AMERICAN OPERA CLASSICS DARON HAGEN Orson Rehearsed An Operafilm Omar Mulero, Tenor • Robert Frankenberry, Tenor Robert Orth, Baritone Fifth House Ensemble • Roger Zahab 1 Overture 3:11 Daron Aric 2 Maybe a Man’s Name: Our works in stone 4:15 (Orson #1, Orson #2, Orson #3 ) HAGEN 3 (b. 1961) Everybody’s Shakespeare: Jesus, the days I’ve seen 4:14 (Orson #1, Orson #2, Orson #3 ) 4 Orson Rehearsed (2018) Lament for Jacaré: J’accuse! 3:44 (Orson #3 ) An Operafilm 5 Libretto by Daron Aric Hagen First Nach(t)musik: Ah 3:25 (Orson #2, Orson #3, Orson #1 ) 6 First performance: 15–16 September 2018 The Magnificent Downbeats: I intended to portray a golden world 3:07 at the Studebaker Theater, Chicago, USA (Orson #1, Orson #3, Orson #2 ) 7 All Through: Marc, on fire, alone, at the piano 3:27 Orson Welles #1 . Omar Mulero, Tenor (Orson #2 ) 8 Orson Welles #2 . Robert Frankenberry, Tenor Manhattan Ambulance Ride: Give me the script 3:08 (Orson #3, Orson #2 ) Orson Welles #3 . Robert Orth, Baritone 9 & Border Sequence: The scene was conceived musically 3:39 (Orson #1, Orson #2, Orson #3 ) Peter Marshall, Piano (special gues1t p0#ianis^t) 0 Card Tricks and Talk Show Badinage 3:25 Daron Aric Hagen, Electronics – – ! Second Nach(t)musik: We’re born alone 3:14 (Orson #1 ) Fifth House Ensemble @ Beatrice Welles Practices Chopin, 1924: Then I heard her again 3:48 Melissa Ngan, Flute • Grace Hong, Oboe (Orson #1, Orson #2, Orson #3 ) # Elizandro Garcia-Montoya, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet Consider the Chimes: Come! Sing me a dirty song 3:21 Eric Heidbreder, Bassoon • Parker Nelson, Horn (Orson #3 ) $ Katherine Petersen, Piano Serenade for Rita: Rita’s face is not on the bomb by her own choosing 5:23 (Orson #2, Orson #3, Orson #1 ) Sarah Plum, Violin • Sixto Franco, Viola % Herine Coetzee Koschak, Cello • Eric Snoza, Double Bass Myocardial Infarction: My two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart 3:03 (Orson #3, Orson #1, Orson #2 ) ^ Roger Zahab, Conductor Postlude: Go On: Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared 5:13 (Orson #1, Orson #2, Orson #3 ) & Charlie’s Rag (End Title) 2:26 Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961) fragments of the scores of his movies, and scraps O3: But what of the so-called “information age?” Now, Orson Rehearsed (2018) of dialog from unmade scripts, soaring melodies. nothing is ever lost, no matter how ephemeral. We see what he sees: clouds through a jet’s O1 – the young one, wearing a stylish suit from Hollywood, California. 10 October 1985. Evening. Orson in “starting at the top” with Citizen Kane and ending up window transform into surf; his hands typing the 30s – performs a deft magic trick with his Welles, the American actor, activist, filmmaker, visual earning “grocery money” doing wine commercials. transform into his mother’s hands playing the Hamburg hat, of which he is clearly proud. artist, director, writer and creator of Citizen Kane , is alone Deeper still, there is the consolation of a life fully lived piano; stepping through the iris of his own eye, a O1: Do we start at the top? Or do we cut to the finish? in his home. His heart has stopped. – the giddy joy of careening across Manhattan in a rented solitary Departing Boy of about nine carrying a The three Orsons seem suddenly aware that We enter his mind in this moment, on the threshold ambulance (to better cut through traffic) at the top of his suitcase walks away from him down a country something is not right. Like a juddering heartbeat, between life and death. In the bardo, Orson’s thoughts game on his way to the radio broadcast of The War of the road; playing cards fly upwards from the floor as a the Orsons intone the rhythm known to every film unspool as a stream of consciousness that loops back on Worlds , the tender recollection of his wife Rita Hayworth, fire curtain parts to reveal Welles’ friend President editor and artist who revises: itself, like a Möbius strip. Those thoughts are articulated and fatherhood. Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging national unity. O1/O2/O3: Edit. Edit. Edit. by three avatars: the first (Omar Mulero) represents the A passionate social activist, Welles’ last thoughts are As a trumpet call unfolds, the profiles of three men O2 – middle-aged, his suspenders askew, one past, the memory of his youthful wunderkind self; the of the future – with the foresight available only to the (Orsons #1, #2, and #3) appear in various stages shirt tail hanging out like a tongue, clearly fully second (Robert Frankenberry) represents Welles’ dead, he mourns his country as the words of a of life – one in the past, one in the present, and engaged in the hurly-burly of rehearsal and life – vestigial self-image as a swashbuckling mid-career artist, xenophobic reality television president are intercut with one in the future. They are avatars, figments of his carries a copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick , bemused to find himself crumpled on the floor in his Emma Lazarus’ paeon to liberty. But the body gives out expiring imagination expressed as the unity of which he has dog-eared nearly to shreds. bathrobe, dying; the last (Robert Orth), represents Welles’ even though the spirit’s still willing – it is no longer Welles’ three ecstaces. The iris returns, revealing the O2: “Call me Ishmael.” spirit, “out of time” – what Heidegger called an “ecstace.” problem, it is ours. His avatars join together in a secular Departing Boy through the rifling pages of a O3: I started at the top – I should know. We sit beside Welles as he weighs his life and hymn: “Our songs will all be silenced,” they sing, “but what forgotten blue book that transforms into surf. They resume bantering. gradually comes to terms with his own death. The 60- of it? Go on singing. Go on. Go.” And he does. We do. 2 O1: Did I say, “A movie in production is the greatest train minute narrative arc is not a physical one. Rather, it is a Composed over the course of four years, the musical Maybe a Man’s Name set a boy ever had?” psychological, emotional, and spiritual journey that begins score fuses live players with pre-recorded sounds and O3: Why don’t you “giggle” it on the “inter-webs?” in the echoes of his heart’s final beats and ends with the sound effects. The present live recording documents what Out of the Departing Boy’s back emerge dozens of O2: (Indicating O3’s manual typewriter.) You mean sound of his footsteps as he makes his existential exit. the audience heard in the staged production that I Orsons in black and white, in various attitudes: “Google,” and the “Internet,” and that’s the wrong sort of We hear what he hears, and, in the filmed and staged directed at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago under the some watch one of the many movie screens “laptop,” old man. versions of Orson Rehearsed , we see what he sees – auspices of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts in suspended over the heads of other Orsons on Again, the abrupt awareness that something is three 60-minute films counterpoint the onstage and filmic September 2018. which their interior thoughts are being projected; wrong. action of his avatars’ monologues. The final result is others embrace as though saying hello or O1/O2/O3: Edit. Edit. Edit. “Everything must finally fall Orson Rehearsed , a film within a staged opera within the Daron Aric Hagen goodbye to one another; several others stand off away in universal ash.” film called Orson Rehearsed taking place within Orson to the sides, observing as three of the Orsons, O2: Why bother with Ishmael? Why not just call me Welles’ dying mind. Libretto – Synopsis who sit on stools as though rehearsing a play, give Orson? He was my greatest prestidigitation. At its face, the piece consists of a series of linked 1 voice to Welles’ thoughts. Those thoughts range O1: The triumphs, the frauds. The fraudulent triumphs; essays about how opera and film overlap. Digging deeper, Overture freely, untethered by chronological time, obeying the triumphant farragoes. it examines the relationship between an actor and the only the dream logic of the theater in his mind. O3: The treasures, the fakes. The fraudulent treasures; roles he inhabits – Falstaff, Othello, Brutus, Ahab, Kane, It is 10 October 1985. Orson Welles’ heart has just the triumphant fakes. Quinlan, and, in his “greatest prestidigitation,” himself. stopped. Head leader gives way to a filmic Orson #1 (O1) / Orson #2 (O2) / Orson #3 (O3): “Our They begin teasing out the truth of the situation. Deeper still, it is a survey of the real and imagined countdown clock as we enter his mind in this works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of O1/O2/O3: We’re going to die. failures of Welles’ life: from the loss of his mother at the moment, in the bardo, suspended on the threshold them, for a few decades or more, a millennium or two …” O3: There’s no “to be or not to be” about it. age of eight to the accidental drowning of Manuel “Jacaré” between life and death. Orson’s thoughts unspool O3 – clearly dying, his flowing silk pyjamas O1: Nevertheless, “be of good heart,” old chum. Olimpio Meira during the filming of It’s All True ; the pain of as a stream of consciousness that loops back on stained, the heels of his favourite slippers broken O2: The Pequod’s crew is chum, chum.