Opera Innovator: Grammy-Winning Librettist Mark Campbell Keeps Creating in the New Now

Librettist Mark Campbell, photographed on Fire Island, New York.

(Santa Fe, NM) - When news of Mark Campbell’s librettist prize with OPERA America hit the internet, I sent him a congratulatory Facebook DM. What ensued was a weeks-long conversation that resulted in the wonderful Q&A below. In addition to The Campbell Opera Librettist Prize (COLP), Mark is a man who’s remained just as prolific as he was pre-pandemic, making his ongoing flight into artistic headwinds seem absolutely doable, an inspiration to all of us during these difficult times. With the arrival of new collaborations, operas and another well-deserved 2021 Grammy nomination, this time with composer Paul Moravec for their Sanctuary Road oratorio, we thought a Q&A format would be best, no pun intended. We’re also honored to break some exclusive opera news: Mark’s currently writing a new theatrical song cycle with young, gay composer Matthew Ricketts, inspired by Derek Jarman's book, Modern Nature. Per Mark: “You probably know Jarman as a filmmaker, but he wrote this memoir in 1989-1990 after he’d purchased a fisherman's cottage in a desolate location on the English Channel, soon after he was diagnosed with AIDS.” All this and more revealed below via Mark’s trademark warmth, feeling and humor. JM

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OI: How did you and Matthew Ricketts come together to begin creating this song cycle based on Derek Jarman's memoir? Given the context of Jarman's writings, an AIDS pandemic that's never gone away and the magnitude of our current public health disaster, this is a timely if not extremely real brief. You mentioned that this project would be an opportunity to write "more poetic text." Could you expand on that?

MC: When my husband and I moved into our modest home on Fire Island earlier this spring,  I began imagining my little garden here. Around that time, I read a beautifully written article in The New Yorker by Rebecca Mead about filmmaker and gay activist Derek Jarman and the remarkable garden he created at Prospect Cottage, a scrappy fisherman's shack in Dungeness that he had purchased soon after his AIDS diagnosis. Jarman captured his experiences in 1989 and 1990 at this cottage in his very moving memoir, Modern Nature, and as I read the book, I felt inspired to write a song cycle about it. It sings.

Matthew and I had been "courting" each other as composer and librettist for a little over a year, I proposed the idea and he loved it. (By the way, Matthew who received a Guggenheim Foundation Award last year, is a composer to watch!)

Composer Matthew Ricketts. Photo credit: Michael Kuhn

I had originally thought of the work as a short (4 or 5 songs) song cycle, but the more I write the text, the more I see it as a complete theatrical evening, a contemplative structure similar to the libretto Kimberly Reed and I created for As One. I generally shy away from overt poetry when creating text for operas or oratorios—it tends to call attention to itself and distracts from the music. But with this piece—tentatively titled Unruly Sun—poetry seems right. Of course, I feel many strong personal connections to the story—moving away from a city to escape a pandemic, mortality and the garden, the need for a legacy, a gay man who lost many people to AIDS…the list goes on and on…and the more I enumerate these connections, the more I wince at the obviousness of them.

OI: Let's change directions a bit and talk about West Edge Opera's Aperture program. We love the real-time BTS aspect, tracking almost two dozen original works from the ground up. You're working with composer Kamala Sankaram, breathing life into My Own Country, a longtime dream project that chronicles an immigrant doctor's experiences in Johnson City, Tennessee while caring for people with AIDS during the early years of the crisis. I will sign myself up tout de suite, but what can you share with us about the process thus far? 

MC: As you know, opera companies around the country are trying to find ways to remain connected with their communities during the pandemic. Mark Streshinsky, General Director of West Edge Opera, and his smart and mighty team, came up with the ingenious idea of spending more significant time exploring the process of composers and librettists when they create new operas. They audaciously chose 22 projects to feature and I'm flattered that my name appears on a roster with so many composers and librettists I respect and admire. 

Composer Kamala Sankaram.

My Own Country, which I'm creating with the brilliant (and deservedly overworked) composer Kamala Sankaram is a piece I've been dreaming about creating for 25 years. It's based on Dr. Abraham Verghese's 1994 memoir (another memoir!) of the same name and chronicles his experiences as a doctor and an immigrant in Johnson City, Tennessee as AIDS begins to enter the community. Two years ago, New York Theatre Workshop gave Kamala and I a residency to begin work on the opera and I created an outline and she and I wrote a few songs. If WEO awards us a full commission, we would be able to complete this work.  

OI: Several weeks ago, we started talking about your latest world premiere film project with composer Joe Illick and Fort Worth Opera, based in the now familiar universe of zoom. We've seen the extra Broadway World piece, so we'll have extra popcorn on hand as we watch your A-list cast navigate the "virtual comedy" of an online book club discussing The Handmaid's Tale. This sounds delicious and oh so you. 

MC: Oh, I love working with Joe. We wrote two children's operas which are entering the repertoire very quickly. He asked me for an "adult" libretto and I came up with a story about a mean little book club that meets on Zoom for the first time at the end of April, 2020. It's a pretty bleak view about our country during this crisis and the threat of totalitarianism (expressed in the mute button), but I hope you won't notice that with the work of our director Cara Consilvio, our conductor Andy Whitfield and our crazily stellar cast (Brenda Harris, Bill Burden, Donnie Ray Albert, Joyce Castle and Gabrielle Gilliam).  

Composer Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell worked for three years to adapt Stephen King's The Shining. Photo credit: Euan Kerr | MPR News (2016)

OI: In 2019, we were thrilled when you and Mason Bates won Grammys for The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. It was also excellent to see you at Santa Fe Opera last summer to congratulate you in person. Interestingly, I watched the 2021 Grammy nominations via Twitter and didn't realize that you and Paul Moravec are nominated for Sanctuary Road, performed by Oratorio Society of New York (librettists not mentioned in Grammy noms, had no idea). Getting the full memo via Facebook (big congrats to you), I realized that it's impossible to keep up with opera's most prolific creative. In addition to a new, third oratorio with Mr. Moravec focused on voting rights, you mentioned a secret opera and The Secret River at Opera Orlando?

MC: Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that the Grammys fail to credit the librettist for operas or choral works. (The Pulitzer does the same dumb thing, by the way.) Whining aside, I am very pleased with this nod from the Recording Academy for Sanctuary Road, a work I am very proud of. Paul is a master of musical drama and a fantastic collaborator and, yes, we are about to begin work on our third oratorio to complete a trilogy of operas about freedom. (Our second, A Nation of Others, set in Ellis Island in 1921, was to premiere at Carnegie Hall in May, again with the Oratorio Society of New York.)  By the way, we are turning Sanctuary Road into an opera with stage director Dennis Whitehead Darling, who will also be directing The Secret River (music by Stella Sung) at Opera Orlando. The "secret" opera still hasn't been announced but I will say that it is for Des Moines Metro Opera and is a many-acred thing. Other works waiting to premiere are A Sweet Silence in Cremona (composer: Roberto Scarcella Perino); Supermax (composer: Stewart Wallace, co-librettist, Michael Korie); Edward Tulane (composer: Paola Prestini); again and again. and again (composer: Conrad Cummings) and This Lingering Life (composer: Anne LeBaron, co-librettist Chiori Miyagawa).

OI: The Campbell Opera Librettist Prize (COLP) was announced in late July 2020, in association with OPERA America. The competition opens up December 15th, with the winning librettist selected by a panel of independent experts in May 2021. We did the "opera librettist award" Google and 95% of the entries on that first page were for this award! So, in addition to brilliant branding, what was the inspiration for this nearly only one of its kind recognition for opera librettists? 

MC: I've been very fortunate in that a number of my works (Silent Night, The Shining, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Sanctuary Road, Elizabeth Cree, As One—and more) generate decent income in royalties and will continue to do so after I'm gone. As I was preparing my will about a year ago, I thought about what I might be able to contribute to the future of American opera. It's no secret that I've been and continue to be an advocate for librettists through the Dramatists Guild's Librettist Initiative, which I co-chair with librettist Michael Korie. It was probably through my work there, that I identified that there are no awards specifically for opera librettists. So I decided to create one. And fund it. Our industry has some truly brilliant librettists working in it now; I view the COLP as a way for opera to build on that by continuing to attract the best theatre writers. 

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Learn more and apply for OPERA America’s Mark Campbell Opera Librettist Prize.

Tickets now available for the 14-24JAN digital streaming of Bernadette's Cozy Book Nook.

Press Contact: Barbara Hogenson | (212) 874-8084 | BHogenson@aol.com 

Visit markcampbellwords.com

San Diego's Opera Hack: Optimizing Opera’s Future with New Technology

The San Diego Opera’s 2019 Opera Hack was held at Microsoft Corporation’s San Diego Offices on July 27-28, 2019. Photo: Angel Mannion

(Santa Fe, NM) - It started when The Santa Fe Opera tweeted about “Opera Hack”. We didn't know about this endeavor, so down the Google rabbit hole we went, followed by an email and phone chat with Opera Hack’s Angel Mannion, who got me up to speed. The top line from Broadway World:

“In July of 2019, San Diego Opera partnered with Microsoft, with support from Opera America and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, to bring together professionals from theater companies, tech companies, and prominent university engineering and theater programs for a two-day hackathon to discover new ways for technology to be used in theater.

Inspired by ‘hacks’ in the technological sector which often brings together experts in disparate fields to work together to solve a presented problem, usually in a limited amount of time, San Diego Opera's Opera Hack partnered participants with local universities and tech companies to come up with creative solutions to scenarios presented by San Diego Opera. Forty multi-disciplinary experts from around North America submitted sixteen proposals to a panel of tech and theater-based advisors.

$40,000 in funding was disbursed to the three winning ideas enabling them to develop their proposal over the course of the year. “

We’re honored to host Angel’s blog below, which details his professional journey at San Diego Opera, from onstage roles to behind the scenes, ultimately arriving at Opera Hack, managing this one-of-a-kind opera industry incubator. JM

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By Angel Mannion

(San Diego, CA) -My career with San Diego Opera began in 2011, working as a chorister while pursuing a music degree in college. I was fortunate to sing with the company semi-regularly until 2015, but following SDO’s 2014 season difficulties, I began to understand how the career of a professional musician could be unstable and expanded my horizons, exploring choral conducting and arts project management.

While my heart hasn’t fully recovered from singing in the company’s final production (at that time), I’ve come to realize six years later that I’m a better person and professional from the experience.

Over the course of ten years in classical music, I’ve learned that each season provides new reasons for companies to consider shutting down. While COVID-19 has brought us unprecedented performance challenges, it’s also forced our industry to sit down and acknowledge longstanding problems. If we could turn back time to the pre-pandemic years, wouldn’t it first be worth asking if prior business models were ever that beneficial? It’s common for a major American opera house to spend over $1MM on a production that the public will see and experience only a handful of times. Ticket sales rarely cover more than 25% of those costs, while the other 75% comes primarily from donations, grants, and government funding; this model hasn’t traditionally worked very well for opera.

Now that our operating environment is exponentially more difficult, we have the golden opportunity to entirely deconstruct how opera is defined, produced, and experienced.

The theater industry has already entered a new epoch of public performance. While we can’t control how the economic ripple effects of the pandemic will impact our patrons or government programs, it will take a long time for healthy attendance levels to return. If we can’t rely on performing in local theaters, we’ll need to place a priority on exploring other creative avenues - and venues - that serve our communities, locally and nationally. (Note: San Diego Opera did exactly this with its “La Boheme” performances this weekend at San Diego’s Pechanga Arena parking lot, read the San Diego Union Tribune story).

The most prominent figures in opera are conductors, musicians and composers. However, anyone who works in musical theater knows that the success of any opera is dependent upon the level of skilled labor that powers each production, including stage management, sets, wardrobe, makeup, and everything else that happens behind-the-scenes. High-level production for an opera house (especially a unionized one) is expensive to plan, execute, and maintain. So, (theoretically) the more money a company saves on individual productions, the number of productions will increase. And, hopefully, tickets will become less expensive to purchase.

As the cost of living continues to rise in major cities, younger people will have less financial freedom to choose opera as a new experience. We simply can’t assume or rely upon younger audiences to both become fans and financially support 75% of classical music’s costs as they age and (hopefully) become more affluent. As a proactive measure, it would be more prudent for our industry to immediately embrace and seek new technologies that make opera more accessible, relatable, and affordable to/for younger patrons.

Increasing and optimizing the use of technology in opera will make companies more nimble and competitive in an entertainment market catering to Gen-Y and Millennial consumers.

In order to accomplish this, opera needed both the opportunity and venue for coming together; a way to brainstorm how technology could transform the skilled labor side of opera, making it more efficient, more utilitarian, and more widely understood as public service and an art form unto itself.

The first Opera Hack was held at Microsoft Corporation’s San Diego Offices July 27-28, 2019. OPERA America hosted a webinar showcasing first hackathon winners on August, 2020. Opera Hack 2.0 is scheduled for 2021. Photo: Angel Mannion

San Diego Opera General Director David Bennett, center right, talks to participants at the company’s two-day Opera Hack event on July 27-28, 2019, held at Microsoft Corporation’s offices in San Diego. Photo: Pam Kragen for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Opera Hack’s Angel Mannion (left at podium) with Opera Hacker Ellen Fishman, a member of the Synctus (TM) team, July 27-28, 2019. Photo: San Diego Opera

2019 Opera Hack-winning members of the Becoming team (left to right): John Burnette, Francesca Talenti, Shahrokh Yagdegari and Louis Pisha collaborate on their winning project, July 27-28, 2019. Photo: Angel Mannion

Cue Opera Hack. In the Spring of 2017, I was a part of the marketing team for SDO and had heard rumors that David Bennett was hoping to apply for an OPERA America Innovation Grant to fund a collaborative initiative between tech experts and theater artists. This idea immediately resonated because of its community-centric approach, so I volunteered to assist writing the grant application, with the understanding that I’d have the opportunity to lead and manage the project if it was successfully funded. 

Happily, OPERA America awarded San Diego Opera a two (2)-year grant in 2018 and Opera Hack was born; I’ve managed the project ever since. Following the award, I recruited a panel of local and national advisors to help create the platform (Matt Witkamp, Dr. Chris Warren, Vita Tzykun, David Adam Moore, Charles Murdock Lucas, Anne E. McMills, Ryan Hunt, and Victoria Robertson).

The mission of Opera Hack is broken down into the following pillars:

COLLABORATE - To be a platform that embraces diversity and solves problems by combining expertise from all backgrounds of theater and technology.

INNOVATE - To discover new methods for technology to be used in the production and presentation of musical theater.

EVOLVE - To promote new ways to make all forms and aspects of theater more exciting, affordable and sustainable.

As previously mentioned, San Diego Opera hosted the first Opera Hack in July 2019, a two-day hackathon at Microsoft’s San Diego corporate office. Forty multi-disciplinary experts from across the US and Canada convened to uncover new ways for technology to be used in theater. This group included representatives from Disney, Google Brain, and Microsoft; administrative leaders from Austin Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Opera on Tap; as well as graduate engineering and music students from Florida Tech, Yale, Indiana University, University of Buffalo, UC San Diego, and San Diego State University. After submitting a total of 16 proposals to a panel of advisors, $40,000 was awarded to three (3) winning teams - OperaMap, Becoming, and Open Show.

Ashley Tata, a multimedia theater and opera designer and director, uses a virtual reality headset during San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack event July 27-28, 2019 at Microsoft Corporation’s offices in San Diego. Photo via Opera Hack, as printed in a San Diego Union Tribune story by Pam Kragen (August 14, 2019).

On August 26, 2020, OPERA America co-hosted an Opera Hack webinar, showcasing how our three (3) winning teams used their awards for research and development, as well as their results. That webinar may be viewed below.

Opera Hack’s winning ideas were exceptional, as were the equally-impressive thirteen (13) proposals in competition with them, including: wardrobe databasing; an automated winch system as an education tool; a budgeting app for technical directors; a conductor’s baton to automate light cues; a sensory accessibility headset for those with autism; and creative, new suggestions for enjoying opera on-demand at home or at the community level. All proposals are viewable here.

San Diego City Councilmember (District 1) Barbara Bry chatting with an Opera Hack participant. From her July 27, 2019 tweet.

Overall, our first hackathon was considered successful, but our biggest takeaway was that we’d essentially created an event for people to make up their own problems to solve rather than using the expertise in the room to solve the problems that we already had.

We knew that if we had the opportunity to do another Opera Hack, we’d approach it differently and more efficiently. Fortunately, we’re grateful to be doing just that, with assistance of a second OPERA America Two (2)-year Innovation Grant. We’re very excited for the 2021 iteration of our event, which has been redesigned to address our current cultural context and pandemic emergency. Opera Hack 2.0 will:

1) Conduct an industry-wide survey to identify specific, pre-existing challenges facing our industry;

2) Select the Top Ten (10) Challenges and hold an online-based, industry-wide hackathon to discover technological solutions;

3) Award a total of $15,000 USD to three (3) winning solutions selected by our Advisory Panel, and;

4) Provide an online platform to host all submissions so that companies and other interested parties may contact and further develop solutions with respective creators.

• Special note: all participants will have rights over their intellectual property and full discretion over the option to share their concepts via our online platform.

Want to get involved? Let’s collaborate!

Opera Hack’s goal is to use technology to create new efficiencies while bringing us closer together as collaborators. To achieve this, we need help from our community to identify problems to solve, recruit participants for our upcoming 2021 hackathon and develop meaningful work partnerships with other companies. Here’s how you can help:

1) Help us identify specific problems to solve together. We hope to uncover new issues that have yet to be exposed or realized. One of the most important elements of Opera Hack 2.0 will be bringing these new problems and challenges to the attention of all. If you work in the industry and have ideas in mind, please email us.

2) Participate in Opera Hack 2.0, Summer 2021. Our open call for hackathon participants will be deployed in early 2021. As of this writing, we haven’t yet announced dates for this one-of-a-kind online experience, but please join our mailing list to receive important updates.

3) Partner and Collaborate with Opera Hack 2.0. San Diego Opera cannot possibly solve all of our industry’s problems and challenges alone - we are but one company. But do you represent an opera organization that supports our mission and wants to get involved? Or are you perhaps a person of influence at a tech company, interested in the opportunity to shape the future of opera and theater?

Simply email us to arrange a phone call - we’d love to discuss how your organization could:

• Sponsor Opera Hack research, the development of current Opera Hack proposals as well as new ideas;

• Provide resources for Opera Hack participants;

• Provide a platform for us to grow our one-of-a-kind community of experts.

We’d also like to encourage everyone in the theater industry to use past and future Opera Hack results as conversation starters with potential corporate sponsors. Once we’ve fully identified upcoming Opera Hack 2.0 problems to address, we’ll begin strategically building new relationships, expanding our Opera Hack business ecosphere.

In closing, I’d like to recognize and thank San Diego Opera General Director David Bennett, SDO’s Director of Institutional Grants Justin Dake, OPERA America’s staff, the Opera Hack advisory panel (as above) and all Opera Hack participants for the open criticism, guidance and community-building they’ve each provided, ensuring that Opera Hack serves not only its mission but a greater purpose. Let’s get to work!

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In addition to being Opera Hack’s Project Manager, Angel Mannion splits his time onstage and behind-the-scenes working on community music projects. After studying music at San Diego State University, Angel founded Folklore Guild to bring high school, college, and professional singers together to record music for video game and television soundtracks. Folklore Guild may be heard on Chef's Table (Netflix) and Lamplight City (Grundislav Games). In 2018 and 2020, Angel successfully proposed and acquired two (2) $150,000 OPERA America Innovation Grants (via the Anne and Gordon Getty Foundation), funding San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack project and funding San Diego Opera’s Opera Hack project and securing Microsoft Corporation as a lead sponsor. As a baritone and conductor, Angel frequently performs with professional choirs, symphonies, recording studios, and churches in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Connect with Angel via LinkedIn.

Follow Angel on Instagram.

Parea Virtual Recitals: Contactless Personal Connection In Action

Parea Virtual Recital Series Co-Founders Will Meinert and Emily Misch.

(Santa Fe, NM) - As the pandemic continues to interrupt our ability to gather for live performance, opera singers around the world are actively meeting the moment. Over the last six months, many have applied their energies and imaginations to various virtual initiatives that, in no uncertain terms, pave the way to what could become standard across the performing arts - equally-weighted live and virtual programming running side by side. The Santa Fe Opera’s General Director Robert K. Meya said as much in a recent Associated Press article, highlighting the company’s well-received Songs from Santa Fe virtual opening nights.

Two singers who’ve taken up this digital / virtual challenge are soprano Emily Misch and bass Will Meinert. Based in Herndon, Virginia, Emily was set to be a Glimmerglass Festival young artist this summer, while Will was scheduled for his second season as a Santa Fe Opera apprentice artist. As their summers and lives changed, they began executing an ambitious plan. The results thus far are impressive; as of this writing, the Parea Series format appears to be the only one of its kind online. Viewers are treated to wonderful, longer form recitals with expert guest conversation around a given topic. Parea’s shorter form Instagram promotional videos also deliver maximum interest - and bang - at around three minutes (see below). If you’re seeking classical music entertainment with interesting, connected conversation in uncertain times, look no further. - JM

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By Emily Misch and Will Meinert

How do we maintain personal connection without personal contact? 

As opera singers, my partner Will and I have become experts at nurturing connections over physical distance. Our biggest success story may be our relationship: we met while performing Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg together in 2018, then spent most of our first year as a couple on opposite sides of the country in different opera residencies. But we stayed connected.

Musicians get to be very good at this. One of the most maddening but also wonderful aspects of our profession is how we’re constantly traveling and forming new communities. It’s maddening because these communities are physically fleeting—at the end of a production, we generally go our separate ways—but wonderful because the ties we create often grow and strengthen over years of working together in different contexts. 

However, with the current public health crisis, those same ties can feel stretched thin. We no longer have the promise of “see you next season,” because none of us know when we’ll really be back in the theater. As the distance settles in and begins to seem more permanent, how do we nurture these personal connections? 

For Will and me, the answer was to create something new: virtual recitals in a unique format that allows us to look deeply and differently at the music we perform, safely collaborate, and strengthen our connections with musical friends.

In our Parea Series, Will and I perform music and then discuss it with expert Guest Artists in short video interviews. Our full-length recitals put these different perspectives in conversation to create a concentrated fusion of music and discussion available on a “pay what you want” and “watch when you want” basis. No in-person contact is involved in our work; our productions are completely COVID-safe for both audiences and artists. 

We believe that the personal connections involved in making music are just as interesting and important as the music itself, and that these ties bring us closer together, even while we’re physically apart.

CLICK IMAGE TO WATCH: Parea Series’ “Crisis as Catharsis” virtual recital promo and preview via Instagram.

Our Guest Artists are friends and mentors from a wide variety of our musical communities; while it would be rare for these people to all meet in person, our remote format allows us to have deeper conversations with a wider range of perspectives than would be possible at an in-person recital.

In case you’re wondering, we’ve taken our name from the Greek word parea, a concept deeply rooted in Greek culture. Parea suggests that personal connections and lively conversations with circles of friends are meaningful, valuable, and indispensable parts of life. In our work so far, this has proven to be very true. 

In our first recital, we performed music centered around themes of despair and hope, defiance in the face of oppression, and humor—all ways one might seek relief during a maddening and confusing time. We interviewed five of our musical friends: director Alison Moritz, Yale professor Richard Lalli, opera factotum Rob Ainsley, and coaches Vera Danchenko-Stern and Ken Weiss. For our second recital, we’re performing Menotti’s The Telephone, a short comic opera that, at its core, is about the ways that people communicate, connect, and adapt to reach each other. We’re interviewing friends old and new: composer Bruce Adolphe, pianist Anna Betka, baritone Trevor Neal (Artistic Director of Newport Music Festival) and, of course, our director—the phenomenal Audrey Chait, who directed us in that production of Scalia/Ginsburg two years ago!

Although we’re physically separated from our musical communities, our ideas about and passion for the music we perform keeps us in conversation, and deeply connected to each other. With the Parea Series, we invite you to join our circle of friends, and experience the personal connection that music—making it, talking about it, listening to it—can bring.

Visit Emily and Will at Pareaseries.com

Follow Parea Virtual Recital Series on Instagram.

What Could Opera Learn From Pop Music?

Teatro di San Carlo de Napoli’s production of Bellini’s Norma, Teatre Principal, Palma, Spain (June 2018).

By James B. Mowdy

(Santa Fe, NM) - When I arrived in Paris last summer to see what were thought to be French pop icon Mylène Farmer’s final concerts, I didn’t realize how these experiences would not only transform how I see pop music, but opera, too.

Mylène Farmer 2019 began with “Coming from the Vortex,” our alien queen Mylène arriving onstage in a glowing orb lowered from the ceiling, followed by two hours of highly choreographed, Jean-Paul Gaultier-costumed extravaganza - successive, visually impactful vignettes with uniquely talented musicians and dancers. The finale was the dramatic full circle of "L’Horloge,” a poem by Baudelaire set to the music of decades-long collaborator Laurent Boutonnat, as well as the explosive opening of her first 1989 tour. Like the high priestess of the Druids, the high priestess of French Pop seemed to channel Bellini’s Norma, exiting the stage though a massive wall of projected flames augmented by billowing steam or smoke, climbing to the top of her own funeral pyre. After seeing this concert twice at Paris’ La Defense Stadium, I realized that the French word “spectacle” would forever describe the incomparable career bookend I shared with 50,000 fans over two nights. Stepping back a bit, Mylene’s oeuvre has always been quasi operatic in vocal style (high soprano), dramatic video visualizations and her ability to make an arena intimate. For over 30 years, across screens and on stages in the French speaking world, Mylène has presented universal human themes, touching on revolution, rebellion and renewal. The dark and the light. Sex, blood, murder, death and various forms of rebirth. If that’s not operatic, I don’t know what is.

WATCH: Mylène Farmer performs “L’Horloge,” the finale of her “Mylène Farmer 2019” series of concerts and the final performance of her Paris residency (June 22, 2019).

After seeing Mylène for the second and final time, I returned to my Air BNB between Opéra and Place Vendome, but not before having the foresight to video some of these operatic thoughts in front of the Palais Garnier Opera House (swipe left until you reach the 8th video).

Et voilà, the perfect segue…

Fast forward to April 2020. Isolated in New Mexico, the pandemic spreading, I accidentally discovered Christine and the Queens’ new EP as short film, the brainchild of “Chris” herself (a.k.a. songwriter, dancer, and creative extraordinaire Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier). Filmed entirely on the premises of the Palais Garnier de l’Opéra de Paris, “La Vita Nuova” is, in fact, an opera of sorts, augmented by visually arresting moments and incredible dance sequences, all powered by five of Chris’ dreamy, activated electropop cuts sung in English, French and Italian. Letissier says this in the New York Times, relating a preliminary conversation she had with director Colin Solal Cardo: “ I want to use the postcard of Paris, and I want to be the broken clown inside it. And then a faun will haunt me.”

Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier and actor Félix Maritaud as The Fauna begin their ill-fated entanglement atop the Palais Garnier in Christine and the Queens’ La Vita Nuova, a short musical film released on February 27, 2020, directed by Colin Solal Cardo. Photo: Vogue Magazine and Christine and the Queens.

In the opening shot, the Paris skyline in sight, the gorgeous dandy Chris encounters The Fauna, a mystical creature with lustful intent (as above). Loosely drawing from Dante’s work, a series of fabulous sequences follows, viewers literally falling into the Paris Opera Ballet’s dance studio with Chris, then onto the Garnier stage, into the Grand Foyer and then into the bowels of the building. At this point, she sucks the creature’s life away to herself become a lustful Fauna who pines for vocalist Caroline Polachek in the title track’s club-like sequence that Vogue dubbed as Thriller meets Paris is Burning. Is it a classic text fairy tale set to pop music? A “fever dream”, as described by an artist who “(likes) to think of everything as a novel” because she enjoys them? A melding of dramaturgy, fantasy, pop and dance set in the one of the world’s greatest monuments to classical arts?

Yes.

And we should factor in how many Christine and the Queens fans might now consider a visit to Opéra de Paris, based upon how beautifully La Vita Nuova showcases - and markets - it and the art that’s created there. The same could be said for Kylie Minogue’s Music’s Too Sad Without You, filmed at Venice’s famed Teatro La Fenice in 2018 (this Kylie fan’s interest doubled).

Yes, Christine and the Queens is one of France’s hottest pop acts and La Vita Nuova is an incredible achievement. However, Letissier isn’t an opera singer and her work isn’t considered operatic. But like Queen of French Pop Mylène Farmer, she creates musical connectivity to a visual story as a composer and librettist might, drawing upon universal human themes often found in literary works of high renown, their art songs for our time. And we can’t forget that when opera arrived, it was the pop music of its day. Now that operatic performance is mostly banished from the stage (as we knew it and for an unknown period of time), what could 21st century opera learn from contemporary pop music and the pop music concert experience? To create greater appeal and adoption by global audiences in a world primed for reconnection through music? To become a better, more widely appealing and durable art form?  

This is the open question we’ve posed to several professionals, all of whom have deep operatic experience and training, as well as an understanding of pop music’s unifying power and mass, cross-cultural resonance. Each individual has been encouraged to utilize their personal definition of pop music. Their interpretations and/or opinions will center around their primary area of expertise (or not, that’s their call). Looking forward to their thoughts i.e. how does opera innovate, perhaps borrow elements of pop music that make the most sense, evolving into something that still includes classical voice?  Our first contributor’s thoughts arrive soon. In the meantime, watch Christine and the Queens’ La Vita Nuova and, like opera, enjoy the visit to a visually arresting sound world. JM

Ascending Arts: Creating Opera's First Group Reiki Experience

Photo: Ascending Arts

(Los Angeles, CA) - Opera Singer. Reiki Master. Innovator. Maria Dominque Lopez is all of these and more. I met Maria in May 2020, two months into the pandemic. Connected by a friend through Instagram, it’s a pleasure to know her, as well as being one of her distance Reiki clients - an experience that opened the door to my own improved mental and spiritual health during these often dark and unprecedented times. It’s for all of these reasons that we were thrilled when Maria agreed to contribute some thoughts and reflections to Opera Innovation. In the blog below, Maria details her initial experiences with Reiki (which she explains and defines in her own terms), a one-of-a-kind approach to operatic performance and how the pandemic led to unexpected personal and professional innovation and growth. - JM

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By Maria Dominique Lopez

In the fall of 2019, I was in a trance-state while meditating. I felt a strong tingling in my palms and when I opened my eyes, I had a vision that a golden stream of healing light shooting out of my hands. The vision ended after a few moments, but the tingling never did. For months, I had no idea what this constant tingling in my hands meant, or why every time I touched someone in pain, their pain went away. After months of research, I decided to take my first Reiki course and I learned that I was already attuned by the universe and somehow had opened my own energy channels for healing. When I received my universal attunement to Reiki last year, I was so awed by the beauty, magic, and possibility of God’s Infinite Universe that singing completely lost its luster for me. 

This is a problem when you’re a professional singer!

It seemed as though I’d found my true calling, feeling more authentically myself than I’d ever felt before. I was a healer, coming into my own, and it had nothing to do with music. I seriously considered quitting singing in favor of starting a full-time Reiki practice, but COVID-19 hit. Now that the opera industry is on life support, the universe made that decision for me—at least for the time being—but I digress. So many friends told me, “you can do both,” and I knew that they were correct. But, I just couldn’t see how I’d still feel authentic making music anymore. It’s no secret that the ratio of work-to-reward is toxically skewed in the music industry. Why put that much of myself into a singing career when the monetary reward is abysmal? The spiritual and emotional rewards so much greater with Reiki?

And then I talked to James Mowdy of Opera Innovation and Jonathan Morgan of DominantArts.Design and they literally changed my entire way of thinking about it. They encouraged me to not just “do both” and keep them separate, but to find unifying thread(s) and MARRY THEM! 

In my Reiki practice, I work a lot on opening and balancing people’s chakras. Chakras are energy centers mapped throughout the body. Fun science fact: the endocrine system is made up of seven pairs of glands (adrenals/suprarenals, testes/ovaries, pancreas, thymus, thyroids/parathyroids, pineal and pituitary), all of which are located in the same areas as the seven main Chakras. Coincidence? I think not!

With our physical eyes, we can see the reality of what’s right in front of us - what is. But with our Third Eye, we can see what’s all around us - what can be. In short, the Third Eye helps us problem-solve.

For those unfamiliar, the Third Eye is the chakra that sits in the middle of our forehead, and it’s considered the seat of wisdom and understanding. We’re not talking about traditional college education or trivia knowledge here, rather, one’s openness to possibilities in a multidimensional universe. With our physical eyes, we see the reality of what’s happening right in front of us - what is. But with our Third Eye, we’re able to see what’s all around us - what can be. In short, the Third Eye helps us problem-solve.

I felt stuck with this dichotomy of Reiki versus music because My Third Eye was completely shut to the possibilities of a union between the two. James and Jonathan each challenged me to ask myself important questions - questions I might not have pondered on my own because I couldn’t see a workable solution. They helped open my Third Eye!

Sometimes, we all need a little help, a push in the right direction. Just because I’m a lightworker doesn’t mean I’m always enlightened! My Third Eye was closed to the greater possibilities, and I couldn’t have seen where this was all going without those nudges. After weeks of meditating and questioning, and hours of conversations with Jonathan about the unifying threads, I arrived at my epiphany.

#SingTheLight

I realized that in order to reinvigorate my love for music, I should infuse it with Reiki. Not only would I channel Reiki to myself, my colleagues, and the immediate performance space, but I’d also channel Reiki directly to audiences, hence Sing the Light. After all, music is transcendent and has the unique ability to touch the soul and soothe the spirit, as does Reiki, just in a different way. So instead of quitting music, I look forward to returning to live performance, and putting #SingTheLight into motion; when a concert goer buys a ticket to hear me sing, they’ll also be receiving group Reiki as an audience member.  

As a Reiki Master, my mission is to help a new generation come to consciousness, ascending to their own universal calling. As an opera singer, I already transport audiences through beautiful music. Through #SingTheLight, my intention is to do both, elevating audiences through music while also helping them reach their next level of ascension, by singing group Reiki healing right into them.

Not only would I channel Reiki to myself, my colleagues, and the immediate performance space, but I’d also channel Reiki directly to audiences. After all, music is transcendent, and it has a unique ability to touch the soul and soothe the spirit, as does Reiki, just in a different way.

#SingTheLight - connecting with audiences on this quantum level - will change the way we experience live opera.

Together, Reiki, music and #SingTheLight will comprise my life practice as Ascending Arts. Personally, this feels like so much more than a new business, company or brand. Ascending Arts is the most authentic expression of who I am as an Artist as well as a Reiki Master, in practice every day. Welcome to Ascending Arts, it’s my honor to hold this space for you.

Visit Ascending Arts on Instagram.

Photo: Ascending Arts

Finding Our Frosting: Frisson Films' Visual Brand Identity Process

By Elyse A. Kakacek and Ryan Rivard

(New York, NY) - Classical music is facing some considerable growing pains during these unexpected times. Of course, there’s no shortage of things to mourn, but at Frisson Films we are determined to move towards a brighter future. 

Frisson Films is a non-profit organization that is focused on the filmed expression of classical music. But more than that, we want to be an agent of change in the way we represent classical music through more modern avenues, bucking classical’s more traditional norms.

Our industry has been shackled to racist, socioeconomic, and sexist inequalities for its entire existence. The pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have brought our brokenness into sharp focus, accelerating change, which could redefine classical music for the first time in a long time.

With performance spaces shuttered, classical musicians have a rare opportunity to pause, leave dead weight behind and realign our passion for the art form.

At Frisson Films, we see the evolution of classical music through film, as well as other, new and unexpected mediums. For us, it’s the tailor-made film score inside every waking moment - our heart strings play, feelings externalize, cells vibrate. If you haven't heard the word before, “frisson”, the French word for “shiver,” is the scientific term for a physical response to being moved by sound or sight. We live for these musical chills, more commonly known as goosebumps.

Our goal was to capture and translate these core beliefs and intentions into Frisson’s visual brand identity.

A dear mentor and voice teacher used to say “you need something to put the frosting on.”  I took this to mean that no amount of glitz, glamour or "hype" could ever replace the essence of music, expressed effectively, and what it does for and to people. In the same way, no amount of  branding would matter if Frisson wasn’t already the amazing double chocolate fudge layer cake and company of our dreams. Let’s start our discussion here…

Loving our cake

When filmmaker Ryan Rivard and I founded Frisson Films in New York City, our goal was to incite the discovery of classical music by expressing it visually, through film. Collaborating with artists of all disciplines and genres, we empower classical musicians to express themselves without preconceived ideas of how classical music should be expressed - we don’t believe in boxes.

Once a year, we screen Frisson’s projects for live audiences at a Greenpoint, Brooklyn warehouse. Over the last two years, we’ve released multiple mixed-media short films: L’Eraclito Amoroso (2018), Behold the Archer’s Skill (2019) and Don’t you weep when I am gone (2020), the latter being our most recent film and favorite project to date. Don’t you weep when I am gone features acclaimed baritone Will Liverman’s performance and personal arrangement of the traditional African American spiritual. Liverman was most recently heard as Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, we were so honored to have him on our screen. Thus far, our films have inspired many viewers to continue exploring classical music, key to our ROI, and two films screened in the UK, at the Everyday Arias and The Beeston Film Festival (2019/2020).  Frisson's use of film has also inspired other artists to embark on similar explorations. Along the way, we’ve cultivated a community of musicians, filmmakers, and artists all willing to experiment, which has become as important as creating our own, one-of-a-kind films. 

Finding our frosting

As Ryan and I became more aware of our unique positioning, it became clear that we needed to find the aforementioned frosting for our cake — to visually represent, with integrity, the essence and ethos of Frisson as described up to this point, while still resonating with our artists and audiences.

One of the first creatives to enter our consideration was designer Joe Bradford. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Joe is a Design Manager for Hasbro Games.  Ryan and Joe had long-standing artistic respect for one another, so we knew we were in good hands when we asked him to come onboard.

In addition to designing our visual brand identity, Joe contributed other elements like the poster design for L'Eraclito Amoroso. The film marked Frisson Film’s UK and European debut in October 2019, screening in partnership with Everyday Arias at London’s Closeup Film Center and Nottingham’s Beeston Film Festival.

We began by sending Joe three things: a spec sheet referencing simple and striking designs, the definition of frisson and a photo of hairs standing on end. Then we dove headfirst into all the details. The three of us agreed that one of classical music’s biggest barriers to entry is its traditional aesthetic.  “As someone who didn't grow up with the genre, it often felt stuffy, exclusive, or out of reach,” Joe said. “I'm excited by the ideas of approachability and inclusion…Frisson Films' efforts to break the mold with a modern, inclusive aesthetic that enables people to discover a genre they might not have otherwise."  

We asked him to share some insight on his design process: “I began the Frisson logo design process with a round of digital exploration creating logo concepts with perfectly set typefaces, moving around vector anchor points with mouse and keyboard, adding filters and noise with the intention of simulating the look of goosebumps.” Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned. “When reviewing the work a few days later, it felt cold, overthought and disconnected from the idea of classical music.”

We returned to the drawing board and settled on a revised goal for Frisson’s visual identity. After this conversation, Joe realized that the logo needed to be produced by hand.

Per Joe: “The goal for the Frisson Films visual identity was (for it) to resonate honesty and fervor, much like the creation and performance of classical music itself. It needed to be a statement of creative passion, perfect with imperfections. And so with this clearer vision of what the logo was trying to embody, I went to work on how to communicate that through the medium of pencil on paper."

When Joe sent over a gallery of possible logos, the choice was immediately obvious for us. “The choice of cursive was chosen as a signifier for speed and excitement, (bringing) to mind a vision of someone pouring out over sheet music, frantically making marks, the music in their head playing faster than the pencil can move across the sheet of paper.” It was honest, passionate, simple and resonated deeply. And yes, it gave us the requisite goosebumps!

Joe also shared that “the lines which ground the logo serve as an abstract motif of a music staff, and reinforce the idea that Frisson is lifting or rising.” We couldn’t agree more. When Frisson audiences, artists and fans see our logo, we hope this sense of movement transmits, but we also hope they hear a crescendo, or perhaps a bow quickly sweeping across violin strings. Allegro?!

The final product. Visual brand design by Joe Bradford.

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Experience our films (without paywall) via links above or here. Follow us on Instagram to stay updated on new projects releasing in the coming months, including a fully animated short film by Joe Bradford, set to a commissioned acapella piece for voices by New York composer Nathaniel Adams. We also have a special quarantine project to announce soon, and we’ve begun working on the planning stages of a filmed, full-length new opera by composer Dan Felsenfeld and librettist Bea Goodwin. 

If you’re moved and able, please consider a donation to help us fulfill our mission of inciting curiosity for classical music, film and the multitude of ways it is visually expressed. 

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Elyse Anne Kakacek is a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director at Frisson Films. An American soprano living and working in New York City,  “Kakacek sets her smoldering lyricism into flame” (OperaWire) with her solo album Untethered, available on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon. Follow Elyse on Instagram at @frissonfilmsorg and @furelysek545.

Filmmaker Ryan Rivard is a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director at Frisson Films. Based in Queens, Ryan is a Producer at Reel Works, a non-profit that mentors and trains New York City youth in filmmaking. Follow Ryan on Instagram at @ryanrivard.

Joe Bradford is a multidisciplinary designer and musician based in Providence, Rhode Island. Joe is currently a Design Manager for Hasbro Games where he has helped make your favorite board games for nearly a decade. Follow Joe on Instagram at @joebradford.