NOTE FROM NICOLE Dear Friends, This world premiere of Today It Rains marks a true milestone for Opera Parallèle, our first full scale commissioned work. This production embodies the spirit in which OP was founded, to work in ‘parallel’ with great artists and our community. Collaboration is at the heart of what we do and I believe that a positive collaborative experience can elevate a production to a whole new level. Working with Laura, Mark, Kimberly, and the rest of the creative team over the last three years has been a truly wonderful experience—I’m sure you will see this translated onto the stage. I have been humbled by the opportunity to bring the story of Georgia O’Keeffe to the operatic stage. Discovering just how influential and groundbreaking she was as an artist and as a woman has heightened my awareness of the privilege of being a female artistic leader. In particular I’m so pleased we are able to create this work with a brilliant female composer and many female creatives. This trailblazing spirit also inspired OP to celebrate women in the Bay Area who, like O’Keeffe, are breaking the mold, defying expectations, and pushing the boundaries of their field. I hope you were able to join us for the ‘Georgia & the Rebels’ event before tonight’s performance as we honor these brilliant women. Many thanks for being here, Nicole Paiement Artistic Director FROM THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Today It Rains An Artist in Locomotion What is it about a train ride, that trance-inducing rush on rails, that can be so transformative? Anyone who has traveled on a train for any length of time knows what I am talking about. Ensconced in a hurtling cell, the landscape a blur, there’s nowhere to go but inside yourself. No wonder that is often when we ask ourselves deeper questions: Who am I? What am I? Am I happy with this life? So imagine 42-year-old Georgia O’Keeffe in 1929 on that legendary train ride from Manhattan to New Mexico, with her friend Beck Strand—a pivotal journey when she made a choice that changed her life forever, when she asked, “what do I want to be?” The production you will see tonight is meant to evoke the transformation borne out of the mind of our protagonist, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. It is filled with flashbacks that help us understand where she came from and where she was headed. You’ll see parts of a fragmented train representing memories in motion, and while traveling through the opera we will segue from Penn Station to Alfred Stieglitz’s apartment in Manhattan. We will make stops in O’Keeffe’s sleeper car, Gallery 291, and in Lake George, the upstate New York retreat where O’Keeffe and Stieglitz spent many summers. Integrated projections will help to collect those memories and convey the passing of time as well as the physical motion of the train. Every bend and turn of the tracks takes us somewhere—from place to place, from past to present. Nineteen twenty-nine was the year of the catastrophic Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression; just nine years before, the United States had enacted women’s suffrage. It was a time when prominent women painters were rare, and when O’Keeffe made a decision to be an artist in her own right and on her own terms, on a train headed for the most inspiring, colorful landscapes imaginable. She was reaching for something beyond, something, as she once put it, “I call the ‘Faraway.’ It is a place I have painted before...even now I must do it again.” In the process, she would change the cultural landscape and redefine what it means to be an artist and who gets to be one. Brian Staufenbiel Creative Director THE ORIGIN OF THE OPERA'S TITLE “And I chose coming away because here at least I feel good—and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside—and very still—Maybe you will not love me for it—but for me it seems to be the best thing I can do for you—I hope this letter carries no hurt to you—It is the last thing I want to do in the world— Today it rains— Please leave your regrets—and all your sadness—and misery—If I had hugged all mine to my heart as you are doing I could not walk out the door and let the sun shine into me as it has—and I could not feel the stars touch the center of me as they do out there on the hills at night—or the silver of the sagebrush way off into the distance as well as nearby—seem to touch my lips and my cheek as it does—” Georgia O’Keeffe in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, July 9, 1929 Image Source: Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. SYNOPSIS By Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed PART I – DEPARTURE Scene 1. A train platform, New York Penn Station, early morning, April 27, 1929. Travelers rush in from the rain and board a train. Rebecca Salsbury Strand James (“Beck”) enters the platform hurriedly and is soon met by Georgia O’Keeffe. Both are assisted onto the departing train by Aubrey Wells, a porter. Scene 2. While O’Keeffe unpacks in her compartment, Wells takes her ticket and comments on her destination to Santa Fe, “a far cry from New York.” After he leaves, O’Keeffe expresses her doubts about the journey and imagines her husband Alfred Stieglitz waking and discovering the note she left him about her sudden departure. In a split scene, she recalls the content of the note while Stieglitz reads it in the New York apartment they share. Scene 3. Later that evening, in the lounge car, Beck and O’Keeffe take turns drinking booze from a flask while playing poker, gambling with tubes of paint instead of money. Quoting art critics of the day, including Stieglitz, they lampoon the label of the “woman artist” in society. Scene 4. After Beck departs, the windows of the lounge car suddenly become drawings in Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery and O’Keeffe recalls the first time she and Stieglitz met. Scene 5. O’Keeffe tries to sleep in her compartment as the train barrels toward Chicago. An extended, dreamlike video sequence with music recounts events in her life that inform her as an artist. PART II – CONNECTION Scene 6. A train platform, Chicago Union Station, a day later. O’Keeffe and Beck board the Chief for the second leg of their train ride to Santa Fe, with Wells again assisting them on board. Scene 7. In the lounge car, O’Keeffe and Beck play a game of “Exquisite Corpse,” while bantering about the difficulties in balancing a marriage with a career as an artist. Scene 8. Later in the evening in her compartment, O’Keeffe has a nightmare in which she imagines returning to a party at Lake George where she is unhappy and fights with Stieglitz about her discontentment as an artist. O’Keeffe wakes suddenly and finds solace in her paint box. PART III – ARRIVAL Scene 9. A split scene, pre-dawn: in New York, Stieglitz attempts to write a letter to O’Keeffe about their relationship while O’Keeffe does the same from her compartment. Stieglitz burns his letter in despair and O’Keeffe stuffs hers into her pocket, vowing to abandon her trip at the next stop. Scene 10. On the caboose platform, O’Keeffe encounters Wells practicing on a clarinet. Wells senses O’Keeffe’s doubts and tells her to trust her impulses, as one does when one plays jazz. They greet the new day, along with Beck just waking in her own compartment. When she is alone on the caboose platform, O’Keeffe tears up the letter she meant for Stieglitz and reaffirms her decision to leave. Scene 11. Approaching Santa Fe, April 30, 1929. O’Keeffe rhapsodizes about the new landscape she sees from her compartment. As the train reaches its destination, she bids farewell to all of her apprehensions and emerges from the train into the bright morning. We dedicate Today It Rains to Opera Parallèle and American Opera Projects. —Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed For Rebecca Allan, my favorite artist and greatest love —Laura Kaminsky To Charles Jarden, in appreciation of the many new works we created together. And to Nicole and Brian for helping us bring this new work to life. —Mark Campbell For Claire Jones, my love, and my partner in travel. —Kimberly Reed Photo credit: Blythe Gaissert as Georgia O'Keeffe; photo by Kent Meister INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATORS OP Marketing Manager Marilyn Langbehn recently sat down with Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed to find out more about the journey to bring Today It Rains to the stage. Below is the transcript of their conversation: You worked together on As One; what was it about O'Keeffe's story that drew you to work together again? LK: I suggested O’Keeffe as a possible subject for an opera. My wife had been reading aloud to me the published letters between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, My Faraway One, a huge volume of wisdom and insight and quotidian matters. In learning about their lives, I was made to think deeply about the struggles that we, as creative artists and as life partners, face in finding the space and time to make our work, balancing the demands of our personal relationships and the pressures of the marketplace, while staying true to ourselves.