• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

COVER Tazewell Thompson: more than 75 production credits at venerable companies including Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Oregon !!" !""# less aware of is the director’s lifelong personal and professional engagement with music. An early love of opera has led Thompson to stage operas for companies all around the world. Recently, Thompson shared his thoughts about the craft of working in a dramatic form of stories sung through. One of your earliest successes was with a #O#! production was a major success. It was also my production of the Aaron Copland opera The space on my own. I began a campaign of introduction to directing opera and meeting Second Hurricane. Could you tell us a bit about contacting friends and associates of Copland with and working closely with Aaron Copland. that production? and librettist Edwin Denby to create the props and backdrops and furniture pieces for the At his home and studio in Peekskill, New \ opera. They included Willem and Elaine de York, I was granted close-up observation as The Second Hurricane, in New York City—my Kooning, along with Red Grooms, Robert Copland demonstrated on his piano the stories hometown. It was part of a month-long Wilson, Larry Rivers, John Cage, Alex Katz, Pat and ideas behind segments and scenes and celebration of Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland’s Steir, and others. They came forward to honor arias from the opera. He talked of his special 85th birthday. There were performances of their friends and supported the production by fondness for The Second Hurricane and how he S\!"# contributing artworks, scenery, and props for hoped the opera for young voices might gain Lincoln Center to Carnegie Hall to schools, the opera. I wrote letters to large and small new popularity. He was excited by the fuss of churches, and basements, and other venues "%' the citywide celebration for his 85th birthday. large and small. I had heard about this event venture into producing. Con Edison gave $500; “I am a native New Yorker. From Brooklyn. two years earlier. I had found and purchased a the NEA’s Opera Division gave $20,000. Willem Nice to have a big party in my backyard,” he recording at the Strand Bookstore of the opera de Kooning donated a painting toward the said. We spoke at great length of The Tender and became obsessed with wanting to stage fundraising. Land, his only other opera. I directed that at the piece somewhere. Glimmerglass in 2010. In my research, I discovered the opera I approached the organizers of the Copland premiered in 1937 as a concert at the Henry Please describe for us the process you have in celebration and Boosey & Hawkes—the Street Settlement in Lower Manhattan. I was preparing for an opera. Is that different from publishers and owners of the copyrights— able to rent the Settlement and give the opera your preparation for a play? for permission to produce and direct, and \#!"!) Endless hours of listening to the score and I negotiated the rental fees. I was given aria and a ballet cut from the original and rereading the libretto over and over. Research! permission to be a part of the Copland was permitted to rewrite the libretto. The I always collect stacks and piles of visuals. I 30 SDC JOURNAL | WINTER/SPRING 2017 The Tender Land at The Glimmerglass Festival PHOTO Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival THE WORK I MUST DO do the exact same approach when I direct In my rehearsal hall, research of photos and artist is called upon to do so much more: act +! artwork overwhelms the walls, and I refer their roles convincingly; dance; learn combat; wherever the play’s environment is set. That to them often in the staging. I reinforce and perform from impossible heights and depths music becomes my listening device feeding demonstrate what the singers already know on outrageous scenery, wearing sometimes my imagination as I read the play and develop from the music in terms of how a psychological outlandish costumes; all the while singing at images. gesture or movement can express so much. #!=>"!" all kinds of languages over the gigantic sound When you’re directing opera, are you led most by I love big operas with large choruses. I of a great orchestra. the music or the libretto? enjoy movement in unison with big groups and telling stories through the subdivisions In addition to Copland, you’ve directed operas Both. They are symbiotic. The music provides of groups, bringing out and encouraging written by a huge range of well-known modern the emotion, the setting, the atmosphere, the individual moments from the chorus as they composers, from Poulenc to Benjamin Britten to soul of the composer, and the temperament continue to remain connected to the whole. Philip Glass. Are there particular qualities or issues of the characters. The libretto provides the More intimate scenes are treated no differently that you are drawn to in the work you choose to concrete meaning of the language of the than I would approach a two- or three-hander direct? opera, the narrative. in a play. Great stories. Unforgettable characters. Brilliant Unlike directing a play, I spend no time around The time to rehearse an opera is much shorter music. Operas that have contemporaneous a table discussing character and motivations than for a play. Understandable. Singers )?#" and meanings underneath the libretto. During P"Q new and compelling with the telling and \!#4!" the score, by heart. A day-after-day rehearsal presenting of the opera that hopefully will the maestro’s sing-through rehearsal my !#""\ captivate and leave a lasting impression on an impressions, and then we are on our feet no carefully planned out; otherwise a singer will audience. later than the third day of rehearsal. have very little to give vocally as the stage and orchestra rehearsals approach. Today’s singing WINTER/SPRING 2017 | SDC JOURNAL 31 Lost in the Stars at The Glimmerglass Festival PHOTO Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival You’ve explored the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess remember a time when a rehearsal hall was [It was] one of the great experiences of my life in multiple stage productions as well as directing !"! as an opera director. Imagine directing Lost a televised version of your production. What most carefree experimentation and practical jokes. I in the Stars in the place and all the settings appeals to you about that particular piece? so wish to direct more Gilbert and Sullivan. and circumstances that inspired it—South Africa—with South Africans! [It is] a work A community that I recognize personally and We wanted to ask you about the experiences you’ve about deep and wide racism—apartheid— culturally. A humble people loving and living had with directing operas that had particular that unfortunately speaks to us [as] vividly and thriving and surviving; a community of resonances with the locales in which you were today as it did in 1951. A great work of social hope and pride and determination. And, of working. When you directed Porgy and Bess for the "# !" New Orleans Opera Association in 2010, was there masterwork score. The work is a shattering, memorable, classic score full of great standards a different resonance in that city, given that it was gut-wrenching, intimate tale of the struggle recorded by a variety of great musicians. It is a still recovering from Hurricane Katrina? of the quest of two fathers to recognize, supreme masterpiece. #! The city was in recovery. The audience was chasm of the apartheid system, with themes of @!Q# aware of the parallels of the great hurricane personal heartache and pain, compassion and A Christmas Carol is for theatres across the in the opera. However, like the denizens of understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness, country. Always a sellout, deservedly so. the opera, the resilient spirit of the people and moral transformation—all set against Kurt in the city is what I recall most. There was an VS") What are the joys and challenges of directing an involvement from an audience that was not opera with the kind of verbosity as Gilbert and merely holding tickets. Not eavesdropping or Many members of the company had Sullivan’s Patience? gawking, but attending and witnessing truth. Q!# Their truth. Their experience. They surrounded apartheid system. They knew this tale No challenges. Only great joy. I’m not a the event unfolding on stage in a very personally. They were passionate to tell the fan of comic opera. But I love Gilbert and personal, meaningful way. story. The audience was unlike any audience Sullivan. I love everything about the wacky I’ve ever experienced in opera or theatre. cloud-cuckooland, Theatres of the Absurd & And with your 2011 production of Kurt Weill’s Lost People stood up and shouted at moments of Ridiculous, outrageous world of G and S, the in the Stars in Cape Town? What was the impact ])V#" thrilling patter songs, hilarious language, and or meaning for you of directing an anti-apartheid leaving on an ill-fated train trip. Sobbed openly the memorable melodies. Patience—a blatantly opera in such a historic place? How did audience at the trial scene. Laughed at moments of clever, ever-enchanting, and fantastically members react to it there? deception and irony. Cheered loud and long silly satire of the Aesthetic Movement—was at the ending. Unforgettable. I must also add: extraordinary fun to rehearse. I cannot to be in Africa, the land of my ancestors, was 32 SDC JOURNAL | WINTER/SPRING 2017 Dialogues of the Carmelites at The Glimmerglass Festival PHOTO George Mott/The Glimmerglass Festival particularly and personally special and moving Through life at the convent, I entered and won the page and in the empty space.

Load more

  5

Copy Link