American Lyric Theater Champions Diversity and Representation with Signature Opera Writers Program

From February 27 through April 24, American Lyric Theater conducts a free, eight-week, virtual symposium on writing for the opera stage. The CLDP Opera Writers Symposium will provide artists with practical tools for both first-time and experienced creatives with an interest in creating new opera.

By Rebecca Davis

(New York, NY) - Leading voices of American Lyric Theater (ALT) and the Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP) -- including ALT’s Founder Lawrence Edelson; Associate Artistic Director Kelly Kuo; composers Anthony Davis, Justine Chen and Jorge Sosa; librettists Stephanie Fleischmann and Lila Palmer; and dramaturg Cori Ellison – discuss ALT’s Opera Writers Diversity and Representation Initiative (OWDARI). They share the importance of diversity in the creation of new works of opera, their own journeys with the art form and how the American Lyric Theater addresses proactively recruiting musicians and writers of all racial and artistic backgrounds to take part in their flagship biennial Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP).  

Dramaturg Cori Ellison says, “the best art has always held up a mirror to society, challenging and inspiring us to evolve by facing our frailties or laughing at our foibles, there's so much we can learn from the mirrors held up by the new and diverse voices we're welcoming into our art form.”   

Each artist and leader answered a series of questions on the topic of diversity in opera and what the CLDP does to foster it. Their answers enlighten and inspire.  

---

Why is it important for opera to be open to new perspectives from both composers and librettists? 

ALT’s Founder LAWRENCE EDELSON: Opera is an extraordinarily impactful way to tell stories - bringing together music and theater through a physical realization on stage or, increasingly, through digital channels of distribution. Ultimately, who tells what stories matters. New perspectives that are representative of contemporary American society are vital to keep opera relevant. It’s important to remember that opera’s origins were as a populist art form. The opera house was the first musical institution to open its doors to the general public. The first opera house was opened in Venice in 1637, presenting commercial opera and run for profit. Public tastes and preferences have shaped opera throughout history, though admittedly, opera has also consciously excluded the perspectives of significant portions of the population - often with racist motivations. If those writing opera in the 21st century don’t reflect the totality of contemporary American society, opera won’t be meaningful - either as art or entertainment. 

Dramaturg CORI ELLISON: The best art has always held up a mirror to society, challenging and inspiring us to evolve by facing our frailties or laughing at our foibles.  Diversity is not a new thing in American society, but the complete and eager embrace of it certainly is, and there's so much we can learn from the mirrors held up by the new and diverse voices we're welcoming into our art form.   

“Malcolm X used the expression "that old pale thing" to describe the legacy of racism that has plagued our country since its inception. Opera can no longer afford to be merely "that old pale thing" that only represents White male composers and librettists and the implicit credo of white supremacy. This is a fundamental question of the survival of the art form.” - Composer Anthony Davis 

Librettist LILA PALMER: Opera is one of many music drama traditions, that speaks to human life through song. We turn to stories with music to learn who we are and see ourselves, to educate, build, enforce and when necessary, break down the myths and driving assumptions of our culture. We do that through the creation of empathy and the possibilities of imagination. Opera has traditionally been created by a limited group of people, and consequently the stories and myths and power dynamics it perpetuates align with both the traumas and concerns of that group. But there are wider audiences to reach, to entertain and to speak to, and we need a wider group of storytellers to do that. 

Composer JORGE SOSA: Storytelling is continuously evolving and is in perpetual transformation, so it is essential that we open up avenues for composers and librettists to share and engage with dramatic ideas that can propel the genre forward in order to assert the art form's relevance. 

“Opening one’s mind to the ideas that composers and librettists of diverse backgrounds bring to the table can open doors that one did not know existed; doors that lead to a better version of ourselves.   And sometimes perspectives not chained to the expectations and traditions of the past are exactly what is needed to open paths to evolution.” - ALT Associate Artistic Director Kelly Kuo

Librettist STEPHANIE FLEISCHMANN: Telling stories is a powerful means for not just making sense of our world but for enacting change. The stories we have to tell are infinite. They encompass everybody’s stories. And they must be told by everybody if we are to represent this complex messy world we live in—if we are to attempt to articulate some sort of truth that expresses who we are as humans. Telling stories via music—a form that has the potential to mine an emotional terrain that reaches beyond language to a place that is, simply, and overwhelmingly human—promises to transgress boundaries, cross bridges, reach beyond the walls that we as a civilization still seem far too intent on constructing between us (whoever we may be) and those who hail from cultures different from our own. And yet American opera has been slow to embrace a vibrant, rich, magnificently diverse, multicultural world. Opera as a form will only thrive if and when it is a medium that upholds a diverse breadth of stories housed within a diverse breadth of forms, a diverse breadth of approaches to telling stories, made by a diverse breadth of makers, within institutions led by a diverse group of leaders, performed by singers who represent the diversity and multiplicity of our communities, directed and designed by artists whose lived experience and cultural legacy is not solely western and white. 

ALT Associate Artistic Director Kelly Kuo

ALT’s Associate Artistic Director KELLY KUO: We only survive and grow as a species through collaboration and the best collaboration occurs only when each party can look at things from a variety of perspectives.  In this respect, opera is no different than any other human endeavor.  Opening one’s mind to the ideas that composers and librettists of diverse backgrounds bring to the table can open doors that one did not know existed; doors that perhaps lead to a better version of ourselves.   And sometimes perspectives not chained to the expectations and traditions of the past are exactly what is needed to open paths to evolution. 

Composer JUSTINE CHEN: Composers and librettists both hold the keys to different forms of expression in opera.  Words have a certain power, and music has a different kind of power.  One can also inspire and unlock the other.  When there are two creators working towards a similar goal, each artist knows how to achieve that goal with one art, when two work together, the combination can magnify and heighten the effect.  When two people from different backgrounds collaborate, a new perspective emerges - similar to the combination of two lines of sight giving the perception of depth. There is a danger of stagnation without new perspectives, so recycling old perspectives is not a way to move forward. 

Composer Anthony Davis

Composer ANTHONY DAVIS: Malcolm X used the expression "that old pale thing" to describe the legacy of racism that has plagued our country since its inception.  In order to be a viable art form for the future, opera can no longer afford to be merely "that old pale thing" that only represents White male composers and librettists and the implicit credo of white supremacy. This is a fundamental question of the survival of the art form.  Can Opera be part of something so much bigger and more representative? 

On Monday, March 22nd, this six-part Q&A with ALT’s expert panel continues via Opera Innovation on Facebook.

---

American Lyric Theater is currently in the midst of its first ever virtual Opera Writers Symposium, a series of workshops and mini-seminars for composers and writers taking place February 27 – April 24. With the symposium, ALT seeks to introduce musicians and writers from diverse racial and artistic backgrounds to opera and explore how they might use the tools of the art form to tell their stories. ALT also hopes to encourage applications to the Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP), the country’s only full-time paid mentorship for emerging opera composers, librettists and dramaturgs.  

Symposium classes include:  

• The Architecture of Opera: Outlining for Composers and Librettists led by composer/librettist Mark Adamo 

• Dramatizing History and Opera as Activism led by dramaturg  Cori Ellison  

• Opera, Technology and Innovation led by composers  Kamala Sankaram  and  Jorge Sosa 

• From Erased to Self-Empowered: Celebrating BIPOC Opera Composers and Librettists led by ALT’s Associate Artistic Director Kelly Kuo  

• How to Have a Healthy Marriage: Collaboration Best Practices led by ALT’s Founder Lawrence Edelson and dramaturg Cori Ellison 

Guest speakers during the symposium include composers Anthony Davis, Missy Mazzoli, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Huang Ruo and Errollyn Wallen; and librettists Mark Campbell, Thulani Davis (also a poet and playwright), David Henry Hwang, Andrea Davis Pinkney (also a children’s book author), and Royce Vavrek.   

The symposium provides practical tools for both first-time and experienced artists with an interest in developing new works for the operatic stage and serve as an introduction to ALT’s Composer Librettist Development Program (CLDP), a two-year, tuition-free professional training program for writers interested in creating new operas that includes extensive mentorship and direct financial support. No previous experience in writing opera is necessary.  

The CLDP Opera Writers Symposium is completely free, but  advance registration is required for each seminar, please.  Complete program details here. Lead funding for the symposium comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  

The Opera Writers Symposium is part of ALT’s Opera Writers Diversity and Representation Initiative (OWDARI). In consultation with an Advisory Committee comprised of BIPOC artists and related experts in the field, ALT is examining every part of the company’s operations with the goal of addressing structural inequality and racism and increasing participation by BIPOC artists in the company’s flagship mentorship program.  

---

Rebecca Davis Public Relations
Rebecca Davis
347.432.8832
rebecca@rebeccadavispr.com

Librettist Mark Campbell on Pop Music, Opera and 'the Lucy/Jessie Saga' of it all

Photo: Frances Marshall, Final Note Magazine.

(Santa Fe, NM) - In August 2015, I met librettist Mark Campbell at the press conference for The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, his opera with composer Mason Bates. Consulting with Santa Fe Opera public relations, I took photos of the gents, live tweeted and (with coworker Anh Lê) launched the first live Periscope broadcast of a breaking news event by a North American opera company. Fast forward through (R)evolution workshops at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in September 2015 and September 2016, the 2017 Santa Fe Opera world premiere, in addition to the workshops, events and 2019 world premiere of Opera Parallele’s Today it Rains. Together, these events span the five years that my partner and I have become better acquainted with Mark’s landmark work, his authentic warmth, one-of-a-kind wit and a killer sense of humor. We’re glad to be friends as well as fans.

When I launched this series, I’d hoped Mark would agree to share his ideas (so grateful he did). Shortly after (R)evolution’s world premiere, I asked if he thought his and Mason’s opera could be successful on Broadway. “YES!” As Mark shares below, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs did, in fact, find its inspiration in pop music. Without further delay, a Grammy-winning librettist with some brilliantly crystallized thoughts. - JM

---

By Mark Campbell

What a useless and corrupting little label “pop music” is. The word reared its ugly short head around 1926, reduced to a three-letter palindrome from the phrase “music with popular appeal,” and was devised by marketeers to distinguish music that you could hum or dance to from an equally inane label, “Classical music,” which might break your ears off. Separating music into labels like this does a disservice to both: pop music is considered cheap and lowly but fun and Classical music intellectual but boring. The comparison kind of reminds me of the Stephen Sondheim lyric from Follies, “The Story of Jessie and Lucy.”

“You see, Jessie is racy
But hard as a rock.
Lucy is lacy
But dull as a smock.
Jessie wants to be lacy,
Lucy wants to be Jessie.
That's the pitiful précis.
It's very messy.
Poor sad souls,
Itching to be switching roles.
Lucy wants to do what Jessie does,
Jessie wants to be what Lucy was.”

 When we try to apply the term “pop” to music composed for opera it becomes even more complicated. For a very long time—indeed throughout most of opera’s history—opera music was considered pop music. People listened to arias from operas as they would listen to the latest hit from Taylor Swift today. Sadly, critics and academics started to condemn anything that might be perceived as pop music in opera as frivolous and pandering about the same time audiences began to condemn contemporary opera for its lack of “tunes.” It’s the “Lucy/Jessie saga” all over again. And that has pretty much created a lose/lose situation for opera. 

 It has also created a horrible struggle when we have to find words to describe a new work. We are sometimes forced to use the word “accessible” to define a composer’s sound, lest we scare off our audience and sell no tickets. But “accessible” only means “similar to music you’ve heard before,” which reduces the composer’s voice by making it seem unoriginal. And composers get the damned if you do/damned if you don’t scenario when they are taught to write as complicated and alienating as they can to appease critics’ and academics’ claim of superiority over audiences. 

 My own work as an opera librettist isn’t seriously affected by this issue. But what actually makes a tune a tune is not how the notes are arranged but an audience’s familiarity with it—or how often a composer chooses to repeat a melody. And the repeat of a melody usually requires a librettist to know how to write using song structure in which sections of songs repeat in scansion and rhyme scheme—like you find in “pop music.” 

 There should be no shame in stealing from pop music. There should be no shame if a composer hears a sound in pop music that will help them tell a story truthfully. Mason Bates’ music for The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs certainly finds inspiration in pop music—but it also perfectly captures the period and the soul of its titular subject; and there is not a moment in that score that isn’t a challenging and complex as any in the modern repertoire. Similarly, Paul Moravec’s brilliant music for the score of The Shining contains true arias—even those that follow the pop song structure of AABA. But it always does what the story demands and never panders or strives to be “accessible.”

Since I don’t believe in the separation of pop music and Classical music and love both forms, I don’t think one or the other can save opera. What will save opera—if it needs saving—is music by composers that doesn’t fall on either the Jessie or Lucy side of these labels.  Opera will only succeed if composers are good storytellers and continue to write in their own voices. And…if we tell stories that are relevant to the times in which we live.   

Mark Campbell is represented by The Barbara Hogenson Agency

Visit markcampbellwords.com

Mark Campbell at The Santa Fe Opera | August 10, 2019 | Photo: James Mowdy