Starting a Family

Now before you start rumors that I'm pregnant, I'm only letting you know that we've started rehearsals in earnest for Last Acts. I’ve been slow to write about the first few days, as we all find our pace for the initial rehearsals. We’ve had the customary music read-throughs, which are leaps and bounds ahead of normal premieres thanks to the cast singing the workshop in December. We’ve sketched out the staging for Act I and have a clear idea of how to build this family and how they’ll interact with each other.

But remember that HGO is also hosting Concert of Arias this week, with which our conductor Patrick Summers is heavily involved and that Jake and Flicka are hosting and judging tomorrow. And, oh yeah – Magic Flute has had performances every other day since last Friday, in which Kristin (a third of our cast, mind you) is singing First Lady.

Plus it’s a “world premiere,” loosely defined in several ways:

• The first public performance of a musical piece or play
• That’s what it sounds like with piano?
• No, you should have Version E with the two added pages, minus the cut we made yesterday, and your line should now read, “These shoes rule.”
• You want the pianos where?

Now, I’m 90% joking, of course, but when you’re creating something from scratch, it has a whole host of challenges that your typical Mozart opera doesn’t have. Yet, these are exactly what make it rewarding. The atmosphere of good will and collaboration in the room is palpable and with it comes a refreshing level of patience, flexibility and curiosity. Thankfully so, as there are many logistics to solve (where DO those pianos go?) and even more family issues to sort through in Act II.


Cocktail Party Tip #2
I’m sure Kristin would love to tell you about the socks she’s wearing in this picture. They were a gift from Flicka and Jake and reference the duet Kristin sings with Keith in Act II. I wonder if Keith got his own pair….

First Impressions and Last Acts

Learning Last Acts: The Music

I can remember clearly the first time I ever heard the name Jake Heggie. It was the August before I entered graduate school at the University of Michigan to study with esteemed pianist Martin Katz, and Martin invited me to a recital he was playing with Frederica von Stade at Ravinia, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony. On the program, they premiered Jake’s song cycle Songs to the Moon and acknowledged Jake (who was seated a row away) after performing it. Me? I was thrilled.

Since then I’ve met Jake several times, but this is my first real opportunity to work with him. Patrick Summers, on the other hand, has known him quite a while, and if you haven’t read his article on Last Acts in HGO’s Opera Cues, start here.

Patrick writes of Jake:

For all of his surface humor, he is, more than almost anyone I’ve ever encountered, a deeply spiritual and just person. He is unnervingly empathetic. He views life not as a complex series of causes and effects, but as a simple matrix of shared emotions, and he loves tender, humanizing similarities.

This is exactly what comes through in Jake’s music. As I wrapped my fingers around Last Acts for the first time, what struck me immediately was that this is music that serves the drama. Funny, conversational, angry, pensive – whatever the mood, Jake’s musical language is one of empathy and color with rare directness. When it's a beautiful sentiment, his music is gorgeous – really, really gorgeous. When the characters are confrontational, his music becomes dense and more challenging.

As concerned as he is for the drama, first and foremost he is a singer’s composer. He loves the voice (most of his compositions are vocal), and it’s clear he KNOWS the voice. It’s beyond writing pretty melodies, which he clearly does well, but knowing where the drama lies in each singer’s range and how and when to capitalize on it. And singers love him for it. You can even hear me in my studio wailing like a banshee through sections of Last Acts because it’s just so….sing-able.

An added bonus in Last Acts is Jake letting his musical theater hair down. Part of the story is Maddy making her Broadway singing debut, so of course, there HAS to be a big musical theater number written specifically for Frederica von Stade. The Cullen will be a-rockin’, that’s for sure, and you can bet that I'll be just as thrilled as I was ten years ago.

Scheer Genius

Last Acts follows the life of a self-absorbed actress named Madeline (Maddy) and her two grown children - a daughter, Beatrice, whose unhappiness has caused her to seek comfort from alcohol, and a gay son, Charlie, whose partner is dying of Aids - as they struggle to understand and love each other. The action takes place in San Francisco, Hartford, Barbados and New York; the scenes are set in 1986, 1996 and 2006.

Learning Last Acts: Where to start?

There are no recordings to consult, no synopsis in Kobbe’s Opera Book, no translating of foreign texts to do. So, quite simply and obviously, I read Gene Scheer’s libretto and learn who these characters are and how this story unfolds. Talking about the genesis of a good libretto is beyond my expertise, but suffice to say, beyond writing words to be sung, a good librettist sets the psychological tone and pacing of the entire opera without us really being aware of it. Add to the mix that when great composers partner with great librettists, nothing short of divine inspiration occurs – look at Mozart with Da Ponte (Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, and Don Giovanni) and Verdi with Boito (Otello and Falstaff). Enter Gene Scheer and Jake Heggie.

Gene is no stranger to music and the theater. In fact, I can count myself among Norah Jones, Renee Fleming and Nathan Gunn who have performed songs he has written. Quite modestly he also told me at the workshop that he sang musical theater in Europe for many years – now we have a librettist who not only "gets" music but has real-life stage experience! He and Jake first collaborated on the lyric drama To Hell and Back and work so well together that after Last Acts, they will launch Moby Dick for Dallas Opera in 2010. (Pictured are Isabel Bayrakdarian, Patti LuPone, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer after the premiere of To Hell and Back.)

After I manage to get my hands on Terrence McNally’s original play, Some Christmas Letters, I quickly realize the casual genius that is Gene Scheer. Granted, he has a great place to start – McNally’s characters and words are exquisite – but as a piece of musical theater, it would result in a series of back-to-back arias. Gene does a fantastic job adapting the play and integrating separate letters to create the opening scene. We learn in the first 10 minutes exactly who each of these characters are and what their roles are within this small family. It’s sort of like a stranger being dropped into the middle of your family’s Thanksgiving dinner. It wouldn’t take long to figure out who’s the oldest child or the crazy aunt or the cousin who grew his hair long, dated models, and ran off to LA to be a rock star. Or is that just mine? Anyway, this is all to Gene’s credit.

What truly amazed me at the workshop was how the relationships of these three characters touched a deep chord in all of us present. Gay or straight, we relate to Charlie’s efforts to define and redefine his own individuality with the people who think they know him best – his family. Maddy has done the best she could coping with a huge loss and raising her children as a single parent, making very human mistakes along the way. Bea is often caught in the middle and finds ways to distract herself from her own hardships.

Having just been through the holiday season, it's no surprise that family drama makes for powerful opera. We all have it and continually find new ways to understand and love those we've known all of our lives.


Cocktail Party Tip #1
Should you run into Gene at a party while he's in Houston, here's some trivia to break the ice: He was classmates at Eastman with Renee Fleming and our own Richard Bado.

In the beginning...

[Eric Melear is an assistant conductor with Houston Grand Opera and likes to divide his time between being a conductor, pianist and amateur photographer. This is first of a series of guest posts about Jake Heggie's Last Acts, which will premiere with HGO.]

Last month I had the pleasure of traveling to San Francisco to conduct the workshop of Jake Heggie’s new opera, Last Acts, which HGO will premiere February 29-March 15. “Pleasure” is a bit of an understatement, as I’m sure you can imagine my excitement at being part of a brand new piece with the likes of Jake Heggie and Frederica Von Stade from the ground up musically. Yes, yes, be insanely jealous, but take comfort in that you will hence forward share in my experiences on Last Acts.

As a conductor and pianist, I’m often one of the last people to get on board for a project like this – usually after the music has been written. Before it reaches me, there have been ideas tossed about by Jake, Gene Scheer (the librettist), Lenny Foglia (the director) and the singers. There are preliminary talks with Terrence McNally (who wrote the play on which Last Acts is based). There are talks about making it a Broadway musical. There are talks of a cast of thousands…and then talks to return to its original three-person intimacy. And somewhere in there comes a commission from HGO and San Francisco Opera. Now with a premiere in sight, contracts are drawn up, words start to be written, music composed, set designs imagined, season brochures created, and a cast assembled. And sometime after all that is when my work begins.

I’m no stranger to world premieres or workshops for them, but each experience is always unique. Usually, a workshop consists of a conductor, singers, and a pianist rehearsing and reading through the piece, while the composer, librettist, director and members of the presenting opera company make suggestions and changes. Jake told me he insists on workshop-ing his operas, and it’s easy to see why. It is the first time that the score and libretto leap off the page and out of realm of ideas into a tangible piece of theater. It gives everyone a chance to decide what needs to be kept, tweaked, cut, and added, and answers very basic questions: Is the story clear? Does it suit the voices? What is the impact on the audience? All of this saves valuable rehearsal time in February and enables Jake to confidently finish orchestrating his score in the meantime.

Needless to say, preparing for all of this when the ink is hardly dry on the page is exciting, and the challenge is always, “Where to begin?”