A Church of Art: Mary Birnbaum's rebellious Four Saints in Three Acts

There's hardly any piece in the operatic repertoire as enigmatic as Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts. You can read Gertrude Stein's libretto here, but you might need a stiff drink. 

The writing has been called "verbal nonsense" or merely that Stein was more interested in the sounds of words than what they meant. Thomson's score is a collage of non-operatic American styles - hymns, marching band, parlor tunes - and he described the piece himself as "virtually a complete summary of my Protestant childhood in Missouri." His musical life was indeed colorful, and in by the age of sixteen he could be found accompanying silent films on the piano and Baptist choirs on the organ in the same week.

It may be interesting to note that it originally featured an all-black cast (who apparently had the clear diction Stein desired), and premiered in 1934, the same year as Cole Porter's Anything Goes!

An image from Thomson's original production

We are lucky to have two very different artists weigh in on how to approach this challenging work. The first is Mary Birnbaum, who directs both theatre and opera and also serves as the Associate Director of the Artist Diploma in Opera Studies Program at Juilliard. 

Our next post will feature the writing of Andrea Andresakis, who takes a very different approach, but no less interesting. 

Mary worked with a team of designers to dream up these great ideas:

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We searched for a way to present the show that would be as dissonant in a contemporary context as the original staging was in its own time. In trying to rebel against Stein and Thompson, we wound up using what they were rebelling against: the American theater of the 1930s: representational, beautiful and divorced from the audience. Our production of Four Saints in Three Acts will slam the theatrical conventions of the 1930s -- Follies divas, historical tableaux vivant and religious pageantry -- up against the efforts of Stein and Thompson, turning their rebellion on its head and creating a new, exciting dissonance.

On stage is a proscenium theater wherein the scenes from the lives of the saints are playfully depicted, replete with charming historical inaccuracies. This is a church of art, where chorus girls and boys portray saints and collaborate with stagehands to create a show and inspire the suspension of disbelief; theatrical magic stands in for divinity. As Stein and Thompson point out, saints and artists have a lot in common: both try to share their visions and encounter problems when others doubt their convictions. Both feel out of sync with the conventions of their time yet attempt to connect with a type of timeless truth. 

There's even an onstage audience for the play, an elderly couple (the Commère and Compère) who are constantly trying to make sense out of the nonsense in front of them, rifling through their programs to try to find out what scene they’re watching. We watch the Commère and Compère watch a play, but also we are aligned with them, delighted to find that we share their perplexed, outsider reactions from time to time.

The staging begins as a tightly ordered machine, highly choreographed and representational. The ensemble saints earnestly replay St. Teresa’s life in Avila, avoiding camp but occasionally stumbling into the ridiculous. Gradually, however, the rules and norms of the 1930s theater stop working, and the abstract starts to take over in an unexpectedly beautiful way. As scenes progress, no set piece is ever struck, the vines of the garden become bedecked with stars. The established order is so confused that audience and artists alike are forced to join Stein and Thompson in their celebration of the essential illogical nature of art, life and God. 

Even the strict boundary between actor and audience dissolves; the Commère and Compère ecstatically find themselves on the stage and some of the showgirls wind up in the actual opera house. The houselights come up to reveal humanity everywhere. We concede that things can both be and not be, that the divine both is and is not a “fact".

The prologue of the piece is played downstage of a drop that shows the outside of the theater on stage left and the stage door on stage right. As we are told, to orchestral oom-pah-pahs, what's going to happen, we see a continual stream of bundled up chorus girls enter the stage door in time for half hour call and then fancy fur-clad audience members enter the theater. 

Finally, the Marquee lights up, reading "FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS" and the performance is ready to begin, the drop flies away and we are looking at the house of the theater, where the Commère and Compère have bustled to their seats in a convenient balcony, opera glasses in hand and sucking on sugar free candy. As they wait for the houselights to dim, they read each other the cast list aloud, "saint... saint... saint..." trying to keep track of "who's who". At the end of the prologue, the curtain inside the smaller proscenium opens on the steps of Avila Cathedral, and the real show begins. 

Learn more about Mary Birnbaum's work at www.marybirnbaum.com

Very Grateful: The Opening of Klinghoffer

In the midst of our online forum on American works for National Opera Week, we couldn't ignore the extraordinary opening of John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer last Monday. So here are some thoughts.

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I knew I couldn't miss Klinghoffer's opening night at the Met. Even if I don't agree with the protests, I can't help the thrill of any work of art creating a vehement discussion in the headlines. I managed to arrive to my cozy balcony box after making it past the barricades and protesters without much altercation...

Upon seeing the barricades along Columbus Avenue, I asked a very senior-looking police officer:

"Excuse me, how do I get into the Met?"

"For what?" he flips back.

"For the...opera...?" (perhaps he was unaware that there was an actual performance going on behind the metal fences?)

Finally another officer overheard and directed me to the stairs on the 65th street side, where I was greeted by this festive welcoming committee:

I was rather disappointed that the protesters were not allowed onto the plaza itself - do they not have a right to assemble in a public plaza? But then because they were mostly on Columbus Avenue, and unshielded by the reverent buildings of Lincoln Center, you could hear their noise all across Broadway. So perhaps more people heard about what was going on than if they'd been allowed front and center.

Anyway, it was an amazing evening nevertheless, and leave it to The New Yorker and Mr. Alex Ross to give a succinct and sensitive response to the events. I found the column's illustration by Tomer Hanuka less insightful than Mr. Rose's prose, however, as the dancer/actor playing the assailant Omar, Jesse Kovarsky, was not scary or brawny. He was indeed a tiny dancer, not much taller than five feet and the body of a teenage boy, costumed simply, in a red T-shirt and blue pants. His form slowly attacking Mr. Klinghoffer was so frightening precisely because the evil was so small, so young, and clearly so impressionable. It makes the deed even more horrific. The evil is clearly much greater and more insidious than a single deranged murderer.

Alan Opie, as Leon Klinghoffer, and Jesse Kovarsky, as the terrorist Omar, on board the Achille Lauro, in John Adams’s opera. Illustration by Tomer Hanuka.

However, the illustration is accurate in the staging - in Tom Robbins's production, the murder is committed onstage, as opposed to the the score's indication of simply an offstage gunshot, an indication that most past productions have followed, to my knowledge.

From my seat in a house left balcony box, the scene was terrifying and mesmerizing: this tiny young man, goaded and haunted by the voice of his mother to serve his homeland with violence, slowly and cowardly creeping up behind a noble and brave elderly hostage, pointing his gun through the man's back and straight at the audience; gold light from behind him spilling, flowing in a treacherous force forward, so the entire house of onlookers was ablaze in this bright hate. The music twists and wrenches and roars.

And then the gunshot. And nothing. Some red. A man slumped in his chair.

The sombre, anti-climactic silence of death. I was left staring at the extra dancers, dressed as white crew members, unlocking the manual brakes of his wheelchair as they took it offstage.

Why do we need works of art that depict such terrible murders? Such insurmountable sins of humanity? Because a piece like John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer reminds me that a tiny bit of hate can do a world of hurt. Just like the anti-semitism that led to the Holocaust, or the animosity that led to gunshots in Ferguson: it starts in small forms, in small packages, and is dismissed. Until there are gunshots.

The piece also reminds me how culture and behavior is passed through generations: the British woman behaves as a hostage just how she did during WWII; the anger of the Palestinians is passed along each generation. When each generation has known the same feelings and the same behavior, they forget any other way of living.

I also must give this piece credit not only for it's beautiful and poignant ending, sung gorgeously by Michaela Martens, but its specific portrayal of Marilyn Klinghoffer as a no-nonsense, wise, beautiful, brave, simple, sensitive, strong woman. And one who is a low mezzo, a fach usually relegated to witches and crones. I can't think of any character in the operatic repertoire quite like Marilyn Klinghoffer, and just for that, Alice Goodman and John Adams deserve an ovation.

Quite surprisingly, the Klinghoffer's daughters Lisa and Ilsa do not share in the celebration of this heroic portrayal of their parents. In their message printed in the Met program (graciously appearing along its center page with the staple seam), they disparage the opera completely, saying,

"[Adams's opera] offers no real insight into the historical reality and the senseless murder of an American Jew. It rationalizes, romanticizes, and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father...and sullies the memory of a fine, principled, sweet man..."

I read this after seeing the piece on Monday night, and am left bewildered. Not only did I not feel that any action of the story was legitimized, but all the kind words the daughters wrote about their father were things I understood from watching his character on stage. Again, the creators deserve praise for this.

Above all, I know that without this opera, the name Mr. Leon Klinghoffer would mean nothing to me, nor to the large majority of Met audiences. We would not know what he believed in, nor how he died. Great art tells stories that must be told.

At the opening night reception, John Adams remarked that he was merely a vessel through which the piece passed through, and the opera's artists made real. He was grateful. So should we be.

Sea Fog and Shadow Sister - Sarah Meyers imagines an oppressive Lizzie Borden

Welcome to National Opera Week and the hundreds of events occurring nationwide. As we begin our collection of posts from women opera directors on American works, we aim to create a fascinating collage of some of the medium's finest thinkers, and a window into a few of the greatest operatic works from the 20th century.

Tweet @operathink and #operaweek, and JOIN this blog to share the news!

A portrait of the enigmatic Lizzie, by Tiago Finato

We begin with a great story for Hallow's Eve - Jack Beeson's Lizzie Borden. You can watch the original New York City Opera production here, directed by Rhoda Levine. 

Our first contributing artist is stage director Sarah Meyers, a staff director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York since 2006, who is also finishing a doctorate at Columbia. Here she tells a great story about our dear old Lizzie.

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Sea Fog and Shadow Sister

A meditation on space in Lizzie Borden 

by Sarah Meyers

Lizzie Borden is an exploration of evil, but that evil is not Lizzie’s alone. Rather the opera explores the corrosive, oppressive, persistent evil of the Borden household, of a family turned inside out by repression, secrets, and betrayal. Darkness permeates their world, and oozes into life through cruelty after petty cruelty.

Much like a Shakespearean play, the opera transfers the psychological agitation and turmoil onto the environment. The spirit of dead mother Evangeline hangs on to the house – first literally, in the portrait upon the wall, then figuratively, as Lizzie becomes a double of her mother. The house watches, shadows pursue, the fog rolls in malevolent and heavy from the sea. The garden is rife with pests and bugs. 

Hatred and resentment have made the space itself sick, and sickening. The walls – Lizzie repeats, over and over again – the walls.  It reminds me of a gothic fiction story I read many years ago, The Yellow Wallpaper, in which the winding patterns of vines in a woman’s bedroom drive her mad. But is it her insanity that in fact transforms the space, or does the room really have its own dark intentions? That story, like Lizzie Borden, suggests the possibility that both are true. As madness develops, yes, it transforms the space around us. But perhaps more frightening is the idea that space itself can become sinister, and that the inanimate – charged perhaps by our own hatred and fear – can come to life with its own dark purpose. The haunted house.

I’m currently at work on a dissertation at Columbia about exactly this type of space in contemporary performance – spaces which defy logic, which articulate a very specific form of anxiety. I’ve been studying how theatrical performance can get under our skin and inhabit our subconscious. So naturally, I would love to direct Lizzie Borden. It would be an ideal opportunity to explore the terrifying potential of theatrical space. Without doing a full design process, it is of course hard to say what that would entail, but I know what the key elements would be. 

The house would have to be dangerous. Edges like blades, dark corners, angles. The fog – perhaps we could find a way to control its movement to make it interactive. I’d love for it to literally lick at Lizzie when she stands by the window. And perhaps most important, the use of light and dark. The shadows of the opera intrigue me – I’d love to literally bring those shadows to life, to give them increasing autonomy as Lizzie hurtles towards her murderous acts. In the end, only the shadows keep her company…

Learn more about Sarah Meyers's work at www.sarahinameyers.com

National Opera Week Features Opera Think Tank: Idea Power from Women

We at OPERA THINK TANK have been very busy connecting with dozens of outstanding women opera directors at every level, all over the world, and the enthusiasm for an online forum to connect and converse has been overwhelming. 

We eagerly await celebrating so much of this talent and insight at our online forum during Opera America's National Opera Week. 

If you're interested in being a part of this online forum, please hit the blue JOIN THIS SITE button to follow this blog. 

If you're a professional woman opera director and have not yet received an invitation to post, please email us at operathinktank@gmail.com.

We will be discussing the list below of American operas. What interests you about these pieces? What are the challenges? What would help them gain more momentum as part of the world's opera repertoire? Many artists will be posting about specific titles, and their ideas or questions about the work.

We are collecting content now and will be posting daily during National Opera Week, October 24th through November 2nd. Positive comments, questions, and conversations are encouraged.

The operas we will use as conversation points are listed below. This list was generated by Opera America as part of the Director Designer Showcase of this past fall, though this online forum will have nothing to do with that program, and its deadline has passed. The list serves simply as a conversation starter, however some artists may have submitted a showcase application and may choose to share their team's work. 

A Streetcar Named Desire (Previn/Littell)

Candide (Bernstein/Wilbur)

Four Saints in Three Acts (Thompson/Stein)

Glory Denied (Cipullo)

Il Postino (Catán)

Lizzie Borden (Beeson/Elmslie)

Of Mice and Men (Floyd)

The Cradle Will Rock (Blitzstein)

Three Decembers (Heggie/Scheer)

Vanessa (Barber/Menotti)

We're looking forward to some fascinating insights and conversations!

Opera Think Tank 2.0

We're back! And wow, what a different world we have now. New York City Opera is gone, San Diego Opera barely survived shuttering, and the Met just mud-slung its way through some interminable union negotiations. Some say we're dragging behind in every way, if you read the comments here. Meanwhile there is a growing number of young leaders in opera and new work being made everywhere you look.

In the eight years I've been in NYC, however, it seems like opportunities have dwindled for singers to actually develop and perform here in the city. Meanwhile I find myself in amazing theatre spaces set up by actors and comedians - artists who work at their craft to a point that they can perform any where, any time - places like the PIT and Magnet and spaces that not only have a great theatre spaces, but great bars where people can hang out and have a good time on a Friday night. Why don't these spaces exist for opera?

The PIT, or People's Improv Theatre, has great spaces for performing and hanging out

There was recently a great article picking apart the many ways that the Met makes going to the theatre unnecessarily cumbersome and difficult. It's a theatre house stuck in a century-old tradition of entertainment. But hey, let's not pick on the Met - they are the nation's largest performing arts organization. I just wish there was more middle ground, especially in New York, where you might trip over a singer, a director, or a designer every three feet.

So I decided to do something about it and launched OPERA THINK TANK this summer. We've only just begun, but we have a packed schedule for the fall in an amazing new theatre space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The stunning staff of Triskelion in front of their new free-standing theatre building!

So here's how it all works, at least for now:

OPERA THINK TANK's goal is to get an ensemble of singers making theatre together on a regular basis, creating regular performance opportunities that singers can join whenever they are available.

Led by director/choreographer Heidi Lauren Duke and guest coach/conductor Carmine Aufiero, the THINK TANK also includes includes guest coaches, directors, and designers.


The flexible session schedule includes private coaching, ensemble work on skills and dramaturgy, and public presentations. No new music to learn - all a singer needs to prepare is her current rep - either her 5 audition arias or other arias/duets that a singer wants to brush up or get in front of an audience. We will use principals of improv comedy, theatre composition, and reinterpreting the classics to create a vocabulary and process we can use again and again to create engaging opera theatre.

Throughout the 2014-15 season, singers may join ongoing weekly sessions whenever they are available. Performances will be monthly and will be cast from new singers that have attended at least 3 sessions total, and singers who are already part of the roster but have attended at least one session in the current month.

So experienced singers could work with us a bit, then leave town, come back for two weeks (or six months), and perform in quality shows in NYC with limited rehearsal time. Younger or less experienced artists can come every week and continuously work on their skills and craft, performing as they wish. Meanwhile singers can invite their friends and fans to see them perform in a gorgeous space in a fun neighborhood with amazing views of Manhattan.

Sunset earlier this year at East River Park, an easy walk from Triskelion

So save the dates for our Saturday night fall shows - come have dinner before at Adelina's, Jimmy's, Calexico, or just come wander around this booming neighborhood:

Saturdays at 10pm

October 18th, November 15th, and December 13th

Triskelion Arts, 106 Calyer Street, Williamsburg / Greenpoint, Brooklyn

And donate here to Triskelion's valiant efforts to provide a home for so many artists!

Airline Tix for Opera? (Thanks, Hugh Jackman!)

The New York Times just reported about rather 'interesting' pricing strategies, helping to keep the lights shining brightly down on the Great White Way.

Turns out, theater owners and producers can look at past sales figures and predict exactly how much people will pay for certain seats. Some seats get discounted at first, but when reviews come in or some sections sell out, prices skyrocket. In effect, it's pricing performance seats similarly to airline fares.

Imagine how that pricing has influenced the way we buy airline tickets (or at least, the way I do!): I try to buy early, compare the possibilities, scanning my computer screen hungrily, until the moment I find the perfect date, price, and location and BAM! I review the itinerary with lusty caution...hit the PURCHASE button with apprehension-soaked courage, and the blessed confirmation screen finally arrives as I shudder with relief and gratitude. Ahhh...that's better.

If only buying opera tickets carried so much DRAMA!

Because of course, just as airlines are now catering to the profitable customer, so should performing arts organizations. There will always be the discount shoppers like me, but considering the number of deep-pocketed Puccini fans, opera companies could stand to make some serious dough if they get with the program.

How much will you pay for the best seat in the house?

The other pricing strategy that goes along with this: the affluent customer wants things that are expensive.  In fact, I think our current economy is unique in this trend: cheap things are getting cheaper and more disposable, and expensive things are getting more costly and more lasting -- there is little in between. Does opera want to be the former or the latter? It's a tricky question, and the answer is that it just has to pick one and not stay in the middle. (Brilliant example: seeing the Met Live is expensive and extravagant and time-consuming; Met HD is cheap and disposable, and people buy both because they are getting the extreme on the pendulum, and those extremes are what sell.)

But let's follow-through with the fact that the affluent customer wants things that are expensive...in another life I worked in the copyediting department of a major entertainment company that shall remain nameless.  Needless to say they ran both the most famous circus in the world, and also the most famous ice skating show in the world. On their ads for the circus, they sold the show as a fun but casual event for the family.  They had tiered pricing. They listed the cheapest prices first and then went up from there.  On the contrary, for the ice show, they were marketing it more like a ballet or a Broadway show -- an epic, fancy, family event, so they listed the most expensive seats first. And guess what? The most expensive ones were the first to sell -- always. And remember...the two different productions were sold by the same company, so they reaped the profits from both extremes, just like the Met!

I still feel that opera is stunted by the albatross of non-profit-bleeding-hearts. Yes -- we can still be accessible, and also exclusive; 'cheap' to some and 'extravagant' to others...we have to provide both products.

Airline travel used to be something reserved for the wealthy, but now the product has changed to offer something for both the well-heeled elite, and also the great unwashed. Or people who can pass for both, like me.

Opera Patron 2.0: Sue, from Brooklyn

On Monday I took advantage of the ecstatic September weather and caught operamission's Figaro performance, which was presented as part of the Bryant Park Fall Festival.

It was idyllic: sparkling sun, cool breezes, amazing food and beverages, and bustling energy surrounding a park with Mozart flowing through the speakers.  As I walked from the south side of the park to the north, tables of lunchers gave way to sunbathers, which gave way to rows of seats in front of the white-tented stage.

At the end of the performance, around two o'clock, I was surprised by the woman near me, who leapt to her feet, clapping, shouting,

BRAVOOOOO! BRAVOOO! THAT WAS AWESOME! 

She admonished her friends, some of whom had fallen to napping in the sunshine: "You missed the best part!  There was a ton of action!  They were really goin' attit!!! (referring to the Figaro Act II Finale Throw Down)

She looked around....

Why aren't more people standing??  That was AWESOME!

I spoke to her afterwards.  I was too shy to ask for a picture, but she looked something like the picture above, except very excited. Her name is Sue and she's from Brooklyn.  She'd seen opera before, but had never subscribed to anything. She liked Mozart, Handel; Beethoven not so much. She was also excited because, at that same moment, her daughter was expecting to give birth to a baby girl by way of c-section.  She gave me a hug and said God Bless.

So I was surprised by her not by her age, but her energy.  She stood up and hollered. She knew she was seeing something special.  And she had a busy life, with babies being born any second -- she had a lot on her mind.

So how we get her into the Hall to hear singers on a regular basis?  I don't know.

But that would be AWESOME.

P.S. the awesome singers from operamission included bass CORY CLINES (Figaro) • soprano SHARIN APOSTOLOU (Susanna) • baritone MICHAEL WEYANDT (Count) • soprano INNA DUKACH (Countess) and countertenor TYLER WAYNE SMITH as Cherubino - led by Jennifer Peterson and directed by Peter Kozma