Opera (WNO). WNO is an OPERA America Professional Company Member at Level 1; its current Artistic Director is

Francesca Zambello. The company was founded in 1956 and produced many premieres over the decades, including Alberto Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci (1971), Gian Carlo Menotti’s Goya (1986), and Dominick Argento’s The Dream of Valentino (1993). Funding comes from large endowments and underwriting from private donors, including Jacqueline Badger Mars, David M.

Rubenstein, Mrs. Eugene B. Casey, and presenting sponsor General Dynamics.

In 2012, however, WNO embarked on something different from other large opera companies and founded the American Opera Initiative—a self-contained commissioning

Scheer’s Cold Mountain (2016). “New Works,” Opera Philadelphia, accessed June 25, 2019, https://www.operaphila.org/opera-lab/new-works/. 72 “Festival,” Opera Philadelphia, accessed June 25, 2019, https://www.operaphila.org/festival/. 59 program. Every year, the AOI invites three teams of emerging composers and librettists to write

20-minute works, as well as a one-hour-long chamber opera by a more established composer.

WNO describes the program as a guided mentorship, with all the elements necessary to produce an opera provided by the company. Composers and librettists can apply as teams or individually, but the final commissioned teams are ultimately determined by WNO.73

The singers are drawn from the Doming-Cafritz Young Artist program, and the operas are typically scored for flute, clarinet, horn, percussion, piano, and string quartet (the instrumentalists come from the WNO Orchestra.) WNO’s high standing has brought in prominent artists as mentors for the participants, including composers Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian

Gordon, John Musto, and Kevin Puts; librettists Mark Campbell and Gene Scheer; and conductors Steven Osgood (of American Opera Projects), Anne Manson, and John DeMain.

The most prominent projects to come out of the AOI are 2014’s An American Soldier by

Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang and 2018’s Proving Up by Missy Mazzoli and Royce

Vavrek. Both were named by the New York Times as part of “The Best Classical Music of 2018” for productions in that year, and both were the hour-long commissions from their respective year at AOI.74 Proving Up was a co-commission with Opera Omaha and the Miller Theatre at

Columbia University, and received support from OPERA America’s Grants for Female

Composers.

This grant also supported the hour-long commission for the 2019 festival, Taking Up

73 “American Opera Initiative,” Washington National Opera, accessed March 22, 2019, https://www.kennedy-center.org/wno/mto/AOIInfo.

74 Anthony Tommasini, Zachary Woolfe, Joshua Barone and Seth Colter Walls, “The Best Classical Music of 2018,” The New York Times, December 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/arts/music/the-best-classical-music-of-2018.html. 60

Serpents by Kamala Sankaram and Jerre Dye. The 20-minute operas included Relapse by Molly

Joyce and James Kennedy; 75 Miles by Matt Boehler and Laura Barati; and Pepito by Nicolas

Lell Benavides and Marella Martin Koch. While none of the operas produced by AOI are expressly feminist, the program does considerably better than the average, with 48% of the roles written for women in all operas since its founding in 2012. The majority of the operas include at least 50% female roles.

The mission statement does not refer to any interest in a certain kind of storytelling (there are no references to “innovation,” “ground-breaking,” or other common terms), nor is it expressed that the program strives to meet a specific demographic. Yet there is a strong presence of female artists—32% of the operas have female composers, and half have female librettists

(compared to the respective 21% and 30% of all analyzed works.) And next year’s team of mentors are all female: composer Laura Kaminsky, librettist and dramaturg Kelley Rourke, and conductor Anne Manson.

Guerilla Opera

One of the smaller companies profiled here is Guerilla Opera, a Boston-based company devoted to “[fostering] a new canon of chamber opera for the 21st Century through commissioning and performance, and [engaging] new audiences by making opera more accessible, creative, and experiential.”75 The group was founded by percussionist Mike Williams and composer Rudolf Rojahn, who had served as co-artistic directors since the company’s founding. In late 2018, the company introduced a new team of co-artistic directors—soprano

Aliana de la Guardia and scenic designer Julia Noulin Mérat, with new Executive Director and

75 “Our Mission,” Guerilla Opera, accessed March 22, 2019, https://www.guerillaopera.org/about-us. 61 clarinetist Amy Advocat.

This performer-generated company states in their mission that many of their operas

“often do not use a conductor,” citing this and its use of non-traditional spaces among its qualities of distinction. Since its founding, Guerilla Opera has premiered fifteen operas and mounted seventeen new productions, with a total of ninety-two performances. They seek to extend their reach beyond the Boston area with recordings of their commissions and live- streaming performances. Guerilla Opera is an OPERA America PCM 5 company, and is supported by the Boston Cultural Council and the Mass Cultural Council.

Of the fifteen commissions referenced on their website, nine were available for analysis.

All but one contain at least 50% female casts, and of all nine works, 53% of the roles are for female singers. None are expressly feminist, and only two have female lead characters; however this is much higher than many companies, and greater than the average by 9%.

The Midwest

Four of the top five companies in OPERA America’s second highest PCM level are located in the Midwest. As discussed in Chapter 1, Opera Theater of Saint Louis (OTSL) holds the greatest number of commissions at PCM Level 2 (companies with annual budgets between

$3 million and $15 million). Minnesota Opera is in second place. Fourth is Lyric Opera of

Kansas City, and Cincinnati Opera is fifth. There is absolutely a presence of new opera in the

Midwest, but mainly at these major houses among seasons including works from the traditional repertoire. In my analysis of the OPERA America North American Works database, one company stood out for its dedication to developing newer works in the Midwest.

Nautilus Music-Theater

The stronghold of contemporary opera creation in the Midwest is Nautilus Music- 62

Theater. The company is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul and began in 1986 as part of Minnesota

Opera. Founded by Ben Krywosz, the company became independent in 1992 and has produced new works continuously since.

The works they commission typically step outside operatic tradition—as implied by their name, Nautilus Music-Theater has done many productions in non-traditional spaces or that utilize genres outside classical music.76 Training artists to push their own boundaries is at the core of their mission; Nautilus hosts the Wesley Balk Opera/Music-Theater Institute every year.

This program for performers, directors and coaches focuses on basic skills of acting and movement with an eye toward blending these elements with musical skills for the optimal operatic performance.

Nautilus’s other development effort is the Composer-Librettist Studio, an annual two- week program that joins five composers, five librettists, and five performers. The teams rotate until all composers have worked with all librettists and performers. The Studio has been a part of

Nautilus since its inception. The company states that this program’s purpose is not to result in polished, programmable products; instead the focus is on exploration and collaboration. This is quite distinct from other composer-librettist programs. The program is limited to Minnesota- based applicants.

The final products of the Studio are presented on Nautilus’s Rough Cuts concerts—an

“informal series of works-in-progress, dialogues between artists and audiences, and explorations

76 Eric Salzman and Thomas Dési notes the use of the term “music-theater” as a way to eschew the connotations of traditional opera, while pointing to the new body of work as one in which music and drama are on equal footing. Eric Salzman and Thomas Dési, The New Music Theater: Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5. 63 of the creative process.”77 The company states a vested interest in fostering art in the community, performing at a variety of venues in the Twin Cities while maintaining a studio in St. Paul.

At the time of this writing their website was undergoing construction, and archival material was not available. Consequently, there was limited information on many of their commissions, as well as their current season.78 However, there were ten operas listed in the

OPERA America database; I found cast information on seven. Of these works, 68% of the roles were for women—the highest average score and all other companies profiled in this chapter. It should be noted that this may be due to the small sample size. Additionally, four of the seven works came from a single commissioning effort—four composer-librettist teams were tasked with writing one-act operas for two performing sisters, with the theme of sisterhood. This small showing demonstrates the kinds of works and investment in local artists indicative of Nautilus’s mission.

Canada

Opera in Canada, compared to the United States, seems to be more of a collaborative effort. There is a nationwide consortium of companies, Opera.ca, which partners with OPERA

America. In Toronto there is another collection of companies called Indie Opera T.O, which brings together eleven small organizations devoted to operatic performance. And new opera is thriving thanks primarily to the following two companies: Chants Libres and Tapestry Opera.

Chants Libres

In Montreal, Chants Libres has been the dominant presence in innovative contemporary

77 “Nautilus Music Theater,” Nautilus Music Theater, accessed March 22, 2019, http://www.nautilusmusictheater.org/. 78 I made contact with Mr. Krywosz and asked for this information, but received no follow-up response. 64 opera. The company was founded in 1990 by soprano and director Pauline Vaillancourt, who has maintained the position of Artistic Director since its founding. Chants Libres’s projects typically push outside operatic norms, from incorporating electronics into the accompanying forces to innovative visual components or abstract and futuristic narratives. Chants Libres receives funding from the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters, the Canada Council for the Arts, the

Montreal Council for the Arts, and Hexagram-UQAM. They are a member of OPERA America and Opera.ca.

Their development program is called Oper’Actuel Works in Progress. While there is no page on their website devoted to this program, information about it exists on the event page. This year marks the sixth iteration of the program; it is not clear if it is annual. Chants Libres selects six teams of composers and librettists based on their proposals and commissions 20-minute works from them. The works are performed almost a year later by young singers from Montreal- area universities.79 It seems educational outreach by connecting with area singers and showcasing emerging composers and new sounds and ideas to their audience is the main drive behind Oper’Actuel—it does not seem that the completed works are reprised, nor have any teams resulted in longer commissions from Chants Libres. Additionally, because there was limited information on these operas, they were not available for analysis.

Significant new works from Chants Libres include Kristin Norderval and Naomi

Wallace’s The Trials of Patricia Isasa. Premiered in 2016, the opera won the Prix Opus “Concert of the Year” for the Modern and Contemporary Music category, as well as “Concert of the Year

– Montreal” from the Montreal Council for the Arts. The work tells the true story of Argentine

79 “Oper’Actuel Works in Progress 2019,” Chants Libres, accessed March 22, 2019, http://www.chantslibres.org/en/productions/wip19/. 65 human rights activist Patricia Isasa. Opéra féerie (“Enchanted Opera”) by Gilles Tremblay and

Pierre Morency also received awards from the Montreal Council for the Arts. This 2009 opera is a fantastical fairy tale from two Quebecois creators.

Chants Libres has created twelve mainstage operas since their founding. 52% of the roles in these operas are for women, and only three do not have at least 50% female casts. Many of these works were conceived by and for Pauline Vaillancourt; though not expressed in their mission, it is possible this influence has its effects in these works.

Tapestry Opera

Tapestry Opera was established in 1979. The company is based in Toronto, and its members pride themselves on being “the only professional opera company in Canada solely creating, developing and performing original Canadian opera.”80 They define their “role and place in the art form of opera/music theatre” as:

the champion of Canadian works and artists and often a provocateur and revolutionary in the opera/music theatre sphere. We produce new works in new ways that will provoke reaction, engagement and interest in opera. In this role we strategically foster new Canadian works and creators as well as new performance and presentation techniques, keeping the art form relevant for current and future generations.

The company was founded by Wayne Strongman, and first took shape as the “Tapestry

Singers,” a madrigal ensemble. As Strongman’s vision increasingly turned toward theatrical works, the group was renamed “Tapestry Music Theatre” in 1986. An acclaimed premiere in

1991 (Nic Gotham’s Nigredo Hotel) refocused the company toward new opera, and in 1999 they changed their name to reflect that: Tapestry New Opera Works.81 As Artistic Director,

80 “Tapestry Opera,” Tapestry Opera, accessed March 22, 2019, https://tapestryopera.com/. 81 Colin Eatock, “Creative forces; Tapestry New Opera Works has a mission: to push the boundaries of music theatre,” Opera Canada, June 22, 2004, 66

Strongman commissioned and premiered over 30 Canadian operas. He served in that role until

2013; since then, Michael Mori has assumed the title.82

Tapestry Opera claim 160 world premieres of “opera shorts”, 20 world premieres of 15- to 20-minute chamber operas, and 18 world premieres of full-length Canadian works. Tapestry

Opera maintain the Ernest Balmer Studio as a physical space, and host rehearsals and performances in it as well as making it available for rental.

Tapestry Opera’s development efforts center around the Composer-Librettist Laboratory

(“LibLab”). The program is similar to others mentioned in this chapter, in that it pairs writers and composers to produce a series of short operatic works. The works are showcased, and some result in longer commissions. LibLab began in 1995 as a collaboration with the Canadian Opera

Company (Toronto’s main company and the largest producer of opera in Canada)83; in 1999

Tapestry took sole ownership. In its current form, the composers and librettists spend one week together, with the result of their collaborations presented on the Tapestry Briefs concert series.

In 2015 the company began Tapestry Explorations (“Tap:Ex”), an annual staged concert that brings together non-operatic performing art forms (like physical theater and popular genres of music.) They also offer a youth outreach program called the Youth INside Opera Education

Program, a scholarship program that pairs children with professional musicians to write and perform their own opera. They have also commissioned and toured two children’s operas—

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Creative+forces%3B+Tapestry+New+Opera+Works+has+a+mis sion:+to+push+the...-a0118823689. 82 John Terauds, “Tapestry Opera founding artistic director Wayne Strongman departs as new season starts,” Ludwig van Toronto, September 20, 2013, https://www.ludwig- van.com/toronto/2013/09/20/tapestry-opera-founding-artistic-director-wayne-strongman-departs- as-new-season-starts/. 83 “Canadian Opera Company,” Canadian Opera Company, accessed March 22, 2019, https://www.coc.ca/. 67

Elijah’s Kite by Camyar Chai and James Rolfe, and Get Stuffed by Alexis Diamond and Richard

Payne.

Significant projects include 2016’s Rocking Horse Winner by Gareth Williams and Anna

Chatterton, based on a short story by D.H. Lawrence, and 2001’s Iron Road by Chan Ka Nin and

Mark Brownell. Iron Road told the story of Chinese-Canadian immigrants in both Cantonese and

English, and featured a predominantly Asian cast. 2017’s Oksana G., created by Aaron Gervais and Colleen Murphy, focused on human trafficking with a distinctly feminist view.

The 2018-2019 season includes two of Tapestry’s regular offerings—Tapestry Briefs, premiering short operas from the Composer-Librettist Laboratory, and Songbook, a concert of

Canadian opera excerpts. There are also two larger-scale world premieres in February and May

2019. Hook Up by Julie Tepperman and Chris Thornborrow examines issues of sexual exploration and consent in universities. Shanawdithit, a co-commission with Opera on the

Avalon, was written by Dean Burry and Yvette Nolan. This opera is about the true story of the woman thought to be the last member of the Beothuk Nation, and is an effort to create awareness and foster inclusion of First Nation peoples. To this end, most of the cast and artistic collaborators are of First Nation/indigenous backgrounds.

Tapestry’s investment in telling Canadian stories with Canadian artists is unique, and has resulted in some works that explore marginalized communities. However, their demographics fall short—of the 15 operas analyzed, they achieve only 42% roles for women.

Conclusion

The initial goal of studying these contemporary-leaning companies was to determine if they performed better than the average rate established in the overall database analysis. When combined, these ten companies’ output has a rate of 47% female roles—3% better than the 68 average (fig. 16). This statistic, while better than the average, falls below operas by female composers, librettists, with a female lead character, or an intentionally feminist mission or plot

(fig. 17.)

Total Roles

ALL COMPANIES 56% 44%

CONTEMPORARY OPERA COMPANIES 53% 47%

Male Female

Figure 16. Bar chart comparing the distribution of roles in all North American works, 1995- present, versus the works by contemporary opera companies. Percentage of Female Roles

51% 53% 47% 48% 48% 44%

Total Data Set Contemporary Female Female Female Lead Intentionally Opera Composer Librettist Character Feminist Company

Figure 17. Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in operas written by a female composer, a female librettist, with a female lead character, or with an intentionally feminist story, compared with the percentage of roles for women in all works studied and in works from contemporary opera companies.

Women in Charge

Something that does seem to influence these numbers is a female presence at the executive level. Companies with a female leader or founder tend to have a higher average. The 69 companies that performed higher than the average were Washington National Opera, Chants

Libres, Guerilla Opera, Experiments in Opera, American Opera Projects, Beth Morrison Projects, and Nautilus Music-Theater (fig. 18). When these companies are isolated, they have an average of 50% female roles in their premiered output. AOP, BMP, and Chants Libres were founded by women, and BMP and Chants Libres are still run by their founders. The American Opera

Initiative at WNO was established by current Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. And Guerilla

Opera and Experiments in Opera recently appointed women to high-ranking positions.

Percentage of Female Roles: Contemporary Opera Companies

68%

52% 52% 53% 53% 48% 42% 42% 42% 45%

CCO

WNO AOI Chants Libres Tapestry Opera Guerilla Opera

Experiments in Opera American Lyric Theater Beth Morrison Projects Nautilus Music Theater American Opera Projects

Figure 18. Bar chart showing the percentage of female roles in works by contemporary opera companies, separated by company.

This rule, of course, is not hard and fast. Sara Jobin recently took over the Center for

Contemporary Opera (though toward the end of their last season; there has not been any changes to their programming or mission.) And Nautilus Music-Theater is run by a man, though we must keep in mind the incomplete data for their company.

There have been many initiatives in recent years to help get women into gatekeeping 70 positions, in opera and other industries. There is even a demonstrated monetary value for having a more diverse executive level: in the broader business world, companies with more female executives are more likely to produce more patents and demonstrate increased net margins.84

And studies of female-led companies show increased job satisfaction at those businesses.85

Kamala Sankaram, recently appointed as the Co-Artistic Director of Experiments in

Opera, referenced a broadening of opera’s traditionally narrow scope as part of her role as a gatekeeper:

[We] tend to hire those that we can think of quickly, and we tend to be able to think of people who are most similar to us more quickly than people who are not. As both a woman and a person of South Asian descent, my worldview and my network are different than many people in the field. Therefore, as a gatekeeper, I see my role as inviting people to the table who may not have had an invitation before.86

While this kind of diversity-focused thinking may not directly reference increased gender balance at all levels, it certainly enacts change that may have that result. The incorporation of viewpoints and narratives outside those of the traditional repertoire often include more women and people of color. Greater representation at the executive level can foster an inclusive working culture throughout the company—the kind of environment crucial to the amplification of new voices.

84 Yoni Blumberg, “Companies with more female executives make more money—here’s why,” CNBC, March 2, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/why-companies-with-female- managers-make-more-money.html. 85 Caroline Castrillon, “Why Women-Led Companies Are Better For Employees,” Forbes, March 24, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2019/03/24/why-women-led- companies-are-better-for-employees/#291e8ab53264. 86 Lauren Alfano, “5 Questions to Kamala Sankaram (Co-Artistic Director, Experiments in Opera),” I Care if You Listen, January 8, 2019, https://www.icareifyoulisten.com/2019/01/5- questions-kamala-sankaram-experiments-in-opera/. 71

Language of Intention

In Chapter 1 I discussed the importance of intention in resolving gender parity. The presence of a female composer or librettist does not mean they will produce a work with a gender-balanced cast. Operas written with intentionally feminist goals resulted in the highest number of roles for women. Looking at the mission statements for each of these companies allows me to explore this at the institutional level. Companies that use language like

“innovative” or “adventurous” in their mission statement are more likely to have greater female representation in the casts of their commissioned works.

The companies are evenly split on this quality. Five companies make statements relating to innovation, including Beth Morrison Projects and American Opera Projects. Experiments in

Opera refers to their works as “adventurous” and “unconventional”, and Guerilla Opera uses

“daring” and “bold” to describe their operas.87 Chants Libres makes specific reference to technological innovation in their operas.

Center for Contemporary Opera and American Lyric Theater are among the companies that did not use this kind of language in their mission statements. Nautilus Music-Theater uses the word “innovative” in reference to their touring productions of existing works.88 Tapestry

Opera’s mission statement emphasizes their connections with their community and commitment to Canadian opera. Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative states a similar goal:

“Commissioned works are based on American themes and stories.”89

A company’s mission statement sets their goals for the broader public to see. With these remarks, organizations place themselves in the greater context of their field. The ways

87 “About,” Experiments in Opera; “Our Mission,” Guerilla Opera. 88 “Nautilus Music-Theater.” 89 “American Opera Initiative,” Washington National Opera. 72 contemporary opera companies interact with terms referencing change have concrete results, especially in the equality of their works.

In Chapters 1 and 2, I have considered the different factors that go into works with gender-balanced casts, from the organizations that commission them to the artists that create them. In Chapter 3, I identify ten contemporary operas with mostly or entirely female casts, discuss the circumstances of their creation, and how they fit into the larger conversation of female identity in opera. 73

CHAPTER 3. FEMALE-FOCUSED CONTEMPORARY OPERAS

My analysis of contemporary North American operas in Chapter 1 showed the bigger picture of gender imbalance in opera today. In Chapter 2, I narrowed the view to the companies dedicated to contemporary opera. This chapter examines ten contemporary operas with at least

50% female casts, featuring complex characters and a variety of plots that do not subscribe to traditional opera’s standards of female mistreatment.

When I considered which operas to feature, I thought of several parameters: plot, character depth and relationships, to name just a few. In the Introduction, I examined the Bechdel test as one method of teasing out the lowest common denominator of female representation. The

Bechdel test has its problems, but it could be a useful starting point. Should the women be named, and interact with each other for a specific amount of time? Should their conversations center around something other than men?

As Valerie Weak did with San Francisco theater productions, I counted the operas in the

North American Works database to reveal works with gender-balanced casts. I knew the operas I profiled should have at least 50% female roles, but should I try for a higher percentage? Or even

100%? Given the number of high-profile works featuring mostly male casts (Carlisle Floyd’s Of

Mice and Men, Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain, Kevin Puts’s Silent Night), perhaps a combination of gender-balanced and female-dominant works would be appropriate.

There is the consideration of plot content—as discussed in the Introduction, more women onstage does not necessarily translate to more complex roles or better stories for women. Edwin

Penhorwood’s Too Many Sopranos takes the common knowledge that there are more sopranos than any other voice type and creates a comic opera in which the female singers must convince their male counterparts to repent so they can all gain a place in Heaven. While entertaining and a 74 humorous way of looking at this very real problem, the characters are reduced to their voice parts, Penhorwood leans heavily on the stereotypes of traditional opera, and there is little character development—no one gets too much in the way of depth. Therefore, I selected operas whose plots deal with a variety of subjects that treat these events in a meaningful way, complemented by characters with dimension and veracity.

There are also many works that feature interesting and complex leading female roles, but concentrate primarily on their relationships with men. These operas also tend to have more roles for men. Gary Kulesha’s Red Emma is a 1996 biopic opera for the Canadian Opera Company.

Despite self-identifying as a story about a strong, influential and unusual woman, the opera centralizes her romantic relationships with Alexander Berkman and Johann Most.90 The cast contains two women (Emma and Helen) and six men. In Bernard Rands’s Belladonna the five primary roles are women with complicated backstories, but all supporting and comprimario roles are male (and one of the primary women is a role for a countertenor). The plot revolves around their relationships to the men in their lives, despite the framing mechanism of a dinner party for five accomplished women.

And Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s upcoming Eurydice is set to premiere at LA

Opera in February 2020, as part of its “Off Grand” series. The company is marketing it as a fresh take on the Orpheus myth, told from Eurydice’s point of view. However, Eurydice (soprano) is the only female character and singer in the show. The other roles include Eurydice’s Father

(baritone), Hades (tenor), and two iterations of Orpheus: Orpheus (baritone) and Orpheus Double

(countertenor). Considering the rampant inequality in opera casts combined with the greater

90 “Red Emma, an opera by Gary Kulesha,” Research on Anarchism, December 16, 2003, accessed June 27, 2019, http://raforum.site/spip.php?article515. 75 number of female performers, having a cast of mostly or entirely women performers became a priority.

What about cast size? As I mentioned in Chapter 1, there are many monodramas for female voice that feature fascinating women. Kaija Saariaho’s Émilie is one, premiered at the

Opéra de Lyon in 2010, based on the life of the French mathematician the Marquise du Châtelet.

Tom Cipullo’s Josephine (2016) portrays the performer Josephine Baker. Missy Mazzoli’s 2012

Song from the Uproar takes an abstract look at real-life adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt. And

Mikael Karlsson’s The Echo Drift (2018) is a futuristic tour de force for a mezzo, who plays prisoner Walker Loats as she attempts to reason her way out of her captivity.

There are still more to mention—however, a monodrama defeats the purpose of talking about giving more opportunities to women. If a producing organization recognized the lack of female representation on its stage, but only addressed it by presenting a work for a single female character, this could hardly be considered a solution. In the Introduction, I referenced Francis

Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica as the most often performed operas in the traditional repertoire that feature larger female casts. Mark Adamo’s

Little Women (1998) is the most commonly performed contemporary foil to these. But is it the only one out there?

Below I have selected ten works (see Appendix D for a list with the breakdown of characters and singers). Each has at least a 50% female cast, and a story that lends complexity and depth to its characters (female and otherwise). Most of these operas happen to be written by women, and all have either a female librettist or source material from a female author. All have a female main character or characters, but not all are intentionally feminist. As I identified in

Chapter 1, these factors can contribute to greater female representation in a cast. 76

These works are diverse in their content, musical material, and format. Some were produced and premiered in Europe, and others by educational non-members of OPERA America, which is why they do not appear in the OPERA America North American Works database.

Several come from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University (my graduate alma mater), whose annual contemporary operas frequently feature mostly female casts. As part of this series,

Peabody premiered The Yellow Wallpaper in 2008 and gave the US premieres of Svadba in 2013 and ANON in 2017. After seeing a revival performance of Ophelia Forever at Peabody in 2014, I produced a performance at Bowling Green State University in 2016.

I worked on the New York premiere of p r i s m as an intern at the PROTOTYPE

Festival, where I also saw the US premiere of 4.48 Psychosis. I became interested in Kate

Soper’s operatic output after performing her work for voice and flute, Only the Words

Themselves Mean What They Say, with texts by Lydia Davis. I produced a short tour of her Here

Be Sirens in Michigan and Ohio in 2018, including a stop at Baldwin Wallace University, where

I received my Bachelor’s degree. Earlier that year, Baldwin Wallace produced a performance of

…for the sake of a narrative closure in 2018.

Of the operas I studied from the North American Works database, Thumbprint and

Hildegurls stood out for their content and the ways in which they treat their female characters.

Additionally, there was a large amount of information readily available on these works, including video and audio recordings, reviews, program notes, and statements from the composers, librettists, directors, and producers. This merited their inclusion.

Ophelia Forever

One work with a female-focused cast is Amy Beth Kirsten’s Ophelia Forever. The opera was developed and premiered by the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University as part of 77 their annual performances at the Baltimore Theatre Project, on a program of Shakespeare- inspired operas by Peabody composers. This program was the result of Opera Études, a biennial production of student-composed and student-performed short operas. Kirsten was personally influenced by the art exhibit “The Myth and Madness of Ophelia,” curated by Carol Solomon

Kiefer at the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. She credits this exhibit with the inspiration to pursue multiple sources and use multiple performers.91

Amy Beth Kirsten’s work reflects a vested interest in the voice and theatre. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and written works for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, eighth blackbird, the New World Symphony, and others.

Kirsten also runs her own ensemble HOWL, which takes a cross-disciplinary approach to music- theatrical productions. HOWL has presented five programs, two of which are evening-length works by Kirsten: Savior, based on the story of Joan of Arc, and Quixote, on the character from the novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Kirsten holds degrees from Roosevelt University and the

Peabody Institute; Ophelia Forever was written during her doctoral studies at Peabody.

A chamber opera based on Shakespeare’s character from Hamlet, Kirsten supplements lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet with text from Elizabeth Siddal, Christina Rossetti, Charles

Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and her own creations to explore the nuances of the character

Ophelia. Ophelia has very little to say in the play—58 lines, out of 4,042 (Shakespeare’s longest play). Much is said about her in the play, but largely in relation to Hamlet. Kirsten gives Ophelia more to say with these supplemental texts, providing greater depth to her character.

Ophelia is splintered into three performers, each representing a different aspect of her

91 Amy Beth Kirsten, “Ophelia Forever,” accessed May 21, 2019, https://www.amybethkirsten.com/ophelia-forever. 78 personality: the Mad Mermaid (coloratura soprano), the Faithful Seductress (lyric soprano or high lyric mezzo), and the Violated Saint (lyric soprano with comfortable middle-low range or lyric mezzo). All voice parts use basic extended vocal techniques (ex. audible breaths, nasal timbre, Sprechstimme).92 Kirsten uses three distinct styles to distinguish Ophelia’s three personalities. The Violated Saint’s solos imitate medieval chant, and the chosen texts reflect

Ophelia’s pious, obedient side. Kirsten uses sultry tangos to depict the Faithful Seductress. Her second aria’s lyrics, taken from Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, show Ophelia’s sensuous qualities.

For the Mad Mermaid, Kirsten resorts to contemporary classical modernism, with unstable tonality and greater use of extended vocal techniques.

The opera is divided into two large sections. In the first, each Ophelia sings a solo using the text “With his head over his shoulder turned, he seemed to find his way without his eyes…”.

The use of the same text presented in contrasting styles provides a link between the three, while highlighting their individual characteristics. The solos alternate with refrains sung in unison

(“We know what we are…”, “I know that voice”), emphasizing their unified personae.

In the second section, each singer’s solo is in response to Ophelia’s recognition of

Hamlet’s rejection. The characters react in different ways: the Saint grieves, on a text written by

Elizabeth Siddal.93 The Seductress is shocked, then regretful, singing the Baudelaire quote:

“Quand je mordille tes cheveux élastiques et rebelles, il me semble que je mange des souvenirs.”

(“When I chew at your elastic rebellious hairs, I seem to be eating memories.”)

The Mermaid’s solo is last, using the couplets from Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia (in the

Shakespeare, read aloud to Gertrude by Polonius): “Doubt thou the stars are fire/Doubt that the

92 Sprechstimme is contoured, pitched speech, halfway between speaking and singing, most commonly associated with Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (1912). 93 Siddal was the model for John Everett Millais’s iconic painting of Ophelia. 79 sun doth move/Doubt truth to be a liar/but never doubt I love.” The words become a commentary on Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia, as she turns his words back on him in a cathartic expression of anger. Only the Mad Mermaid expresses true rage, exploding in one moment on the words “I loved you not” in an unaccompanied aria that uses extended vocal techniques to explore the full range of her emotions.

Hamlet is represented visually by a silent, expressionless actor and audibly with oboe. In

Shakespeare’s play, Ophelia is alternately wooed and humiliated, subject to Hamlet’s erratic moods and obscured motives. Here Kirsten strips him of all expressive power, centralizing

Ophelia’s thoughts, words, and feelings. This opera looks at a character who, while key in the plot of Hamlet, is not given much material. By using three singers and incorporating other styles and texts, Kirsten provides previously unseen depth and insight into Ophelia’s personality.

Ophelia Forever is in one act, with a run time of approximately 40 minutes. The accompanying forces include oboe, four-hands piano, and percussion (one performer). The piano part can be reduced to one performer (the performances at Omaha Under the Radar in 2015 were performed this way.) The pianist(s) and oboist also play some auxiliary percussion instruments.

The small ensemble and the abstract nature of the show lends itself to non-traditional venues or production companies with limited resources.

Here Be Sirens

Kate Soper’s Here Be Sirens holds several similarities to Ophelia Forever. Both works are for three female voices, and almost all the musical numbers in each involve all three singers.

The form of both pieces is cyclical with recurring musical themes, though Soper’s opera is longer and contains more character development (rather than the abstract portraiture of Ophelia.)

Like Kirsten, Soper uses a variety of source texts. Plato, Bishop Theobald, Homer, Carl Jung, 80

Erasmus, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Campion, Michael Drayton, John Milton, Iamblicus,

Dante, and Sappho make appearances, as well as original texts by Soper. Soper uses polystylism—however, where Kirsten’s polystylism is used to serve character purpose, Soper uses it to fuel plot purpose.

As described by the publisher PSNY:

"Here Be Sirens" presents the daily life of three sirens, who kill time on their island as they await an endless procession of doomed sailors. Peitho revels in the luxurious sensuality of their rite; Phaino stonily enacts the ritual with no inner feeling; and Polyxo longs for escape into the world of the real, delving into centuries of scholarship and research on her species in an attempt to untwist their circumstances.94

Here Be Sirens is written for chamber-scale instrumentalists: the only accompanying instrument is the piano, which is played by the singers. The work is 90 minutes long (in nine scenes) with no intermission. The primary challenge for interested producers is locating a venue with a grand or baby grand piano whose lid can be removed and whose owner is permissive regarding extended techniques. Soper calls for using glass guitar slides rolled across the tops of the tuning pins, fishing wire for bowing the strings, using a soft timpani mallet to play the low strings, and wire brushes for strumming the strings.

Peitho is the highest of the voices, Polyxo the next highest, and Phaino sings the lowest line. All three remain in typical soprano ranges—Peitho’s top note is a high C6, Phaino’s lowest note is an A-flat3 below the treble staff with an option for one low F3, and all three briefly have a low G3 in one of the final movements. The challenge for the performers comes in the multitude of musical styles Soper uses, as well as having to play the piano using traditional and extended techniques.

94 PSNY, “Here Be Sirens,” European American Music Distributors Company, accessed May 21, 2019, https://www.eamdc.com/psny/composers/kate-soper/works/here-be-sirens/. 81

The Prologue offers a glimpse into how Soper teases apart the origins of the mythical siren. The Sirens enter singing “The Myth of Er,” a chant on a Greek text by Plato. This intensifies into “Concerning the Siren,” an angular piece using extended techniques in the piano, beginning with the text, “Sirens are sea monsters” in Latin by Bishop Theobald. It splits apart into something more crystalline as the text refers to the pleasing quality of their voices, and flows into “Song,” a rocking ballad with piano accompaniment on an original text representing a romanticized view of the siren.

The next scene introduces the daily routine of the Sirens: A period of waiting, during which Peitho hums to the dead sailors, Polyxo continues her research, and Phaino scans the horizon for the next ship. At the appearance of one, Phaino signals the other Sirens to cast their voices to lure it in. Once the ship is near, the Sirens perform the “Naufragium,” ululating and beating on a metal sheet on the piano strings in a primal ceremony to reel the doomed to shore.

The subsequent scenes follow a similar format. Polyxo parses out various theories about the origin and purpose of the siren myth, with frequent questioning from the naive Peitho. Their debates are interrupted with the signal of the next ship, and each scene contains a different

“luring” song: “Witch-Wife” is a sprightly yet eerie waltz, “Hymn to Neptune” is in the style of an English madrigal, and the vocal lines of “O Sailor” flare out and reel in, then rise in close dissonance as the Sirens call for blood (texts by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Campion, and

Soper, respectively).

Throughout the middle scenes, Polyxo encounters different stories mentioning the Sirens.

These become plays within a play as the Sirens act them out, portraying the abduction of

Persephone and a singing contest between the Muses and the Sirens. Toward the end, Peitho gains more agency and her identity strengthens as Polyxo’s begins to unravel. The penultimate 82 scene features texts from Sappho, leading in to Polyxo’s final confrontation with her fate as a

Siren. The Sirens keen and wail on the “Hymn to Odysseus” for the final number of the show.

Kate Soper is a composer and performer, and often premieres many of her own works.

She sang the role of Polyxo in the 2014 premiere production of Here Be Sirens, and regularly appears with and writes for the composer collective ensemble Wet Ink. She was a finalist for the

Pulitzer Prize in Music for her evening-length work IPSA DIXIT and has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of Arts and Letters, among others. Soper is currently working on another stage work based on the Medieval poem The Romance of the Rose.

Svadba

While many of the female-focused operas mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2 examined significant female figures or the problems associated with being a woman in Western society,

Ana Sokolović’s Svadba takes a distinctly different approach. Svadba, the Serbian word for

“wedding,” portrays a bride and her five friends on the eve of her nuptials. The opera is notable for being unaccompanied—the six singers are the only performers, with minimal auxiliary percussion used in some scenes.

Svadba was commissioned and premiered by the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, a

Toronto-based company.95 This opera was their fourth commission from Sokolović; her first commission was a concert piece for six unaccompanied female voices in 2000, and two operas followed. The company requested another piece for six female voices, and Sokolović chose the subject matter, settling on eastern European wedding practices.

Ana Sokolović is a native of Serbia, currently living in Montréal. She received the 2019

JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year for her orchestral piece Golden Slumbers

95 The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre ceased its operations in 2013. 83

Kiss your Eyes. She is at work on a commission from the Canadian Opera Company inspired by

Philip Larkin’s poem “The Old Fools.” Sokolović frequently collaborates with conductor Dairine ni Mheandhra, the founder of the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre.

The project was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and premiered in Toronto in 2011. It toured in Europe before arriving in the United States. At the US professional premiere in 2013, Opera Philadelphia hosted a post-performance reception in the tradition of a Balkan wedding with music from the West Philadelphia Orchestra.96

The opera is 60 minutes long. The roles are split somewhat evenly between high and low female voices, and each woman is named: Milica the bride (soprano), Danica (soprano), Lena

(soprano), Zora (soprano or mezzo), Nada (mezzo-soprano), and Ljubica (mezzo-soprano).

Sokolović discusses her choice to focus on female camaraderie around a wedding in her program note:

A wedding is an important turning point in a woman’s life. Most often anchored in long- standing traditions, it always marks a transition for her. This rite of passage that Milica experiences is a universal one, an archetype of the human experience. Svadba (Wedding-) offers us a chance to delve deeply into the virtues and richness of this brief but decisive juncture in a woman’s life.

Sokolović describes the scene structure as a series of tableaux, “in which the animated drama turns ordinary moments into moments of magic and fantasy.”97 The texts are drawn from Serbian poetry and popular folk songs from Balkan wedding tradition. (Indeed, San Francisco Opera noted its likely audience as “fans of Pentatonix, World Music lovers, or anyone who has ever

96 As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the Peabody Institute gave the US premiere shortly before Opera Philadelphia’s performances. 97 “Svadba-Wedding”, Ana Sokolović, accessed June 25, 2019, https://www.anasokolovic.com/catalogue-en/vocal-works-and-opera/svadba-wedding-2010/. 84 planned a wedding.”98) Sokolović indicates that these should not be taken literally, and instead interpreted as a reference to the traditions of the celebration.

The opera consists of seven scenes. At the opening, Milica’s friends sing of her beauty and her wedding the next day. In the second scene the friends sing an imagined complaint of a bride who wanted to marry another man, and dye Milica’s hair with henna sent by the groom’s family (related to the bridal application of henna in Eastern cultures.)99 The third scene begins with an imitation of the marriage proposal and the conversation between the groom and the bride’s mother; this rises to a raucous dance.

The fourth scene shows the joyous energy of the dance souring into a fight. Milica faces off with Ljubica in a sparring match, reciting the Serbian alphabet in nonsensical patterns. The following scene resolves the tension and presents a calmer tableau as the girls bathe and get ready. At dawn, the girls awaken one by one and encourage Milica to prepare gifts for the groom’s family. In the final scene, Milica sings a solo as a farewell to her friends as she prepares to meet her beloved; the friends join her in a response.

Svadba lends itself to a producer who may be looking to feature multiple female performers in a non-traditional space. The challenges come from the text—Serbian, not a common language in traditional opera repertoire—and from the unaccompanied nature of the piece. San Francisco Opera described the vocal techniques demanded: “opera singing with

Balkan folk voice, overtones, extreme chest voice, heightened nasal voice, whispering and

98 San Francisco Opera, “Svadba-Wedding,” San Francisco Opera, accessed May 24, 2019, https://sfopera.com/sfoperalab/season-one/svadba-wedding/. 99 Noam Sienna, “Bless Me, Mother, That I May Apply the Dye: Henna Traditions in the Balkans,” Eshkol Hakofer, October 14, 2015, http://eshkolhakofer.blogspot.com/2015/10/bless- me-mother-that-i-may-apply-dye.html. 85 rhythmic riffs, creating a wildly onomatopoeic palette of colors and sounds.”100 p r i s m

In its 2019 award announcement, the committee for the Pulitzer Prize in Music described p r i s m (hereafter prism) as “a bold new operatic work that uses sophisticated vocal writing and striking instrumental timbres to confront difficult subject matter: the effects of sexual and emotional abuse.”101 Through these means, composer Ellen Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins create a meaningful exploration of trauma, as experienced by a woman. Reid has referenced her own experience of assault as part of the inspiration for creating this piece.

Ellen Reid recently became the first composer to have works premiered by the four leading musical institutions of Los Angeles (LA Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los

Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Los Angeles Master Chorale) in a single year. She is the co- founder of Luna Composition Lab with composer Missy Mazzoli, and holds degrees from

Columbia University and the California Institute of the Arts. Roxie Perkins is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. She has received a Sundance Playwright Fellowship, and has been nominated to The Kilroy’s “THE LIST” and We for She’s “WriteHer List,” “annual rankings of the best unproduced plays and original TV pilots by women.”102

prism is a full-length opera for two female singers and chorus. The plot is an original story about the aftermath of trauma. The two main characters (Bibi and Lumee) live in a single room together, shielding themselves from the mysterious and dangerous “Blue” that lurks outside their door. Lumee emerges as the protector of the pair, as Bibi suffers from an

100 San Francisco Opera, “Svadba-Wedding.” 101 “prism, by Ellen Reid,” The Pulitzer Prizes, accessed June 25, 2019, https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ellen-reid. 102 Roxie Perkins, “About,” accessed May 23, 2019, https://www.roxieperkins.com/ABOUT. 86 undisclosed condition that renders her unable to walk.

The chorus voices the role of “Chroma,” a representation of Bibi’s inner/subconscious self. Dancers depict the physical form of Chroma. The libretto describes Chroma as a neutral single body, devoid of identifiable or signifying clothing, and distinct from the typically sexualized depiction of nude human form: “Instead, their nudity should strip each members (sic) body of its sexuality, making Chroma appear to be a hydra of flesh: wrinkled and withered, soft and vulnerable.” The premiere production featured soprano Anna Schubert in the role of Bibi,

Rebecca Jo Loeb as Lumee, and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street as Chroma, conducted by Julian

Wachner.

Perkins draws on the significance of color in memory recall. The stage directions are very abstract, almost filmic, and the language shrouds the true story in mystery until the true story of the traumatic event is revealed in the second act. When this occurs, the survivor’s experience is entirely foregrounded—the assailant is never depicted, and the chorus and ensemble of dancers are used to amplify the survivor’s voice and physicality. As Hamlet is stripped of any expressive power in Ophelia Forever, Perkins and Reid reject the portrayal of the attacker.

In his review of the opera’s premiere, Charles Donelan of the Santa Barbara Independent nicely contextualized prism in opera’s troubled history of female mistreatment:

Opera…has a special, long-standing, almost mystical relationship with female tragedy…Although Bibi, the heroine of Ellen Reid’s new opera p r i s m, avoids that ultimate fate, she nevertheless participates in opera’s ongoing mediation of women’s experience through narratives of trauma, distress, and sacrifice…soprano Anna Schubert disrupted opera’s canonical narrative of women’s undoing by telling a new story that revealed both the complexity of mother-daughter relations and the ongoing dilemma of women’s complicity in their own oppression.

Dolean’s reference to Catherine Clément’s Opera, or the Undoing of Women points out the way the characters of prism subvert the role of women in opera. Bibi is subjected to the same 87 kind of victimization experienced by other operatic heroines, yet through the acts of regaining her memory, acknowledging her trauma, and confronting her oppressor (in this instance, Lumee, who wishes to keep Bibi in the dark), she breaks the cycle and frees herself.

prism premiered in November 2018 at LA Opera, then was performed in January 2019 at

PROTOTYPE Festival in New York. It was co-commissioned by LA Opera and Beth Morrison

Projects and supported by an OPERA America grant. The work is 100 minutes long, and divided into three acts. For the premiere production, an intermission occurs between Acts I and II. At the end of the intermission, Bibi and the dancers appeared in the lobby, beginning the second act of the opera and drawing the audience back into the story.

Of the operas profiled in this chapter, prism is on a grander scale. It requires a chorus of

12 voices, dancers, a larger chamber ensemble, and a venue with a sound system for the electronics. Each act is set in a different setting, and while the scene descriptions are abstract and could be interpreted in many different ways, the producing organization may need more resources (lighting, set pieces) at their disposal to realize them.

4.48 Psychosis

Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis is 90 minutes long, with no intermission, and divided into 24 short scenes. It was premiered by the Royal Opera in London in 2018 at its Lyric

Hammersmith venue, then performed in January 2019 as part of the PROTOTYPE Festival for its American premiere. It won the 2016 UK Theatre Award for Achievement in Opera, the 2017

Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition, and it was nominated for the

2017 Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production.

The opera is based on the last play by Sarah Kane; Kane died by suicide not long after writing the work. The play does not contain any indication of roles or stage directions; 88 adaptations differ greatly, and it opens the work to performance by any gender or number of people. In doing so, Kane severed the action of the play from any particular identity, transferring the audience’s focus onto the experience of depression. “4.48” refers to the time Kane would regularly awaken during her depressed state.

Philip Venables’s is the first permitted adaptation of Kane’s work; he completed the adaptation himself. Venables has been a MacDowell Fellow and the Doctoral Composer in

Residence with the Royal Opera House and the Guildhall School of Music. He completed his doctorate at Guildhall and studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music.

Venables is currently at work on a new opera for Opera Philadelphia and Music Theatre Wales.

Kane and Venables share a fascination with violence—Kane’s previous plays and

Venables’s previous compositions feature violent scenes prominently, and the plots examine how violence changes and transforms a narrative. Venables remarked that 4.48 Psychosis represented a shift for Kane: “It’s not about blood and guts – it’s about that huge conflict of wanting love and wanting happiness and not being able to find it.”103

The text refers to her struggles with medication, therapy, her relationships with doctors, and the tormented inner monologues that permeate her consciousness. While the work is unrelenting in its darkness and unflinching in its honesty, Kane inserts moments of warmth, humanity and humor. The physical and sexual violence present in her previous works is replaced by the violence of the depressed mind against the outside world.

Venables elected to adapt 4.48 Psychosis for six female singers (three sopranos, three mezzos). One soprano assumes a central figure (called “Gwen” in the premiere production after

103 Rachel Beaumont, “Opera Essentials: Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis,” Royal Opera House, May 17, 2016, https://www.roh.org.uk/news/opera-essentials-philip-venabless-4-48-psychosis. 89

Gweneth Ann Rand, the singer who performed the role), with the other singers taking on different foils depending on the scene—a doctor, a former lover, inner voices. Like Ophelia

Forever, the opera exists entirely within the mind of the central character, and the performers represent different explorations within the psyche. The genders of these characters are not mentioned; instead they are defined by their relation to the central character.

In sequences between the central character and the doctor, the text appears via projection, each syllable appearing with a strike from a respective percussionist, placed antiphonally.

Venables requests that the percussionists be women, “so that they are manifestly extensions of

Gwen’s consciousness.”104 Forcing the audience to read the text places Gwen’s (and, by proxy,

Kane’s) voice inside the audience’s mind, internalizing her experience. Venables calls on different styles to distinguish select moments: in one scene where the central character mourns a lost love (either unrequited or imagined), Venables references a Purcellian lament.

The premiere production featured a stark white set; all singers wore the same costume of nondescript, shapeless grey garments. The singers and the ensemble are amplified. Venables’s electronics include some pre-recorded material from the cast, as well as tinny Muzak to be projected from a stage speaker (giving the impression of a doctor’s waiting room.) The ensemble of twelve players is of an unusual instrumentation: alto flute and piccolo, three saxophones (all soprano and baritone), piano and synthesizer with an organ pedalboard, accordion, two percussionists, and strings. The German version of Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis will premiere in

Fall, 2019 at Semperoper Dresden.

104 Alex Ross, “Psychotic Opera at the Prototype Festival,” The New Yorker, January 21, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/psychotic-opera-at-the-prototype-festival. 90

…for the sake of a narrative closure

Sean Ellis Hussey’s …for the sake of a narrative closure is a chamber opera that directly addresses the issues of female representation in opera. Hussey wrote this opera while completing his Master’s degree at Roosevelt University. The initial idea was for a “meta-opera,” in which the audience is watching another opera audience. With Head of Opera Andrew Eggert and

Assistant Professor of Opera and Voice Scott Gilmore, Hussey developed the details of commentary on the current state of opera and the desired result of having the audience recognize the issues and question their own relationships with opera. The title comes from Susan

McClary’s introduction to Catherine Clément’s book Opera, or the Undoing of Women, in which

McClary points out Clément’s complicated relationship with opera as both a devotee and a critic of an art form who regularly victimizes women “for the sake of narrative closure.”105

The opera is for six female singers with electronic interludes. The voices are all indicated as sopranos, but certain roles could be sung by mezzo-sopranos. Each role is featured equally, and all singers provide support under each solo. The work is approximately 20 minutes in length.

Hussey recalled the effects performing an unaccompanied work had on the performers of one production:

Because the work is a cappella they all described a deep-seated trust they had to build with one another in comparison to other opera scenes that lean on a pianist or orchestra. They also expressed relief in learning a work that allowed them to reflect deeply on their own fears and apprehensions as graduating and aspiring opera singers.106

…for the sake of a narrative closure examines the thoughts of six women as they observe a performance of an opera that is being protested for its violent misogynist and racist content.

105 Susan McClary, foreword to Opera, or the Undoing of Women, by Catherine Clément, trans. by Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1988), xi. 106 Sean Ellis Hussey, “Master’s Degree Reflections-2,” Sean Ellis Hussey, Composer, May 21, 2018, https://www.seanellishusseycomposer.com/blog/masters-degree-reflections-2. 91

Each woman is identified by her relationship to opera: the artistic director of the company, a board member, a philanthropist, a tourist, a critic, a conservatory student. One might argue that this opera does not technically pass the Bechdel test—none of the women are named, and they do not converse with each other. While no one is named, Hussey gives each of them agency by featuring their voice (the inner voice of the characters and the outer voice of the performers) in short arias. And no one directly addresses each other (save for shushing the Tourist), yet musical interplay between the voices permeates every scene. Like 4.48 Psychosis and Ophelia Forever, the characters are linked by a central figure; instead of a person, however, …for the sake of a narrative closure’s central figure is opera.

The opera opens with an electronic prelude referencing the orchestra tuning before a traditional opera performance. The first scene (“Inner Monologue I”) comes from the Artistic

Director, who wishes for the audience to transcend the issues present in the production. Each

Inner Monologue ends with a recitation of “Love Lust Life Truth Tension Tragedy,” followed by the character’s expression of what opera is to them.

At different intervals there are electronic interludes, in which the opera “responds” with different emotions. The Board Member sings “Inner Monologue II,” representing the conservative side of operagoers. She bemoans the protests and regards opera as separate from reality. Her scene is immediately followed by a raucous and comedic entrance from the Tourist, whose “Inner Monologue III” happens over a chorus of flapping programs, rustling cough drop wrappers, and shushing from the other singers. Though they stand diametrically opposed on

“proper” opera behavior, the Tourist and the Board Member share the view that opera is an escape from reality. 92

The Philanthropist longs for opera’s beauty, but recognizes that “opera might need to die.” At this, the opera responds with the third electronic interlude, referencing Dido’s death scene from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The final inner monologues from the Critic and

Conservatory Student happen simultaneously, as they look at their pasts and their futures with this problematic art form. Their final words offer up an invitation to consider alternatives: “In my dreams, Love Lust Life Truth Tension Tragedy: can all be portrayed in a way that doesn’t demand submission or death of women for the sake of a narrative closure.” The opera ends suddenly as all the characters applaud, as if mid-thought.

Each production has taken slightly different shape, with scenes added or texts altered based on improvisation sessions with the composer. It has also been performed in diverse venues: at the 2017 premiere at Roosevelt University, the audience sat on the stage while the singers performed from the house seats (as if watching the ongoing performance). Another performance at the BOP STOP in Cleveland appeared slightly more traditional with a proscenium stage. A production by Thompson Street Opera Company in Chicago took place in an intimate recording studio, the singers moving around the audience and using simple gestures to redirect the attention toward each singer. Hussey’s work with this group of singers inspired the composer and performers to develop the ending so each performer finishes the work asking the audience members “what does opera mean to you?”

The composer is currently working on an expansion of the opera with Thompson Street

Opera Company and Quince Ensemble. The complete version will be three acts, and follow the development of an opera production. Says Hussey: “In this way it will shed light on aspects of the opera institution often taken for granted or ignored-notably the unidimensional portrayals of 93 women and the sexual violence they endure.”107

ANON

Every day there is a Manon story. A story where a girl doesn’t speak. Every day a girl goes missing. Every day a girl is raped. Every day a girl is murdered, kidnapped. It is happening on your street, in your town, in our country. It’s a story happening the world over, we just don’t see it.

So begins Errollyn Wallen’s ANON, a chamber opera based on the themes of Abbé

Prévost’s Manon Lescaut. The character in the oft-adapted novel runs away from home for the love of Des Grieux, but leaves him for a wealthier man. Her circumstances worsen, and she dies penniless in the desert. Giacomo Puccini’s (1893) and Jules Massenet’s (1884) adaptations are performed frequently; of the operas performed worldwide from 2004 to 2018, Puccini’s is the

42nd most performed and Massenet’s is 89th.108 The novel has also been adapted for opera by

Daniel Auber (1856) and Hans Werner Henze (1952).

Wallen recalled her initial resistance to this source, where Manon is largely an object with little agency or original thought—but after holding workshops with women from different backgrounds, she recognized a way to update the themes of young love, the mistakes of youth, and succumbing to the pressure of one’s conditions. As the work evolved, Wallen consulted with sex workers to gain insight into those aspects of young women’s stories.

Errollyn Wallen was born in Belize and currently lives in Britain. She has been commissioned by the BBC, the Royal Opera House, Almeida Opera, and the Royal Ballet. She has written twelve operas in varying forms, including a 2015 dance opera about the harsh working environments of sweatshops that premiered at Sadler’s Wells and Another America, a

107 Sean Ellis Hussey, “…for the sake of a narrative closure,” Sean Ellis Hussey, Composer, accessed May 25, 2019, https://www.seanellishusseycomposer.com/for-the-sake-of-a-narrative- closure.html. 108 “Statistics,” Operabase, accessed June 3, 2019, https://www.operabase.com/statistics/en. 94 multi-part opera on the black condition.

ANON was commissioned by the Welsh National Opera, and premiered there in 2014.

Like 4.48 Psychosis, it is a series of vignettes portrayed by anonymous performers, most of whom take on multiple roles. Wallen’s intention is to shift the focus from the identity of the performers to the situation depicted. By removing ascertaining features, Wallen wants the audience to see themselves in these situations. While there is something of a narrative, there is no intentional through-line.

The opera opens with two girls considering the story of Manon. One wishes she could live like Manon, naively wrapped up in the fairytale romance. The other more sensible friend points out this problematic view, and indicates her intention to hear “her” story, pointing to someone offstage. As the other players move into place, we hear the singers ask “what would you do?”

The initial scene establishes one of the more recurring stories: girl meets boy, they fall in love, but have to carry on surreptitiously until they make plans to run away. When they do, they struggle to make ends meet. The girl resorts to sex work; in one scene, she feels empowered for taking control of her sexuality, in another, she feels exploited and oppressed. The story is interrupted with other vignettes: a chorus of mothers, a girl’s expressing her desire for education, the gossip around disapproval of a relationship, harassment in the street, a woman’s family committing an honor killing. The opera ends with the repeated refrain “what would you do?”

Wallen’s choice of words corresponds to Hussey’s method of engaging the audience in a conversation. Wallen and Hussey break the fourth wall throughout their works to elicit responses and inspire independent thought in the observers. Both composers expressed intentions of furthering the conversations around the issues presented in their operas. They accomplish this 95 through the anonymizing of the performers and directly questioning the audience.

ANON is for three female singers and two female actors. The work is about 40 minutes long, and it is scored for piano/keyboards, cello and percussion. There are two productions available to view online; both rely on simple set and costume pieces that can be moved quickly to facilitate the rapid scene changes. The work has toured in the United Kingdom and the United

States; its portability and short length could lend itself to a company with limited resources. In the 2017 Peabody Conservatory production, the actors joined in some of the ensemble singing; this production only used piano.

The Yellow Wallpaper

This opera is based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story of the same name.

Gilman’s story was first published in 1892 and is regarded as an “early feminist classic.”109 After marriage and the birth of a child, Gilman experienced severe depression that led to an increasingly serious illness. Her family turned to Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who prescribed the

“rest cure.” This entailed “almost total bed-rest, isolation from friends and family, a rich fatty diet, and permanent cessation of all creative activity.”110

Under this treatment, Gilman almost suffered a complete breakdown. She managed to free herself, and ultimately separated from her husband. She recognized that while the treatment was mostly applied to women, any person subjected to it would end in the same result:

It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it.111

109 “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Peabody Opera, accessed May 25, 2019, http://peabodyopera.org/seasons/s0708/wallpaper08/index.html. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 96

Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper to warn others against such treatment. Upon reading it,

Mitchell resolved to reform his methods.

Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is written as a series of journal entries by an unnamed woman, whose physician husband John has rented a house to administer a rest cure. The woman, a new mother, is exhibiting symptoms of some “nervous condition.” She is moved into a room with peeling yellow wallpaper; from the bars on the windows and other damage around the room, she assumes it was a nursery. Her husband’s sister watches over her, and she is forbidden from anything that might excite her or tire her out. She begins to fixate on the wallpaper, noticing the details in the pattern with increasing obsession. Gilman shows the woman’s spiraling sanity as she loses contact with reality and gives in to liberating the woman she sees moving behind the wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper has been adapted for opera multiple times. Composers Ronald

Perera (1989), Whitney George (2010), Sarah Taylor Ellis (2014), and Dan Welcher (2018) have delivered widely different permutations of the work. Perera’s and Ellis’s expand the story to an evening-length work, while George’s and Welcher’s are closer to monodramas. Peabody noted the small scope, faithfulness in adaptation, and compact scoring as the main reasons for selecting the Lane and Reid version to premiere in 2008.

Composer Catherine Reid and librettist Judith Lane first met completing graduate studies at New York University. Reid has received commissions from American Opera Projects and the

Glens Falls Symphony, and runs Wild Women Productions where she creates original cabarets.

Lane is also a composer, and has written an opera for the Children’s Opera Company of Ossining and an oratorio on the Salem Witch Trials. The development of this opera was supported by a 97 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

As in the original story, the main character is nameless. The opera contains roles for the woman (soprano), her husband John (baritone), and a five-voice female chorus personifying the wallpaper. The ensemble also takes on the roles of the woman’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

The opera is 90 minutes long and scored for piano, synthesizer, flute, and cello.

Lane identifies the five-woman ensemble as the “Women in the Wall,” and indicates that they are first heard, then seen gradually over the course of the show. With each scene they approach closer to the Woman, and in the final scene they fully emerge and tear at the wallpaper with the Woman. She notes that this could be accomplished by doubling the ensemble with dancers. Lane also indicates the wallpaper “should be treated as a character”; while the set design remains relatively stationary, Lane requests that lighting or other effects be applied to make the wallpaper seem to move, as seen by the Woman. The room should seem to grow over the course of the opera.

Reid and Lane emphasize the effects of solitary confinement on the Woman’s psyche; she repeats the phrase “I am alone” as she falls deeper into madness. JoAnn Kulesza, the music director of the premiere, describes Reid’s musical world as occupying a conventionally tonal, almost musical-theater space in the scenes between the Woman and John, especially in his expressed “desire for her to be the stereotypical woman of the time.”112 When the Woman is alone, or with the entrance of the Women in the Wall, the music reaches toward bitonality, polytonality, and more complex rhythms.113

112 JoAnn Kulesza, “Program Notes to The Yellow Wallpaper,” Peabody Opera, accessed June 25, 2019, http://peabodyopera.org/seasons/s0708/wallpaper08/notes.html. 113 Peabody Opera, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 98

Thumbprint

Contrasting works like …for the sake of a narrative closure and ANON is Thumbprint.

Where the former strip the characters of identity to shift focus to the issues, Thumbprint portrays the actions of one woman: Mukhtar Mai, human rights activist and the first woman in Pakistan to bring her attackers to justice.

In 2002, Mai’s brother was the victim of a sexual assault by men from another tribe.

When he refused to keep quiet about the attack, the tribe’s council invented an affair between him and a woman from their tribe, and enacted a “revenge rape” against Mai. Tradition dictated that a woman subjected to such treatment would be dishonored, shunned by her family, and expected to end her own life. Mai, however, summoned the courage to report her attack to the police. When it was time to sign her official statement, the illiterate Mai signed with her thumbprint. Through her tenacity and refusal to back down, the case went to trial and her attackers were sentenced to death. With the settlement money from the case, Mai established a school for women and a welfare center for victims of domestic abuse in Meerwala.114

When composer Kamala Sankaram and librettist Susan Yankowitz began collaborating, they knew they wanted to subvert the typical paths of traditional opera heroines. Sankaram cited

Carolyn Abbate’s Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century as a major influence, and detailed how Mukhtar’s real-life actions challenged the conventional power dynamics onstage:

We celebrate the submissive woman in opera. The tendency is that if the woman’s voice is too strong, we have to quiet it. Lulu has to die. Medea has to die. So it was really important for Susan and for me to show this woman who becomes very powerful in the

114 The case has continued to go through several appeals processes, and Mukhtar and her education center have been the target of several obstacles—in 2005 Mukhtar’s passport was revoked, then returned; in 2009 the Mukhtar Mai’s Women Welfare Organization had its electricity shut off. 99

classic sense of the operatic tradition. In the beginning of the show, her vocal part is contained to just the middle of the voice. It isn’t until she makes her decision [to report the rape] that she starts singing the more coloratura passages with higher notes; that was very deliberate.115

Susan Yankowitz is a playwright and novelist, best known for Terminal and 1969

Terminal 1996, Phaedra in Delirium, and Seven, a play about seven prominent women by seven women playwrights (Yankowitz’s contribution was a 40-minute monologue on Mukhtar’s story).

She has received residencies from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Hermitage, and the MacDowell Colony. Yankowitz recently premiered a gospel opera with musician Taj

Mahal titled Slain in the Spirit.

Kamala Sankaram has been commissioned by the Washington National Opera, Houston

Grand Opera, Opera Memphis, and many others. She has received grants from OPERA America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and held residencies at the HERE Arts Center,

American Lyric Theater, and the Watermill Center. Sankaram maintains a performing career, most recently singing in Yuval Sharon’s production of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS. Sankaram is the leader of “operatic Bollywood surf ensemble” Bombay Rickey, holds a PhD in psychology from the New School, and teaches composition at SUNY Purchase. As mentioned in Chapter 2, she became the Co-Artistic Director at Experiments in Opera in January, 2019.

Thumbprint is 90 minutes long. There are six roles—two sopranos, one mezzo, a tenor, and two baritones—and six instruments: flute, violin, viola, bass, piano doubling on harmonium, and drum kit doubling on Indian percussion instruments. It grew out of an earlier collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects: a commission for a song cycle. This version premiered at the 2009

115 Kamala Sankaram, “Kamala Sankaram: Being One with the Performance,” interview by Frank J. Oteri, NewMusicBox, February 19, 2014, https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/kamala- sankaram-being-one-with-the-performance/. 100

21c Liederabend at Galapagos Art Space. BMP chose to invest in further development, resulting in an early performance in 2011 at The Kitchen and the fully staged premiere at the 2014

PROTOTYPE Festival.

The final version was performed at NYU’s Baruch Center for the Performing Arts. There were subsequent performances of this production at Opera Ithaca in 2016 and LA Opera in 2017.

Reviewers noted the majority-female creative team—the composer, librettist, producer (Beth

Morrison), director (Rachel Dickstein), and many of the designers are women. Additionally,

Thumbprint elevates the actual words of a marginalized voice; interviews with Mai provided the source for Yankowitz’s text.

Sankaram and Yankowitz utilize certain opera tropes: the libretto is poetic, there are arias, there is an opening trio for the women as they sing of domesticity for exposition. The action remains faithful to the real events, but the assault is depicted in an abstract manner:

Sankaram and Yankowitz developed that scene with director Dickstein, resulting in a male cast member using a knife to cut open bags of rice over a “chorus of breaths.” This is not unlike the treatment of the assault in prism, in which the experience of the survivor is foregrounded. The performers portray multiple roles, but primarily inhabit Mukhtar’s family—her relationships with her mother and sister feature prominently. In a departure from the sounds of traditional opera, Sankaram blends Hindustani and Western classical music traditions.

The original production used video projections as the primary backdrop, with cots arranged in different formations depending on the setting. Sankaram expressed her desire to have a majority or entirely South Asian cast, but acknowledged the difficulty in sourcing those singers for a newer work. The small ensemble combined with the potentially portable nature of the set 101 could make this an attractive offering to a producing organization in a location with a large South

Asian community.

Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum

…we did things a little different. Hildegurls was formed at CBGB.116

The last opera on this list is once again inspired by a significant female figure. Like …for the sake of a narrative closure and ANON, it corresponds with opera, though in a very different way. Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum is more than a remix and different from an homage.

To understand this project, we must first consider the source. Hildegard von Bingen was a twelfth-century German abbess, writer, composer, and philosopher. Throughout her life, she experienced religious visions and kept journals of them. Sometime in the middle of the twelfth century, she composed the Ordo virtutum (“Play of the Virtues”), the earliest known and surviving musical drama that is not part of the liturgy. It was performed by the noblewomen and nuns in the community.

The plot concerns the soul’s struggle to overcome human weakness, as influenced by the

Devil and the Virtues. The Soul (Anima), the seventeen Virtues, and the Devil are soloists, with a male chorus of Prophets and Patriarchs and a female chorus of Souls. 117 The Devil, portrayed by a male voice, does not sing; instead he yells. All the other parts are sung in plainchant.

Composer Kitty Brazelton had been performing at the CBGB club since the 1970s, and in the 1990s curated several programs there of avant-garde music. (A New York City music venue founded in 1973, CBGB is best known for supporting the punk rock scene; the Ramones played

116 Kitty Brazelton, The Story of Hildegurls, May 11, 2014, https://vimeo.com/94916361. 117 Humility, Hope, Chastity, Innocence, Contempt of the World, Celestial Love, Discipline, Modesty, Mercy, Victory, Discretion, Patience, Knowledge of God, Charity, Fear of God, Obedience, and Faith. 102 their first shows there, and Patti Smith, Blondie, and the Talking Heads were regular performers.) In 1993, she arranged a performance of Ordo virtutum with other female composers she knew—Eve Beglarian, Mary Jane Leach, and Elaine Kaplinsky. When asked to organize a performance in 1996 for a women’s music festival, Brazelton approached the group about reprising the piece. Beglarian suggested incorporating technology; Lisa Bielawa replaced

Leach.

Each composer took one of the four acts from the original work and recomposed the material, condensed into 15-20 minute movements. Lisa Bielawa took Act I, Brazelton took Act

II, Beglarian took Act III, and Kaplinsky took Act IV. The prologue and processional were performed as originally written. The group took on the name “Hildegurls,” a reference to the original composer and the reclamation of the word “girl” by other feminist groups in the 1990s

(including the riot grrrl movement).

Brazelton pitched the project to a contact at Lincoln Center, who expressed interest and connected her to director and founder of American Opera Projects Grethe Barrett Holby. The new project premiered in 1998 at the Lincoln Center Festival, coinciding with von Bingen’s

900th birthday. (The festival included a traditional performance of the work from early music group Sequentia.)

The prologue introduces the Order of the Virtues. In Act I, the Soul considers the path offered by the Virtues, but opts to follow the easier way of the Devil. The Virtues introduce themselves and call back and forth to each other in Act II. Act III sees the return of the abused and repentant soul. In Holby’s production, the Soul physically fights off the remnants of Hell and sings her repenting confession unclothed. Act IV is the restoration of the Soul on the virtuous path, newly adorned in white robes. The processional is an offering of celebration to God. 103

After the performance at Lincoln Center, there were a couple follow-up performances. A recording was released on Innova Records in 2009. However, there have been no further developments on the project; said Brazelton: “…we were done. What made us strong was what broke us: too many leaders, too many composers. And each one with her own idea of what should happen.”118 Brazelton does not give further detail, and the other composers have not commented on the dissolution of the project.

Lisa Bielawa won the Rome prize in 2009. She has been a vocalist with the Philip Glass

Ensemble since 1992, and co-founded the MATA Festival in 1997. In 2018, she premiered

Vireo, a filmed, made-for-TV-and-online opera. This year she became the inaugural Composer- in-Residence at the New School.

Eve Beglarian has won the Alpert Award in the Arts in 2017 and the Robert

Rauschenberg Prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2015. In 2009 she biked and kayaked the length of the Mississippi River, taking inspiration and sound samples and turning them into a song cycle. She has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Master

Chorale, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others.

Elaine Kaplinsky has written pieces for pianist Kathleen Supové, a women’s electronic improv trio named Trousers, and her jazz-based Kaplinsky Quartet. There is no evidence of recent activity from Kaplinsky as a composer or performer; most of her online mentions are in reference to the Hildegurls project.

Kitty Brazelton founded the digital-chamber-punk band What Is It Like to Be a Bat? and the nine-piece rockestra Dadadah. She has written operas for American Opera Projects and

118 Brazelton, The Story of Hildegurls. 104

Ardea Arts, and chamber works for the Manhattan Brass Quintet and California EAR Unit.

Brazelton holds her masters and doctoral degrees in composition from Columbia University, studying with Jack Beeson. She teaches at Bennington College.

Final Thoughts

In the Introduction and Chapter 1, I used data on the top ten most performed works to demonstrate female representation in traditional opera repertoire and works premiered in North

America, and in Chapter 2 I examined the casts coming out of contemporary opera companies. In this chapter I moved the focus from quantity to quality, looking not just at the numbers of women, but what kinds of women and what kinds of stories are being explored. Some of these operas, like …for the sake of a narrative closure, ANON, Thumbprint, prism, and The Yellow

Wallpaper, directly interrogate the different ways women are marginalized, and do so with female voices. Others, like Here Be Sirens and 4.48 Psychosis, distance themselves from a distinctly female identity to draw attention to the central plot matter.

These operas also accomplish that in a variety of musical styles, and some with the use of extended vocal techniques. Ophelia Forever, Here Be Sirens, and Svadba use extended vocal techniques, and Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum and …for the sake of a narrative closure rely on electronics to augment and support the voices. …for the sake of a narrative closure and

Svadba are primarily unaccompanied, and in Here Be Sirens the performers provide their own accompaniment. Thumbprint incorporates elements of Hindustani music, Svadba uses Serbian folk music, and prism’s second act includes electronics and Western pop music to enrich the identities of their respective characters. The diverse sound worlds of these works supplement the variety and vibrancy of their stories and characters.

At the beginning of this chapter, I referenced Dialogues des Carmélites, Suor Angelica, 105 and Little Women as opera’s most frequently performed works with greater female representation. While these are valid stories, they provide a narrow view of female identity and the kinds of performances women singers can give. The ten operas discussed in this chapter may not be widely performed, but they are the kinds of operas that, when performed, can present a diverse, complex, satisfying picture of the contemporary female experience.

106

CONCLUSION

What Did We Learn?

In Chapter 1, my analysis of operas premiered since 1995 showed that while female creators move the needle a little toward an equal distribution of male and female roles, having a female main character had a greater effect on the gender balance of the cast. Even more effective was the intention of female focus, as seen in a small subset of intentionally feminist or women- focused operas. When women are the center of the narrative and the creative team pays attention to how they are treated, the result is a more balanced cast.

My analysis of contemporary opera creators in Chapter 2 demonstrated a noticeable difference when the company is led by a woman. None of the companies studied had gender parity explicitly stated in their missions, but the companies that were founded and/or ran by women had higher numbers of gender-balanced casts. In Chapter 3 I profiled a variety of operas that portray the kinds of stories and characters lacking from the traditional repertoire. These works spanned styles, scope, and content; the women portrayed in them are multi-layered and active players, rather than the passive victims of older works. With works like these present in the repertoire, opera could move closer to representing the audience it desires.

What’s Missing?

“But the figures don’t tell the full story, nor are numbers the only prize we should be keeping our eye on. They are just one part of a much bigger picture.”119

Studying this data leads to several conclusions. If a company or creative team is not thinking about parity, it is less likely to happen. If there is not a woman in a major creative or administrative position during the creation of an opera, that opera is less likely to have a gender-

119 Lucy Kerbel, All Change Please (London: Nick Hern Books Limited, 2017), 46. 107 balanced cast. The works I analyzed in Chapter 3 were primarily chamber operas. Even if these works were picked up by major opera companies, they would be relegated to a smaller venue and perhaps feature less prominently in marketing materials, and not attract the audience they deserve. This connects to the intention of the producing organization—are they merely looking for a quick fix, or are they willing to make the bigger changes that will lead to gender parity?

How Do We Fix It?

Institutions

Let’s start at the top. Change at the institutional level is arguably the most visible, with the potential to affect more people. And organizations with more resources (like those in the

PCM 1 group) have even greater effects than those further down the food chain.

Lucy Kerbel was a successful director in the United Kingdom before she changed gears and founded Tonic Theatre in 2011. Kerbel saw the gender disparity in British theater and sought to make real changes, but recognized the limitations of accomplishing that through traditional theatrical work:

Instead of attempting to create change by leading through example – i.e. putting on plays in a gender-balanced manner and hoping the industry (which probably wouldn’t even have known we existed) somehow magically followed suit – Tonic decided to offer something that at that point didn’t exist: we became the first providers of a service that gave the UK theatre industry the support, information, guidance and practical assistance it needed to make progress in regards to gender equality.120

Through her work with Tonic, Kerbel consults with companies to examine their practices and determine where biases may be affecting decisions. She outlines examples of small changes companies can make to eliminate those effects, including anonymizing the submission of unsolicited scripts, having gender-balanced reading panels, and scheduling more time to research

120 Kerbel, All Change Please, 7. 108 works by women.121

After the 2019 New Opera Workshop (NOW19) was held in Brisbane, a group of women issued a call to action for the Australian opera community to adjust its intentions toward greater diversity and inclusiveness Director Sally Blackwood, composers Liza Lim and Peggy Polias, and percussionist Bree Van Reyk connect the problems in the Australian opera community to the country’s larger problem of violence against women, and argue for all members of the community to take responsibility for making changes. They state their desire to see this inclusive atmosphere reflected in the art that results: “We want to see ‘us’ in the stories, share the role of storytelling, and have greater input into the way these stories are told.”122

In the United States, composer Kamala Sankaram talks about the importance of making gender parity an objective. Like Kerbel, she points out specific action items for music institutions to implement to work toward greater equality:

A first step for presenters could be to set a goal of programming a certain percentage of living composers, women, and composers of color, understanding that there will often be overlap between categories. We should be doing the same thing for our designers and directors. And I would urge arts organizations to consider using quotas for their administrative positions and board make-up to ensure that our gatekeepers are also representative of the world we live in.123

Sankaram also advocates for blind submissions, citing the boost of women in orchestral positions after the introduction of blind auditions.

OPERA America’s grants for women composers are another example of institutional

121 Kerbel, All Change Please, 24. 122 Sally Blackwood, Liza Lim, Peggy Polias, and Bree Van Reyk, “Opera and the doing of women,” ArtsHub, May 13, 2019, https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/opinions-and- analysis/performing-arts/sally-blackwood-liza-lim-peggy-polias-and-bree-van/opera-and-the- doing-of-women-257968. 123 Kamala Sankaram, “5 Questions to Kamala Sankaram (Co-Artistic Director, Experiments in Opera),” interview by Lauren Alfano, I Care if You Listen, January 8, 2019, https://www.icareifyoulisten.com/2019/01/5-questions-kamala-sankaram-experiments-in-opera/. 109 support dedicated to this kind of change, and the program targets two different levels of engagement. The Discovery grants go directly to composers to help develop their own projects;

Kate Soper, Kamala Sankaram, and Kitty Brazelton are past recipients. The Commissioning grants go to organizations for the purpose of creating a new work—Ellen Reid and Roxie

Perkins’s prism was supported by one of these.

These grants began in 2015; there is currently limited information about the resulting projects, as many of them are still in development. It would be interesting to analyze them for gender-balanced casts when there is more information available—I think it very likely that their averages would be higher. Even if these projects are not intentionally feminist, the added element of woman-focused funding may spark the awareness necessary for improving those numbers.

Composers and Librettists

We as composers have the ultimate power in deciding the gender split on stage. We are more powerful than a playwright would be in deciding that gender split. We are more powerful than the director, or an artistic director of a company would be. It’s up to us. Right? Because once you set the tessitura of a musical theater piece, it is very difficult to cross-gender cast…especially if you start introducing instruments other than piano, transposing becomes very impractical…We have composers right now who are writing musical theater pieces or operas that are full of male voices—full of them! We have a situation in the vocal music world where women singers outnumber male singers at least three to one, and yet there are so many new pieces of musical theater and music coming to the stage where the men outnumber the women by that ratio or higher. This is an abuse of our power.124

This bold statement from composer Melissa Dunphy hits the center of the target. While no individual or single group can solve the problem of gender bias, composers and librettists are in a unique position that holds a lot of power. As discussed in the Introduction, voice types are strongly tied to gender. If a composer and librettist decide to create a work with a majority male

124 Melissa Dunphy, “Composing Has to Be a Calling,” interview by Frank J. Oteri, NewMusicBox, June 1, 2019, https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/melissa-dunphy-composing-has-to- be-a-calling/. 110 cast, and the composer elects to write those roles for male voices, then women are effectively excluded from this work.

Actress and transgender activist Shakina Nayfack points out the kinds of intentions that contribute to more balanced casting:

I think the reason writers create gender-specific characters is the same reason they create racially-specific or age-specific characters: There is an experience and a history that the writer is hoping to capture, an experience and a history that is part of the larger story they are telling. That said, if we’re talking about smaller roles that don’t require specific experiences or histories to contribute to the storytelling, then yeah, why not say ‘this role is open to anyone who is quick witted and snarky’ for example, or ‘we need someone grounded and wise,’ then let the actors do their work to bring those qualities, as opposed to using gender or racial identity as the marker.125

If creators can work with this kind of forethought and connect characters to singers with intention and care, operas will only be better for it.

Performers

And what about individual performers? We may feel powerless when it comes to taking on major institutions, or even organizations at the regional or local level. But there are small ways we can contribute to the evolution. Actress Valerie Weak, whose Counting Actors Project brought attention to gender disparity in San Francisco theater, talked about the control she exercises as a performer:

Over the course of working on the project, I’ve come to realize that while I have no control over what projects a company chooses to produce, or whether or not I am cast in a project, I do have control over the material I use to audition. I now actively seek out the work of female playwrights to use for audition monologues. When I’m auditioning, I feel that I’m not just there to vie for a role, but also to introduce a director or an artistic leader to a female playwright they could be producing.”126

125 Shakina Nayfack, “Gender Diversity in the Professional World,” interview by Christopher Castanho, HuffPost, March 5, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gender-diversity-in-the- professional-world_b_58bca155e4b02eac8876d04c. 126 Valerie Weak, Not Even: A gender analysis of 500 San Francisco/Bay Area theatrical productions from the Counting Actors Project, WomenARTS: March 2015, 5. 111

Big change has to happen at every level. By bringing awareness and implementing actions wherever we can, we can begin to change the face of opera. And when artists can show the kind of world we could have with equal rights for all, we move that much closer to achieving it.

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APPENDIX A. SURVEY OF SELECTED BAROQUE OPERAS

The greater numbers of characters and singers are bolded. Composer/Librettist Title Year Number of Number of Singers Characters Male Female Male Castrati Female Claudio Monteverdi/ L’incoronazione 1643 10 11 7 3 11 Giovanni Busenello di Poppea Francesco Cavalli/ La Calisto 1651 6 7 3 3 7 Giovanni Faustini Jean-Baptiste Lully/ Alceste 1674 11 10 11 n/a 10 Philippe Quinault John Blow/Anne Finch Venus and 1683 4 2 1 n/a 5 Adonis Henry Purcell/ Dido and 1689 2 4 1 n/a 5 Nahum Tate Aeneas George Frideric Rinaldo 1711 6 5 2 3 6 Handel/Giacomo Rossi George Frideric Giulio Cesare in 1724 6 2 2 3 3 Handel/Nicola Haym Egitto Antonio Vivaldi/ Orlando furioso 1727 4 3 1 2 4 Grazio Braccioli Jean-Philippe Hippolyte et 1733 11 9 11 n/a 9 Rameau/Abbé Simon- Aricie Joseph Pellegrin Jean-Philippe Castor et Pollux 1737 6 6 6 n/a 6 Rameau/Pierre-Joseph Bernard

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APPENDIX B. SURVEY OF POPULAR OPERAS

Top ten operas performed worldwide, 2014-2018 The greater numbers of characters and singers are bolded. Composer/Librettist Title Year Number of Number of Notes Characters Singers Male Female Male Female +one travesti W.A. Mozart/ Le nozze di 1786 7 4 6 5 role Lorenzo da Ponte Figaro (Cherubino) W.A. Mozart/ Don 1787 5 3 5 3 Lorenzo da Ponte Giovanni W.A. Mozart/ Die +some male Emanuel 1791 12 6 9 9 Zauberflöte speaking parts Schikaneder Gioacchino Rossini/ Il barbiere 1816 7 2 7 2 Cesare Sterbini di Siviglia Giuseppe Verdi/ +one travesti Francesco Maria Rigoletto 1851 9 4 8 5 role (Page) Piave Giuseppe Verdi/ Francesco Maria La traviata 1853 9 3 9 3 Piave Georges Bizet/ Carmen 1875 7 4 7 4 Meilhac & Halévy Giacomo Puccini/ La bohème 1896 8 2 8 2 Illica & Giacosa +one travesti Giacomo Puccini/ Tosca 1900 8 1 7 2 role (Shepherd Illica & Giacosa Boy) Giacomo Puccini/ Madama 1904 8 6 8 6 Illica & Giacosa Butterfly

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APPENDIX C. SURVEY OF POPULAR NORTH AMERICAN WORKS

Top ten operas performed by OPERA America Members, 1991-present The greater numbers of characters and singers are bolded. Composer/Librettist Title Year Number of Number of Notes Characters Singers Male Female Male Female George Gershwin/ Porgy and 1935 13 7 12 8 +one boy DuBose Heyward & Bess soprano role Ira Gershwin (Scipio) Gian Carlo Menotti Amahl and 1951 5 1 4 2 +one boy the Night soprano/travesti Visitors role (Amahl) Igor Stravinsky/ The Rake’s 1951 5 3 5 3 Auden & Kallman Progress Carlisle Floyd Susannah 1955 7 5 7 5 Douglas Moore/ The Ballad 1956 4 5 4 5 John Latouche of Baby Doe Leonard Bernstein/ Candide 1956/ 16 5 16 5 Voltaire, Hellman, & 1988 Wheeler Carlisle Floyd/ Of Mice 1969 7 1 7 1 John Steinbeck and Men Stephen Sondheim/ A Little 1973 6 9 6 9 Hugh Wheeler Night Music Stephen Sondheim/ Sweeney 1979 6 3 6 3 Hugh Wheeler Todd Mark Adamo/Louisa Little 1998 5 6 5 6 May Alcott Women

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APPENDIX D. TEN CONTEMPORARY OPERAS WITH MOSTLY/ENTIRELY FEMALE CASTS

The greater number of characters and singers are bolded. Composer/Librettist Title Year Number of Number of Notes Characters Singers Male Female Male Female Kitty Brazelton, Eve Hildegurls 1998 * * 0 4 The singers Beglarian, Lisa Electric portray a Bielawa & Elaine Ordo number of Kaplinsky Virtutum different characters of varying genders Amy Beth Kirsten & Ophelia 2005 0 3 0 3 Various Text Authors Forever Catherine Reid & The Yellow 2008 1 1 1 1 + five-voice Judith Lane Wallpaper female chorus Ana Sokolović Svadba 2011 0 6 0 6 Errollyn Wallen ANON 2014 * * 0 5 The singers portray a number of different characters of varying genders Kate Soper & Here Be 2014 0 3 0 3 Various Text Authors Sirens Kamala Sankaram & Thumbprint 2014 3 3 3 3 Susan Yankowitz Sean Ellis Hussey …for the 2017 0 6 0 6 sake of a narrative closure Ellen Reid & Roxie p r i s m 2018 0 2 0 2 + twelve-voice Perkins mixed chorus, four-person mixed company of dancers Philip Venables & 4.48 2018 0 6 0 6 Sarah Kane Psychosis