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Proving up NEW YORK PREMIERE 2018-19 SEASON Celebrating 30 Years OPENING NIGHT Proving Up NEW YORK PREMIERE MUSIC BY Missy Mazzoli LIBRETTO BY Royce Vavrek Adapted from the short story “Proving Up” by Karen Russell Co-commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha, and Miller Theatre at Columbia University © 2018 G. Schirmer Inc. IN A NEW PRODUCTION BY OPERA OMAHA Wednesday, September 26, 8 p.m. | Friday, September 28, 8 p.m. Click on a section to learn more OVERVIEW SYNOPSIS CREATIVE TEAM CAST NOTES PHOTOS PRESS COVERAGE PRESS RELEASE OVERVIEW Proving Up Wednesday, September 26, 8 p.m. | Friday, September 28, 8 p.m. The performance runs approximately 75 minutes with no intermission. Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek thrilled audiences and critics alike in 2016 with the premiere of their opera Breaking the Waves. This dynamic creative duo reunites for Proving Up, a harrowing tale of a family’s pursuit of the American Dream set in post-Civil War Nebraska. Miller’s 30th Anniversary Season opens with the New York pre- miere of this chamber opera that is by turns optimistic, exultant, and menacing. Major support for Proving Up is provided by Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts and H.F. Lenfest Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation Opera Omaha’s New York appearance is generously supported by Omaha Steaks Proving Up SYNOPSIS Somewhere in the plains of the young U.S. State of Nebraska, 1868 The Zegners – Ma, Pa, and their two young sons Peter and Miles – have moved to Nebraska from the east coast following the Civil War, prompted by the passing of the U.S. Homestead Act, the lure of large parcels of land, and a new prosperous life in the American West. As they face drought, famine, and the loss of their two daughters, they cling to the American dream of “proving up” through land ownership. PART 1: The family tells of the official requirements needed to obtain the title to the homestead, the most elusive condi- tion being that one’s home must have a glass window. Johannes “Pa” Zegner, being in possession of the only glass window in the region, agrees to share it with his neighbors as a farmer’s act of generosity. Ma tends to Peter, her oldest son who has suffered an unfortunate accident. PART 2: Pa tells of rumors that an Inspector is on his way to hand out land titles, and convinces Ma to send their youngest Miles on a journey to lend the window out to their neighbors. He hopes to entice the Inspector back to their land so he can finally claim ownership of their homestead. PART 3: The sisters sing from beyond the grave to reveal that Pa stole the window from the neighboring Yothers’ home- stead after the family vanished without a trace. This disappearance is made even stranger since the Yothers had successfully obtained their land’s title weeks earlier. PART 4: Ma wakes at night to pray for rain and mourn the loss of her daughters. Miles secretly watches her. PART 5: Miles begins his journey. The route is dangerous and difficult; he encounters a rainstorm that turns into a sudden blizzard. His horse, Nore, is blinded by the snow and throws Miles from her back. Miles passes out from pain and exhaustion. PART 6: Miles wakes to discover a dirty, disoriented sodbuster sitting next to him. The man holds out a copy of the Homestead Act and tells Miles that he needs the glass window to obtain his title. Miles hesitates but the man is insistent, and he eventually steals the window. Miles fights back. The man tells Miles that he knows the window doesn’t actually belong to him, that it was stolen by his father. Miles panics as he hears the malicious laughter of his dead sisters. PART 7: Ma and Pa are overjoyed as they see a figure in the distance, convinced that it is Miles returning home. Their joy turns to horror as they realize their mistake. The dead sisters return to their graves with new company. Proving Up NOTES American Dreamers: MAKING PROVING UP INTO AN OPERA BY FRED PLOTKIN Ask any American—whether a descendant of first peoples or, like most of us, part of nearly four centuries of immigration—what his or her concept of “The American Dream” might be and you will get a response that evokes hard work and aspiration to a better life. No matter where we were born and what our circumstances, each one of us has an American Dream. It might include the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity and the pursuit of personal happiness and material comfort. Great sacrifices and suffering have been endured in this pursuit. It is often forgotten that, for millions of people in America and abroad, this is a dream that is never realized. In fact, we know how and when the term was coined. In 1933, when the nation was in the grip of a severe economic depression, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James Truslow Adams (1878-1949) published a book called The Epic of America in which he attempted to put the nation’s history and philosophy in the context of the challenges it was facing at that dark moment. [Scholars will be interested to know that Adams’s papers are stored at Columbia University’s Butler Library.] Adams wrote, “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” The values, and precariousness, of The American Dream are baked into much of the best artistic output in literature, theater, and film. To cite but a few examples: The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Miss Saigon, Dreamgirls. These works, in all of their glorious complexity, reveal to us how privation and damage can attach themselves to the pursuit of this dream. There are winners, yes, but also big losers who cause a wider tragedy in that their own failure brings down the people who depend upon them. This dream is also a natural subject for opera. Madama Butterfly is a prime example, even though she is seldom cited because the story is set entirely in Japan. The opera is usually described in terms of American imperialism but, at its heart, is the story of a young woman with her own American Dream. She marries a lieutenant named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and, at great cost to herself, attempts to renounce her culture, traditions and religion in pursuit of a new life. Pinkerton and Sharpless, the American consul in Nagasaki, sing “America forever” to music from “The Star Spangled Banner.” La Fanciulla del West is the story of miners, outlaws, a sturdy frontierswoman and, peripherally and somewhat stereotypically, two Native Americans in the High Sierra mountains. All the characters are, in one form or another, seeking wealth but also a balm for their loneliness. Proving Up NOTES CONT. The American Dream is to be found in new opera too. As part of its celebration of its 30th anniversary season, Miller Theater at Columbia University co-commissioned (with Washington National Opera and Opera Omaha) composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek to write Proving Up. Mazzoli and Vavrek created their opera as an adaptation from the 2013 short story Proving Up by Karen Russell. It is set in Nebraska in the 1860s but should prove to be both resonant and relevant to audiences today. Christopher Rountree conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble and a gifted cast. Nathan Troup directs James Darrah’s production, which was hugely successful in Omaha, in its New York premiere. Mazzoli and Vavrek found, in Russell’s story, a lot that spoke to them about our nation today. Mazzoli said, “I began to think about the American Dream as a potential opera topic during the 2008 foreclosure crisis, but it wasn’t until I found Karen Russell’s Proving Up that I felt like I had found, through Karen, the right language for the story. Proving Up is about the harsh realities of the American Dream, about the role of fate in our destinies, and also about people who are erased from history. Thousands of Americans throughout the last three hundred years did everything ‘right’ and still failed, were still cut down by fate and undermined by circumstance just like the Zegner family in this story, but Americans don’t like to talk about them.” “Certainly the national conversation about the American Dream has evolved over the last ten years,” Mazzoli added, “and it has intensified,” since Donald Trump became president. “The idea that someone like Pa Zegner could work honestly and tirelessly and still fail goes against the ‘rags to riches’ mentality at the core of the American Dream. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the 2016 presidential election brought these themes into focus for me, as people began talking in a more nuanced way about the realities of wealth, poverty and economic mobility (or lack thereof) in America. I also wanted to address the particularly American take on ‘hope.’ Karen has described the sodbuster character in Proving Up as a ‘hope zombie,’ someone who clings to hope of upward mobility.
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