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WORLD PREMIERE Commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera MUSIC Paul Moravec LIBRETTO Terry Teachout After the play by W. Somerset Maugham CONDUCTOR Patrick Summers DIRECTOR Jonathan Kent SCENIC DESIGNER Hildegard Bechtler COSTUME DESIGNER Tom Ford LIGHTING DESIGNER Duane Schuler CHORUS MASTER Susanne Sheston Sung in English, with English and Spanish Opera Titles The production is underwritten by the Avenir Foundation, Inc. The commission is underwritten by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation . The director is underwritten by the Hon. Patricia McFate in memory of Ambassador Sidney N. Graybeal . The scenic designer is underwritten by Marica & Jan Vilcek . Additional support is provided by the General Director’s Premiere Fund and by the National Endowment for the Arts . 60 I THE SANTA FE OPERA 2009 FESTIVAL SEASON I 61 The Letter The Letter STORY CAST The Story of the Opera The Cast in Order of Vocal Appearance The opera is set in British Malaya between the world wars. The weather is hot and humid at all times . RACETTE Scene I The Murder The Crosbies’ bungalow LESLIE CROSBIE ONG CHI SENG Six gunshots are heard in the darkness. Leslie Crosbie is discovered standing over the body of Geoff Hammond. an Englishwoman living in Malaya Joyce’s confidential clerk She telephones John Withers, a colonial official, and asks him to come at once, bringing her husband Robert. Patricia Racette Rodell Rosel Scene II The Confession The same, two hours later HEAD MAN A GUARD MICHAELS-MOORE Withers, Robert Crosbie, and Howard Joyce, Robert’s lawyer, have arrived. Leslie tells them that she shot Geoff Sung Eun Lee Andrew Stenson when he tried to rape her. Joyce explains that they will have to leave for Singapore, where Leslie will be arraigned on a charge of murder; he is puzzled by the fact that several gunshots seem to have been fired while Geoff was lying on the ground. Leslie claims to have been so upset that she can’t remember exactly what happened. ROBERT CROSBIE FIRST CLUBMAN Leslie’s husband, the manager Jason Slayden Scene III The Letter Howard Joyce’s law office in Singapore, two weeks later of a rubber plantation Anthony Michaels-Moore Joyce tells Robert that he expects Leslie will be acquitted, especially now that Hammond was known to be SECOND CLUBMAN JAMESON living with a Chinese woman. Ong Chi Seng, Joyce’s law clerk, tells him that Leslie sent a compromising Kevin Ray letter to Hammond on the day of the murder. He shows Joyce a copy of the letter and says that it will cost ten JOHN WITHERS thousand dollars to buy the original from Hammond’s mistress. a colonial official A CHINESE WOMAN Keith Jameson Mika Shigematsu Scene IV The Interview Leslie’s jail cell, an hour later At first Leslie denies having written the letter, but then admits it is genuine. In a flashback, the actual events MADDALENA HOWARD JOYCE A JUDGE are portrayed: Leslie killed Geoff after he announced he was leaving her for his Chinese mistress. Leslie a Singapore lawyer Lucas Harbour pleads with Joyce to buy the letter in order to save her life. He reluctantly agrees to seek Robert’s permission James Maddalena to do so. Scene V The Club The Singapore Club, late that afternoon GEOFF HAMMOND the Crosbies’ neighbor Joyce tells Robert about the letter, explaining its significance but not showing him the copy. HONEYWELL Robert agrees to pay whatever is necessary to purchase it. Roger Honeywell Scene VI The Woman Joyce’s office, later that night Ong Chi Seng arrives with Hammond’s mistress. After some hesitation, she agrees to sell the letter. Scene VII The Verdict A Singapore courtroom, the next day ROSEL The judge asks the foreman whether the jury has reached a verdict. To Leslie, the foreman appears to be the blood-soaked Geoff Hammond, who finds her guilty and condemns her to death by hanging. The real-life jury announces that she has been acquitted. Scene VIII The Truth The bungalow, that same evening Robert announces that he plans to move with Leslie to Sumatra, where he has found an estate for sale. Joyce Support for artistic expenses has been provided by the Hank & Suzy Crouse Foundation; SHIGEMATSU informs him that his savings were wiped out in order to purchase the letter, and Robert demands to see it. Mr. & Mrs. Eugene H. Gardner; Brooke Suzanne Gray; Joanne & Arthur Hall ; Robert L. When he finds out what really happened, he tells Leslie that he loves her in spite of what she has done. & Myra Barker Hull ; Charles & Michelle Ritter; Alice C. Simkins; Gene & Jean Stark; “With all my heart,” she replies, “I still love the man I killed!” Edward A. Studzinski; Lore Thorpe; and an anonymous donor in honor of Rudy Avelar . 62 I THE SANTA FE OPERA 2009 FESTIVAL SEASON I 63 author of such celebrated novels as Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence , visited British Malaya ten years later in search of material, he met Ethel’s lawyer, who told him about the Proudlocks and suggested that Encounter their misadventures might make a good yarn. In 1924 Maugham wrote “The Letter,” a short story based on the Proudlock case that became one of his most admired in the pieces of writing. Maugham is now mainly remembered as a writer of Jungle fiction, but in the Twenties he was also one of the most popular playwrights in the English-speaking world, and in 1927 he turned “The Letter” into a three-act play (also called The Letter ) that had long runs in London and on Broadway and was filmed twice in Hollywood. The second version, released in 1940, was directed by William he opera you are about to see is Wyler and starred Bette Davis. Wyler’s film was even true—more or less. The names T more successful than the play, and to this day it remains have been changed, along with many of one of Davis’s best-known movies, just as the original the details, but The Letter is based on a story continues to be read. In all its versions, Maugham’s play that was adapted from a short fictionalized recounting of the Proudlock case is a savagely story that was inspired by an actual concise tale of jealousy, betrayal, vengeance, and death— murder that took place in southeast the stuff opera is made of, in other words. Yet it seems Asia nearly a century ago. never to have occurred to anyone to turn it into an opera until three years ago, when Paul Moravec and I began work on our musical version of The Letter . On April 23, 1911, Ethel Proudlock, a Maugham’s play follows the known facts of the Proud - young English housewife living in Kuala lock case closely, with one major exception: Leslie Crosbie, Lumpur, a smallish town in what was Ethel’s fictional counterpart, is acquitted of the murder of then the British colony of Malaya, her faithless lover. Beyond that, though, most of what came home from church and shot and happens on stage is basically what happened in Kuala One of two known photos of Ethel Proudlock, shown here with her husband William visiting the Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur. killed William Steward, a mining engi - Lumpur in 1911. All that Maugham added was the neer, on the veranda of the bungalow that old-fashioned plot twist that sets The Letter in motion: she shared with her husband, a local school - Leslie sends an incriminating letter to Geoff Hammond, master. Ethel told the police that Steward, a her lover, on the day of the murder. It falls into the hands William Steward, the mining engineer who was shot to death by friend of the family, had tried to rape her, of Hammond’s Chinese mistress, who uses the letter to Ethel Proudlock. but there was no evidence that any struggle blackmail Leslie. The result was a splendidly well-made had taken place. The truth was that Ethel stage thriller that William Wyler and Howard Koch, had almost certainly been having an affair who wrote the screenplay for The Letter , turned into a with Steward, and decided to kill him when movie that is for the most part surprisingly faithful to she found out that he was involved with Maugham’s original play. another woman. She was convicted of murder in June and sentenced to hang. The Sultan of Selangor commuted her sentence, and the The Letter is an opera noir , a Proudlocks and their three-year-old daughter story of ordinary people who make left Asia, never to return. a few mistakes and suddenly find Not surprisingly, Steward’s murder became themselves swept into very deep the talk of the close-knit British expatriate emotional water. community. When W. Somerset Maugham, the 64 I THE SANTA FE OPERA 2009 FESTIVAL SEASON I 65 Turning a play into an opera, however, is in some ways a In addition to Tosca , Paul had in mind Wozzeck , while more complex task than turning it into a film. The first I was thinking more of Salome , The Turn of the Screw , FROM ACT III , SCENE 2 of The Letter , FROM SCENE 8 of The Letter , step is to decide what kind of opera you want to write. and The Medium , but all of these works, like Maugham’s by W. Somerset Maugham by Paul Moravec and Terry Teachout Right from the start, Paul and I envisioned The Letter as play, are concise, fast-moving, and melodramatic in the an opera that would run for roughly ninety minutes, the best sense of that misunderstood word.