A Fearless Flute: Madeline Sayet on Mozart's Die Zauberflöte

This summer Glimmerglass Festival will open their season with a new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, in an exciting debut by director Madeline Sayet and conductor Carolyn Kuan.

Ms. Sayet comes to Glimmerglass with a fascinating background, including a masters degree from NYU in Arts Politics and Post-Colonial Theory, training in improv theatre with Upright Citizens Brigade, and vast experience on stage herself portraying such Shakespearean heroines as Juliet, Viola and Katherina.

Of the top ten opera favorites, The Magic Flute has perhaps the most troubled libretto - at turns a fantasy, a kidnapping/murder caper, and a romance. Add to that lots of scene shifts, a large ensemble, and less than politically correct depictions of women and minorities, and you have a challenging piece in many ways. 

It's a good thing that Ms. Sayet has a record of fearlessness, as you can see from recent conversations with her at Howlround.com and TCGCircle.org. Opera Think Tank recently had the opportunity to pick her brain as well, as you can see from the following Q&A with her as she prepares what will surely be a remarkable production.

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OTT: Director Barbara Gaines once said something to the effect of: Once you’ve identified a problem in a play, unlocking that problem is often the key to the entire production. What is the most challenging thing about the text of The Magic Flute for you? Is there something you would like to crack open, a problem to solve?

MS: As a society we no longer align ourselves with the original moral compass of The Magic Flute. We have evolved. Simply being a Prince does not automatically win Tamino an audience’s favor anymore. 

So how do we construct new entry points into this story to help us navigate the space between the ages?

The decision to have Tamino begin in the city was the single biggest turning point. I already knew the main landscape for the production would be the northeastern woodlands. By staging Tamino leaving a contemporary city and traveling to the woods at the top of the opera, our audiences begin their journey between worlds with him. Suddenly, we understand his reactions as if they were our own. 

A contemporary setting also offers us new opportunities to solve some of the other problems in the libretto. For starters, that the story preaches women are evil and you should stay away from them. 

But, in interpreting the female characters in Flute there is actually quite a lot of room for exploration. How strong is Pamina as the child of two great forces? What does it mean for Papagena to be a match for Papageno? And in what ways does the Queen of the Night’s power equal Sarastro’s, without manifesting as evil?  

These questions led us on a path to create more complex images for the women in Magic Flute. By grounding the journey in the push and pull between tradition and innovation we have found a holistic approach to creating a Magic Flute that’s logic is pulled from the now.  

You’ve written fearlessly about directors finding a more constructive way to lead than echoing the colonial paradigm of    "a white man barking orders" and automatically being “the smartest person in the room.” However, as the leader of the rehearsal process, what strategies do you use to diffuse the inevitable tension of conflict that comes from the creative process? How would you handle opposition from a singer, technician, or conductor?

The biggest problem with the continuation of the model of the colonial paradigm is that it is a fear-based strategy. Fear is the very breeder of conflict. Communication, on the other hand, dissipates it. 

What source is there for conflict when everyone is being heard and considered? When no one is voiceless? Aren’t we all working together to find the best solution - to make the best production possible that resonates with all of us?

Of course - the greatest challenge to this philosophy is time. Since we are ever running out of it in this industry. I have never - as of yet - dealt with direct head-on opposition to any directing choices I have made. Perhaps because I do not see the world as linearly as that. But, if it were to happen - in that head-on way - I can only imagine that would be because I had stopped listening or the other person had, and that the best way to find the path again would be to see what we had missed and check in, before moving forward. 

You’ve called the Magic Flute an Enlightenment Story, in terms of spiritual enlightenment. How do you make sense of the many symbols and rituals in the piece - revered objects like the flute, Isis and Osiris prayers, Freemasonry imagery, and mythic tests of walking through fire and ice? Is there a through line of imagery or ritual in which Tamino and Pamina will find value?

Do you have a daily ritual? What is ceremony for you today?

One of my favorite discoveries for our Magic Flute has been reframing enlightenment in a modern context. We are living in a time when many people no longer strongly identify with religion, but still surround themselves with ritual to get away from all the noise and search for inner peace. 

My mother is the Medicine Woman of the Mohegan Tribe, so those are the traditions I am grounded in. The push and pull between worlds is something I am familiar with as a Mohegan living in New York City. So much of The Magic Flute - Isis and Osiris, the flute itself, the trials - is about balance. For me, the trials of Fire and Water, are not about survival by enduring, but rather realizing you must develop a relationship with your environment.

Early in the design process we realized that there are many masonic symbols that look almost identical to Mohegan symbols. The symbols in Flute are echoed throughout a vast array of cultures and many of them permeate our current landscape more than we realize. I’m excited to see what these revelations and connections inspire in our audiences. 

Early in your career you took inspiration from Shakespeare’s Caliban, an indigenous islander in The Tempest, who was treated as a monster. Isn’t The Magic Flute’s Monastatos a monstrous, racist stereotype, and how do you hope to overcome this, or any other stereotypes you find in the piece?

There is a lot of darkness and rage in old racist stage depictions. There is no way around it. It is an ugly part of performance history that we haven’t transcended yet.

Caliban was a character in whom I found light and heroism, so I wanted to free him from the box he had been trapped in. But, recently revisiting a Caliban/Prospero scene with the Native Shakespeare Ensemble at Amerinda- a hush fell over the room. It was as if uttering those words in that environment hurt every one of us. Damaging reflections of the past still permeate the classical stage. 

Monastatos doesn’t even have as much flexibility in the story as Caliban in Tempest. He is human in his messiness, but the character is not designed to be lovable, despite love being his only real desire. 

He is designed to be an outsider. So what do you do? You cannot tackle or soften the hurt that the continuance of these characters perpetuates. 

While, I believe deeply that Monastatos deserves an adaptation in which the historical complications of that character are the focus of the production, it is not this one. In honesty, choosing not to focus on Monastatos in this production was very difficult for me. But, our production is grounded in the woodlands, a world with its own belief systems. That is a world that had no word for slavery. 

Our Mohegan word for freedom is Nayawiyuwok. In Tempest, I had the luxury of being able to reframe things in order to understand and complicate Caliban’s very human perspective using that word. However, Monastatos is not the centerpiece of this production and is being portrayed by a white performer [Nicholas Nestorak] in a more contemporary relationship, so we have decontextualized the character from the traditional politics of his race. 

This is in no way an attempt to sanitize the ugly history of the character, but he simply is not the focus of this production, where you will find a more utopian depiction of racial relations, and the conflicts lie in other cultural divides. 

There are spheres constructed within all of these stories, and ultimately, when building a world for them, I have to think about whether I want to reconstruct an ugly past, or envision a better future. 

Our Magic Flute is a Flute for the future. The web of conflict in it stems from real divides that exist around us in the world today. I have broken down as many of the disgusting stereotypes as I could by reframing characters to give them their full complexity. When young people see this production, I want them to see a future for themselves in this world. 

Pamina will not be a damsel in distress. And there are new elements, such as our dancers who represent woodland spirits that take on a life of their own in this production, truly bringing breath to the woods. How can each character be reframed for relevance today rather than sit in a static past?

This is an opera, and we are limited by the story of the music. But I can't help but think that the music - while written in different times - still wants an honest reflection in the world today. 

A Fresh Delivery for Catán's Il Postino

For a springtime breath of fresh air, we have a new take on
Il Postino, Daniel Catan's romantic soundscape based on the hit film of the same name.

Director Heidi Lauren Duke collaborated with designers Ada Smith and Yulia Dvorah Shtern to develop a fresh take on the piece.

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Il Postino is a fantastic fable in which a simple man goes on a quest to discover his greatness, and a great man discovers his own simple soul. Daniel Catan's score is as luscious as it is fierce and fragile, and functions as a vessel for poetry, but also as a ballet of life, an underscoring to time spent on a secluded island.

We've sought to create a tactile, sensual environment for the dreams, fantasies, and heartbreak of this beloved story, where the famous poet Pablo Neruda and the fisherman's son Mario Ruoppolo develop an unusual friendship. Eschewing any sleek tools of projections, video, or pret-a-porter, we devised scenic and costume art comprised principally of earth, paper, and lace.

If poetry uses words as small, irregular building blocks, strung together to create lines, lines that then undulate and layer and move, then we have designed an opera production that is poetry itself: a multitude of layers of various building blocks and lines found in the natural world. We built this environment of rocks forming a mountain, paper-thin cloud wisps creating a multi-dimensional sky, layers of paint chipping off old tin furniture, and Chilean embroidery overlapping the crude swarm of fishermens' nets.

We blend all these textures of sky, sea, land, paper, and fabric together in this place of stark loneliness but also powerful romantic possibility.

Our set is simple – a lonely rock amidst a great sky and sea. The Island is a long rake on one side, a rocky coast going into the sea, which becomes Neruda's back yard and solitary place of repose. The back of the island reflects the kind of stone wall of stairs common in coastal towns. 

Above this, the sky is an ever changing collage of paper clouds – again, horizontal lines of interlocking visual poetry – which fly in and often have the poets' words stenciled into them, allowing light to shine through and create a magical, textured effect. 

While the opera is paced similar to the film – short scenes in many settings – we were able to whittle those locales down to very few. The first and last, primary image we see is Neruda alone on the Island. To create the smaller locales, we add smaller elements, roofs, lighting fixtures, shutters, minimal furniture. All of these man-made elements use the harsh texture of metal – the opposite of our soft world of earth / water / paper. 

Storyboard sketch to flow through locations

Initial rendering of a rotating island and paper clouds, by Ada Smith

For the design of the costumes we are drawn to some beautiful Chilean weaving designs and horsehair textures, and were intrigued with the spectre of Mario's “sad fishermen nets.” We play with these textures to allow Beatrice and Mario to transcend their humble setting as they explore a poetic world. Hence the poet Neruda wears the colorful mark on his jacket of traditional Chilean embroidery. 

While Mario begins in a simple ragged shirt and pants, he later earns a fantastical colored coat, with appliqué “embroidery” made from his interlocking nets, over an open-collared, flowing poet's shirt. Beatrice is allowed to lose her sturdy house dress for a sheer butterfly gown, the wings of the skirt playfully surrounding her. Hence Mario and Beatrice see each other in their most spectacular forms.

Beyond the primary four characters of Neruda, Mario, Beatrice and Matilde, the rest of the ensemble creates the extremes of realistic versus fantastical life. The awakening of the ensemble comes with Mario's awareness and imagination, beginning with the fishermen's chorus in Act I Scene 8, which we imagine happening through Mario's eyes – suddenly these poor, exhausted fishermen shed their dirty, frayed jackets and open their worn jumpsuits, revealing clean, white, flowing poet's sleeves and their movement and gestures follow suit as they serenade their women. 

While the chorus is set for men's voices only, we would also have a small group of female dancers who act in both literal and figurative roles in the island community. When Mario and Giorgio take to recording the sounds of the island, Mario's imagination and artistry is at its highest, and through his eyes we see the fishermen poets of Act 1 appear with their ladies, together creating the movement of the sea, sky and stars in a choreographed dream ballet, influenced by the gestures of traditional cuerca dance.

While the ensemble has tremendous power to create an intoxicatingly sensual world, they also create Neruda's most frightening fear: throngs of the dead, still as boxes. During Neruda's aria in response to devastating news from the mainland, we see these ensemble figures lingering upstage of the Island, a wave ready to roll in. This wave of figures returns at the end of the opera, out of which Mario emerges, singing his last letter to Neruda.

By the end of the opera, Catán's score of soaring melodies, gritty percussion, and flowing brass and strings have taken us around and through this enchanted isla. But the rocks, lace, and paper combine to make a fragile world, and one that is only enlivened by music and metaphor. Here we learn what it takes to bring the poet out of anyone, and how even the most insignificant death can break the heart of a hero. 

Was Mario ever truly a great poet? Did Neruda ever come to love him as a true friend? Will Beatrice retreat back to Donna Rosa's pessimism after her love is taken? Will the island people ever win over the politicians' dismissals and corruption? This piece shall raise more questions than it answers, in the way that the best poetry makes you stop and ponder its meaning, which often seems just beyond your reach.

Opera Week Continues...from Florida, to India?

National Opera Week set records for participation in 37 states this year, and the team at Opera Think Tank was overwhelmed with the support for our posts on American repertoire by women opera directors.

I was struck by how differently we all approach the process of investigating a work and how we digest it. How our ideas add to the history of a piece.

National Opera Week even hit Orlando, Land of Disney. Nice.

Of course, the discussion doesn't need to stop here, and among the operas we looked at, here are some other queries and curiosities that arose:

A Streetcar Named Desire (Previn/Littell)

• Whether you look at the play or the opera by this name, the challenge is the same: do we keep doing the same Elia Kazan production over and over? If it works, why change it? Does the opera warrant a different look and feel than the famous play?
• There was a recent opera production in LA and Chicago, directed by Brad Dalton, which some called "semi-staged", but was no less successful. Perhaps the success was partly due to the fact that it kept the period look that audiences know so well, yet allowed a celebration of unencumbered singers and orchestra on the same stage?
• A 21st century setting could be New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with TV and flash bulbs replacing Blanche's dim lamps. But would Previn's neo-romantic music withstand a hyper modern re-telling?

Brad Dalton's recent Streetcar production

Glory Denied (Cipullo)

• What's true about this piece, and also a new veteran-themed piece The Long Walk, is that the subject matter is so specific and naturalistic that a large production is potentially unnecessary. Indeed, the productions of Glory Denied at Chelsea Opera and Fort Worth Opera Festival were very successful with singers in everyday period clothing on a spare unit set.
• Could we possibly move the piece to a different war setting, or have it reflect the universal plight of all veterans returning home? It seems that the emotional memories surrounding Vietnam and the seismic shifts in pop culture during that time trump any other setting for the piece. Perhaps new productions will turn their creativity to texture and ways of examining our culture's memories of that era.

Glory Denied in Fort Worth

Lizzie Borden (Beeson/Elmslie)

• Sarah Meyers illustrated a great way that the house and environment can play its own character and drive the story. But I couldn't help thinking of ways this same oppressive environment could be created outside of Victorian New England.
• Ms. Borden's arrest shocked her conservative society mostly because she was a young woman, and indeed her gender was both her chief defense and the reason for her acquittal. However, if she had a motive it was a yearning for independence: fiercely feeling entitled to more than a life controlled by either a father or a husband. What if the opera were set in a modern day place where women are still treated as property? 

• Immediately I thought of the thriving stereotypes surrounding Asian women - small-boned, passive and seemingly incapable of independence, much less violence. Just as the Second Industrial Revolution was sweeping post-Civil war New England, the Industrial Tech Revolution is sweeping India and China today. Women's rights are coming to the forefront in these countries just as women's suffrage was a long battle in America in the late 19th century. 
• So what if we were to confront these stereotypes with Lizzie as a "sacred cow" of India, a small and gentle woman willing to do anything to break free of oppressive social customs? Some images below illustrate how both the bovine and the beautiful can be intermixed, and are both worshipped and domesticated.

How can we lie these stories of American history down against the new global revolutions of the 21st century, just as Figaro's revolutionary France runs parallel to modern day American race and class relations? 

In so doing, we not only address problems that face every society around the world, but on a practical level, we also create a more pressing need to fill casts with singers of color and gender diversity, a department in which American opera is sorely lagging.

If only Reshma Shetty were a mezzo to play Lizzie!

In their examination of The Cradle Will Rock, Corinne Hayes and Alison Moritz independently looked for ways Blitzstein's "labor-opera" from the 1930s can embrace the protests of a more modern and diverse population. I look forward to seeing how today's directors create new worlds with both classic pieces and new works, stretching the bounds of the people, places, and ideas opera can reach.

Momento Mori: Elise Sandell on Barber & Menotti's Vanessa

Next in our collection of outstanding directors discussing the American repertoire, we look at Samuel Barber's Pulitzer Prize winning Vanessa, which he wrote with his life-long partner and collaborator, Gian Carlo Menotti, who penned the libretto.

Barber & Menotti

While Barber is known for creating such rich and evocative works such as Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and his heart-wrenching Adagio for Strings, Vanessa was mostly ignored after it's successful 1958 Met premiere (and Pulitzer win!) as being too neo-classical, since such writing was not the style en vogue at the time, and the Edwardian Gothic setting felt out of sync with theatre trends of the time.

The piece has most often been presented as a vehicle for a star soprano, beginning with Eleanor Steber in the premiere, and since then Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Lauren Flanigan have both been featured centerpieces of major revivals.

Finalist of the Opera America Director-Designer Showcase in 2008-2009 for her team's production concept for Einstein on the Beach, Elise Sandell made her mainstage directing debut at Tulsa Opera in 2007, and is regularly engaged on directing staffs of major companies all around the country. Here she contributes an intriguing case for a Vanessa that is much more than a sumptuous soprano vehicle.

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The words “opera” or “domestic drama” are far too narrow to define Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti’s Vanessa. It’s a ghost story, or maybe it’s a haunting. It’s a group of people haunted by their pasts, their futures, their relatives, their fears, each other.

Although the relationship between these works can be described as tenuous at best, I am inspired by Isak Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales when I think of Vanessa. Menotti and Barber are rumored to have been stimulated by this collection of stories when composing this opera, although these specific characters and plot points appear nowhere in her work. Dinesen also provides us with an important point of view…that of a woman, for Isak Dinesen is the pen name of one Karen Blixen.

Danish author Karen Blixen, whose most famous works included Seven Gothic Tales, Out of Africa, and Babette's Feast.

Throughout Blixen’s stories are examples of transformation, an idea that holds well with Vanessa. A daughter turns into her mother, a niece into her aunt, a young stranger into a husband. Yet no one understands exactly what lies beneath the surface of these characters and their behavior. This wonder, this inexplicable voodoo, is at the heart of the magical realism that would drive my production.

Imagine a space that is a trap and a whole world all at once. The Baroness’s manor is a hall of mirrors, a magical space that transforms itself, the characters in it, even the audience point of view. While nostalgic and elegiac in terms of furniture and clothing, nothing will be fixed, and the action will play out like a memory play. (Whose memory are we watching with? Is it accurate?) Some of the furniture and other objects will be outsize, highlighting the slightly surreal behavior of these characters.

Video design will figure prominently into the production. The mirrors that haunt these characters will be mirrored video screens; they are the weather, the jardin d’hiver, thoughts inside the characters heads, even inside our own heads.

The handsome young stranger Anatol is transformed into a demon, then to his father, then to an angel. The Old Baroness is transformed into her desperate granddaughter, the skulls and other memento mori of which Blixen was so fond will appear. Lighting can transform a living hell for one character into a romantic fairy tale for another, as quickly as Barber’s music turns from turmoil to celebration.

Is this a story happening now in front of our eyes, or is it a story long past, being re-told by characters long dead? Do these characters have the power to make different choices? Did they ever? What am I really seeing? What is really true? What is identity, and how can the people who surround us influence or change it? 

The audience will leave with these and many other questions…more questions asked than answers given.

Learn more about Elise Sandell's work at www.elisesandell.com

State of the Art, and Art of the State: A Gender Bend in Alison Moritz's The Cradle Will Rock

Yesterday Corinne Hayes called us to action with an exciting look at The Cradle Will Rock. Today will look at a different way this explosive piece questions our notions of power and gender.

Director Alison Moritz is currently the Resident Assistant Director at Minnesota Opera. She has also served on the directing staffs at Wolf Trap Opera Company, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Atlanta Opera, and Chautauqua Opera.

Together with set designer Charles Murdock Lucas, costume designer Dina Perez and lighting designer Kyle Grant, Alison formed a team to look at this list of American operas. Here she discusses the collaboration.

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Almost immediately, our team discovered a mutual drive to engage with the world through art that speaks to our own political and social experiences, and we spent a lot of time considering each opera and its relevance today. We were struck by the timeliness of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, a work that felt uncannily apt given the context of this summer’s labor disputes at the Metropolitan Opera.

The Cradle Will Rock is structured as a series of flashbacks and vignettes, exposing the members of a so-called Liberty Committee in Steeltown, USA. One by one, we learn how the pillars of the community (including leaders of the church, newspaper, education, arts, and medicine) fell under the sway of Mr. Mister's empire, selling themselves for power and prestige and ultimately becoming part of a societal machine that treats the working class as disposable.

I won't go into the specifics of our production concept here, but there's one detail of our concept which I believe is germane to the discussion at hand this week at Opera Think Tank - Idea Power from Women. 

As a team, we wanted to bring The Cradle Will Rock into the 21st century. After some discussion, it became apparent that we could not imagine a millennial Liberty Committee without a single female member, so we decided to recast the role of Editor Daily as a woman. Casting a female Editor Daily requires very few changes to the existing text, but it creates a series of subtle but important realignments in the power dynamics of the opera. 

Is this casting in keeping with Marc Blitzstein’s original intent? I cannot say for certain. However, since both Mr. and Mrs. Mister threaten and bribe members of the Steeltown middle class for their own gain, I would assert that any implied misogyny in the original libretto is peripheral, a byproduct of Blitzstein’s era, and it should not distract from the larger questions at hand in the opera: Who do the people work for? Does the engine of labor serve the many, or just the one? Is the selling of one’s efforts ever honorable or respectable?

1920s flapper Louise Brooks in a man's suit

Over the past few decades, color-blind casting has slowly entered the mainstream for both opera and theatre. Costume designer Dina Perez’s renderings for our concept include singers from ethnically diverse backgrounds as members of the Liberty Committee in order to reflect the changing face of power today. However, since casting choices like this require no adjustments to Blitzstein’s original text and music, there is less pressure to justify them artistically, even though they are part of a charged debate about race and power in America.

And so, my question is this - as ideas regarding gender and sexuality become more and more fluid, how can the opera community continue to engage in this discussion onstage? 

I’m encouraged to see many newly commissioned works that address this topic - including the recent performances of As One at American Opera Projects, where mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Kelly Markgraf shared the role of a transgender protagonist.

 

Perhaps even more importantly, I’m inspired by the current wave of opera directors reexamining the standard repertoire in order to represent the world as they see it today. Through productions like these, we are making the case that opera - far from being a museum piece - can be truly state of the art.

Learn more about Alison Moritz's work at www.alisonmoritz.com

You Can't Sit Still: Corinne Hayes rallies behind Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock

Among the many works of 20th century opera that Opera Think Tank researched for this series, one of the most fascinating and shocking was Marc Blizstein's The Cradle Will Rock. 

In a way, the piece is a social movement, inside of a musical, inside of a historical turning point in politics and theatre. Not only are the real events surrounding its opening night bizarre and convoluted, but the political kaleidoscope of capitalists, socialists, fascists, communists, freedom-fighters, union members, and New Deal government workers demonstrated in the piece and in real life is enough to draw a diagram of practically every political philosophy in existence. Tim Robbins dramatized the piece and the conflicted world in which it premiered in a star studded 1999 movie.

Blitzstein called it a "labor-opera" and it was revived in 1960 with full orchestra and opera singers by the New York City Opera. That same decade, it was revived on Broadway, though like most Broadway revivals since, only a lone piano accompanied the singing actors.

Composer Marc Blitzstein at the piano

It's not surprising that a lot of directors found this piece exciting to dream on, so we have two posts on the piece. 

The first is below, from director Corinne Hayes, an emerging talent whose work has been seen at Marble City Opera, Central City Opera, and Opera North among others, and she has served as Assistant Director at companies such as Wolf Trap Opera Company and Dallas Opera. 

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"Well, you can’t climb down and you can’t sit still…"

Union Protests in Madison

Labor struggles are at the fore of hot button news stories throughout the country—Scott Walker’s adversarial approach to teachers’ unions, Occupy Wall Street’s outcry against corporate greed, and, closer to home for many of us, the recent labor disputes at the Metropolitan Opera. Agree or disagree, the human value of labor is constantly being called into question—a question that results in lockouts and Right to Work, or, with patience and goodwill, in compromise and a renewed sense of shared purpose.

Union Protests at the Met

The Cradle Will Rock sprang from a sweeping folio of reforms known as The New Deal—a mix of legislation and executive orders intended to put struggling Americans back to work following the stock market crash of 1929. From the pen of Marc Blitzstein, the eye of Orson Welles, and the pocketbook of the federal government, The Cradle Will Rock is aggressively pro-union, calling for the spectator to rally behind Larry Foreman and rise up against Mr. Mister (otherwise known as “The Man”). 

Nearing its 80th birthday, Cradle’s jazz-inflected tunes and unsentimental language resonate with a peculiar immediacy as the gulf between "them and us" grows ever wider.

A bit of backstory: Shortly before Cradle was scheduled to open on Broadway, the Works Progress Administration shut down the project. To avoid restrictions enacted by both the federal government and Actor’s Equity, Blitzstein and company opened the show with a single performer onstage—Blitzstein himself, serving as pianist and ersatz cast member—while the principal cast performed from seats throughout the house.

Read the original 1937 New York Times report here

Protest is theater. We perform our grievances, driven by a desire to give them voice. I am reminded of something I witnessed at an Occupy encampment in Washington, D.C.: during an un-amplified speech, the speaker’s words were repeated by the group, to ensure that all in attendance were able to hear. As the people’s microphone took hold, the speaker’s words gained a tangible power, one that energized the group of protestors and gave pause to the bystanders. 

Occupy Wall Street Protesters

I see The Cradle Will Rock as a rallying point, a means to both unify and amplify. Imagine Cradle on the steps of the Wisconsin state capitol, on the grass of Zuccotti Park, in the streets of Steeltown, USA. Broken into vignettes, the piece is inherently flexible in its presentation: archetypal characters play out episodes addressing corruption, prostitution (in its many guises), labor issues, laced through with a growing belief in the possibility of positive change.

Pull Cradle apart. Present Moll to the women's club and Editor Daily to the mainstream press. Pull it out of the theater, scatter the piece through the community, turn its songs into rallying cries.  

If nothing else, The Cradle Will Rock is art meant to work. No lights, no costumes, no opening night gala—just a group of people driven by a common vision, out to do nothing more than change the world.

Learn more about Corinne Hayes's work at www.corinnehayes.com

Making Sense of Life: Andrea Dorf McGray on Bernstein's Candide

Next in our opera week of wonders we look at Leonard Bernstein's Candide, an operetta based on the novella by Voltaire. You can read the novella online, but particularly illuminating is the last chapter here, where the moral of the outlandish story reveals itself. 

Considering the challenge of adapting Voltaire and the beautiful simplicity of the libretto's poetry, it's interesting to note that the book was a decades-long work in progress begun by Lillian Hellman, after which Bernstein collaborated with director Harold Prince and new writers on the revival, including Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur (who wrote most of the lyrics, including those to "Glitter and Be Gay"), John LaTouche, James Agee, Stephen Sondheim, and many others, including Bernstein and his wife.

The first version, featuring Barbara Cook as Cunegonde, opened on Broadway in 1956 and Harold Prince revived the piece again on Broadway as late as 1997. If only more operas could find their path to the Great White Way over the course of four decades!

Our contributor for this piece is director Andrea Dorf McGray, who is based in the Washington, D.C. area and has done a great deal of work for Washington National Opera and Maryland Opera Studio.

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Having done a semi-staged production of basically the concert version of the show, there are a slew of themes, aspects and questions that continue to fascinate me about this opera. Here are a few.

1) The notion of the personal responsibility that each of us carries for our own lives and for our own little parts of the world. 

After all the dizzying ins and outs of the story, the round-the-world trip of exotic locations, unusual people and twists in the plot, the whole opera zeros in like a laser on the final two numbers, the reprise of “Universal Good,” followed by “Make our Garden Grow.” And its here that I believe we find the central question that the story asks: how do we make sense of life?

Using fantastic imagery to illustrate moral narratives: Hieronymus Bosch's Hell

In the reprise of the “Universal Good” music, the text changes from its previous poetry to the following: 

“Life is neither good, nor bad. Life is life, and all we know.
Good and bad, and joy and woe, are woven fine, are woven fine.” 

And in “Make our Garden Grow,” Candide sings, 

“And let us try, before we die, to make some sense of life. We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good. We’ll do the best we know. We’ll build our house and chop our wood, and make our garden grow.”

What I find in these pieces of text, and in the soul-stirring music to which they are set, is a call to believe that though life is far from perfect, and indeed often contains horrid, beyond awful things, we do have a purpose here. It is to join together (“come and be my wife”), to work the daily tasks of life (“build our house, chop our wood”), and in so doing to create our own gardens of Eden (“make our garden grow”). 

Paradise is not out there to be found; it must be grown right here, in each of our corners of the land. We are the ones responsible for the planting, the nurturing, the reaping, and the re-sowing; we are the ones responsible for the present and future hope and happiness of ourselves and our communities.

2) The hero’s journey. 

Candide’s world shatters over and over again throughout the story. With his faith in Optimism so strongly intact at the beginning, he is able to rally a few times. As the story plays out, however, that faith begins to shake, and he starts to rely more on his wits, his friends, and the sustaining strength that his love for Cunegonde provides. But it is in “Nothing More Than This” that Candide hits bottom; he realizes that this ideal woman that he has carried in his heart, this dream that kept him going through all manner of hell, this “angel face with flaxen hair,” is just a money-grubbing, shallow person.

Material Girls: Cunegonde portrayed, from left, by Kristin Chenowith, Marnie Breckenridge, and Anna Christy

Candide had confidently centered the meaning of his life on the love he felt for Cunegonde, a woman, it turns out, whose real core he did not know. At the end of his journey, he shifts to searching for the meaning of life by engaging in the small, daily tasks of life – chopping wood, baking bread, growing food, building shelter. 

There is something quite spiritual in this shift, in the recognition that the meaning of life is not a static answer to be found, but rather it’s a dynamic act with which we must engage.

Two writers that I would like to saturate myself in further when considering a full production of Candide are Wendell Berry and Anne Lamott. 

Wendell Berry in his world

I imagine that what these two authors have to say about the little things in life, and how the little things actively create the ever-changing big picture of life, would be very useful in thinking more deeply about the story and about Candide’s journey.

3) The comedy and tragedy of this opera turn on a dime. 

It’s one of the most amazing and beautiful aspects of the piece, and it makes me think of the Harold Clurman quote:  

“The truth is like castor oil. It’s difficult to take and hard to swallow, so we get them to laugh and while their mouths are open, we pour a little in.”

Finding the right spin so that the two sides of the one coin that is life – the comedy and the tragedy – are examined, belly-laughed over, cried tears over, and ultimately lifted up – is the great joy of rehearsing and producing this opera. 

Learn more about Andrea Dorf McGray's work at www.andreadorf.com