directory  |  sites  |  press        Submit Site  |  Submit Press Release

By Robert Wilder Blue

Few recent operas have connected with audiences as immediately and deeply as Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. Since its premiere in San Francisco in 2000, the opera has been performed to acclaim in Orange County (CA), Cincinnati, New York, Austin, Detroit and Adelaide (Australia); future productions are scheduled for Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Calgary and Dresden (Germany). In an art form that resides mostly in the past (and often in languages other than English), Dead Man Walking was an anomaly; it told a timely American story and gave audiences the sort of visceral emotional experience they usually expect only from theater or film.

Now Mr. Heggie has written a new work for Houston Grand Opera (HGO), The End of the Affair, based on the 1951 Graham Greene novel. While exploring different story matter from Dead Man Walking, it again takes up the theme of spiritual crisis that has been the focus of Mr. Heggie’s work for the past several years. USOPERAWEB visited with Mr. Heggie in his flat above San Francisco’s Castro district, where he spoke about the genesis of the new opera, among other things.

“After the workshop of Dead Man Walking, Patrick Summers and David Gockley approached me about doing a piece for HGO. We didn’t know what the subject would be at that point, but we knew it would be a chamber-sized opera, because they wanted to present it in the Cullen Theater, which is their smaller performing space. Dead Man had such a massive cast and ensemble and orchestra, I was eager to do something on a smaller scale that was still big dramatically.

“Originally, you know, Dead Man Walking was supposed to be a comedy—a lighthearted piece. But it didn’t turn out that way [he laughs]. I thought the second opera could be something more lighthearted and we had the idea of doing an operatic version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. But, it turned out that Sean Connery had the rights all tied up. I turned to Terrence McNally again to pick his brain for ideas, even though I knew he wasn’t available to write another libretto at that time. The new film version of The End of the Affair had just come out and Terrence knew the book and suggested I take a look at it. I read it and then watched the movie and read the book twice more and I fell in love with it. David read the book and thought it was a brilliant idea, as did Patrick. It was all pretty instantaneous. HGO contacted the Graham Greene estate to secure the rights. That all happened about a year after I had begun talks with HGO.

“The story is huge dramatically. It is a deeply human story about spiritual transformation, with extremely elevated emotions, which opera does very well. I was writing this post-9/11 and I liked the fact that The End of the Affair was all about a changed world. It is extraordinarily relevant for our time. It takes place in London during the Blitz ; in fact, the story is set in motion when a bomb falls and explodes. Before 9/11, we had an attitude that was very similar to Londoners before the Blitz, in that they were a major city and felt impenetrable and all of a sudden everything changed in a second.

“Another reason this project was perfect was because I wanted to write a big lyric-soprano role. Up to now, I’ve focused so much on mezzo-sopranos in my work. Sarah is a great operatic character. There’s an intense vulnerability to her, but there’s a great mystery as well. She has moved off on a totally different trajectory. The rest of the characters are all men who have such a need of her and I was fascinated by the dynamics between them. It is Sarah who makes the choices and decisions that influence everyone about her.”

Yet, work on the opera did not proceed smoothly. “The project has been fraught from the beginning and has gone through many shifts and changes. My first librettist, a wonderful playwright named Gary Bonasorte, died. I was originally going to work with the director Michael Mayer, and he introduced me to Heather McDonald, another playwright. I did not know her at that time, even though her work has been performed all over the country at the major playhouses. I read some of her plays and I found her work incredibly poetic. Heather has the ability to distill character in so few words or gestures, which is exactly right for opera, and to find the essential scenes and organize them in a logical sequence theatrically.

“Then, Michael had to drop out because he got a Hollywood film based on Michael Cunningham’s book Home at the End of the World, which will be released this summer, I believe. This was with Sissy Spacek and Colin Farrell and it was a very big deal and he knew he would have not time to focus on an operatic project. Luckily, Leonard Foglia was available; he had done the second production of Dead Man Walking that has appeared all over the country.

“But when we were ready to start writing, Heather had a huge crisis in her family, which delayed completion of the libretto. I finally got Act I in February, 2003, and Act II in May. I had to write the entire opera, orchestrate it, do the workshop and then do rewrites in about ten months. It was very turbulent. But the story was about such huge struggle, it almost seemed as though the opera had to have a struggle behind it as well. Everyone was a little nervous and I admit I didn’t know for sure I could get it done on schedule. You usually get only one chance with an opera and I didn’t just want to throw notes on a page. It has to be honest and true and right. You can't afford to fail. You have to be willing to take that chance, but any composer or artist is judged by their most recent work.

“The more I got into writing End of the Affair, the more excited I was by telling this story—this huge, incredibly dramatic story—on such an intimate scale. The way I work is that I get to know the architecture and flow of the story and the characters and they start telling me how they want it to go. I listen to them, making sure that the music is telling the story and propelling it forward. From the start, the characters spoke to me very clearly.

“What did someone say about Handel taking only 30 days to write the Messiah? Well, it took him forty-plus years to write the Messiah. It’s amazing that it came out of him so quickly, but it took all of his experience up to that point. That’s true with any composer. But I felt that because this was done in a hurry, I had to be resourceful and creative in a different way and on a different time schedule. I’m very proud of the piece. It’s quite different from Dead Man Walking.”

What, specifically, did you learn from 'Dead Man Walking'?

“God, I learned everything about what I do. It was such a huge first project and everything was new—I had never written an opera. I learned that you can say a lot with very little. I learned the value of melodic and rhythmic gestures that repeat in different dynamics—leitmotifs, you could say, but beyond that gestures that might be just a drop in the pond, but the ripple effect is strong. I learned that it is important for the characters to each have a musical language that defines them so they are recognizable immediately. Also, I have become bolder with pushing vocal ranges on both ends—lower and higher.

“I felt with the new opera I could actually be more intense with smaller forces. I told a friend who is an orchestral musician that The End of the Affair was scored for 24 players and she responded, ‘Oh, that’s scary. There’s no place to hide.’ That’s very true. It’s like writing chamber music—everything counts, everything is exposed. When you have a large orchestra, there’s a lot of room for padding. My inspiration for knowing it could work was listening to the Britten operas, which are amazing. Listen to The Turn of the Screw. It has 17 players in the orchestra and it sounds massive. Also, Ariadne auf Naxos—it’s amazing what Strauss was able to do with that orchestra. It says a lot for the flexibility of opera that it’s really about great singing and great drama and being smart with the use of accompanying instruments. It’s exciting to have a large orchestra, but it’s equally exciting to achieve an intensity and an intimacy with a smaller number of instruments. It colors the story differently and it also gives you more freedom with the vocal writing, because you’re not as likely to cover the singers.

“You know how things happen in a sequence in life and at the time you’re not really sure why they’re happening? From 2000-2002, I was resident composer for the Eos Orchestra in New York, which is a chamber orchestra of often no more than 28 players. I had to write four big pieces for them. It was an amazing training ground that completely prepared for writing End of the Affair.

“Right before I wrote this piece, I wrote the cello concerto for the Oakland/East Bay Symphony called Holy the Firm, which was based on the Annie Dillard story. That was a large-scale piece, except that the cello as a solo instrument can be so easily covered—it is a question of balance. Then, I did a set of songs for Susan Graham and Eugenia Zukerman and myself called The Deepest Desire, based on the meditations of Sister Helen Prejean. This was, of course, a more intimate piece. In those two pieces, I developed a language that was new for me. I explored rangy-type things and I started solidifying my own language and voice as a composer, which felt very good. I used a lot of the language from those two pieces to create the language for the new opera. It is a more advanced harmonic language, a little denser but still extraordinarily lyrical and tonally based. And, there are more numbers—arias and ensembles that have a definite beginning and end—than in Dead Man Walking.

“I finished the opera on October 4, 2003, and we started the workshop on October 7. HGO didn’t have a budget to do a workshop, so I called a friend at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where I had done a masterclass, and I knew they had a good opera program. They realized how valuable it would be for the students to be in on something like this and they came up with the money to do it, which was something like $20,000. They were able to give everyone a small honorarium and to give us a hall and a recording of the final read-through. It was pretty amazing. It was a full week and it was very isolated, so we could really have a workshop, rather than a showcase. Heather McDonald and Leonard Foglia were there. The cast was wonderful: Nicole Foland, David Okerlund and John Packard, as well as Katherine Ciezinski, Robert Orth and Joe Evans, who will do the piece in Houston.

“Workshops are invaluable. I can’t imagine doing a large-scale theatrical piece without a full workshop. It only helps. Writing is such a solitary process, that to get perspectives from people you admire and trust is invaluable. Although, you never really know if it’s going to work or not until it’s on the stage, being performed in front of an audience. That’s the scary thing about opera. You can think and prepare all you like, but the reality is a much different thing.

“I spent all of November and half of December doing rewrites and orchestrating it. There were a couple structural things in terms of dramaturgy that I needed to fix to make for better storytelling and to solidify the architecture of the piece musically. I was finally done with opera in the middle of December. The copyist spent much of January copying out the parts and I was proofreading them madly. We started rehearsals on February 2 and it opens on March 4.”

How do arias and ensembles present themselves when you are writing an opera?

“They come naturally in the libretto. For me, it’s about keeping within the flow of the story. It needs to feel as though it’s an organic moment—that it makes sense for the character to take that moment. Every one of those characters needs at least one defining moment—one big solo moment. As a theater composer you also have to think pragmatically; if you want really good singers to champion your work, you need to give them those big solo moments where they can invest themselves fully. Ultimately, though, it’s about what is right for the character. As we were figuring out the libretto, there were definite points where it made sense for time to stop and for this beautiful moment to happen that moves the story forward but also allows the character to reveal more of him or herself than we would get otherwise.

“With Dead Man Walking, I wanted it to charge relentlessly forward and that at the moment when time stopped, it was as if someone had put on the breaks. In the new opera, there’s a forward motion, but there’s a different musical timing and pacing. It’s hard to describe—it’s very hard to talk about music. One of my goals in writing whatever you call this—whether you call it opera or music theater—is that there is a sense of storytelling that doesn’t stop. If a number appears, even though it has a beginning and an end, it has appeared organically and it makes sense within the story line. It’s important that the audience not be taken out of that sound and story world we have put them in.”

What part of orchestration is inspiration and what part just plain work?

“I think orchestrally as I’m composing, even though I write on what is called a short score. Usually I have a line for each singer and then three or four lines for the orchestra. The real chore is doing everything by hand; I don’t work on a computer. I have a copyist who develops a template from the piano-vocal score. He puts in all the vocal lines and the instruments I’m using. Then, after I’ve put down all the black dots on all those pages, I send it off to him. Orchestration is not difficult in terms of knowing what I’m doing. It just feels like rewriting an essay after you’ve already written every word out. But, it’s fun in the sense that you have the black and white bones and architecture of the piece and then you’re putting all the colors. As far as the composing, sometimes I am only able to work an hour a day, other times ten or twelve hours in a day if I have ideas going—if the characters are talking to me or if the muse is speaking, whatever that means. With orchestration I can sit for eight or ten hours at a time—as long as my hand holds out. I orchestrated the entire opera in five weeks, which was really fast. I took six months to orchestrate Dead Man. I have definitely gotten better and faster at orchestration, because of my year with Eos.”

You live in a busy and noisy urban environment. Is it conducive to accomplishing your best work?

“I thrive in this atmosphere. If I were totally isolated, I don’t think I’d be able to write a note. I need human interaction and stimulation. What I like about San Francisco is that it offers me both: we have a back yard that is very quiet and private, yet if I walk two blocks either direction, I’m in the middle of a tremendous amount of activity and interaction with people. My reward at the end of the day is walking somewhere and getting myself a latte. My partner, Curt [Branom], is in Beach Blanket Babylon, so he’s gone from late afternoon until about midnight. My most productive hours are in the evening, so that works out well. Of course, when I was in such a terrible push as I was this year, I would often have to work all day and night.

“I’m so happy in San Francisco. I’ve never been happier in my entire life, and I know that to write successfully, I have to be happy. I’ve been through depressions in the past. When I lost the use of my right hand and I couldn’t play and I didn’t want to write music—back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s before I moved up to San Francisco—I went through a terrible depression. I know from my history that to be creative and to be happy with what I’m working on and to feel excited about the next project, I have to be in a really stable, happy environment. Sad is different; you can be sad and still be creative. But depressed—everything shuts down. So, I have found the Emerald City [he laughs].”

You mentioned before we started the interview that this had been a difficult year. How do you continue to work and allow the inspiration to come through when life wants to distract you?

“When aren’t there distractions? The way the world is set up right now, especially in this country, there isn’t a lot of time for pause and reflection and transition. It’s not part of our world anymore, which is a sad thing. If you think about it historically, the places people have gone to reflect and take time were either religious institutions or the arts. Well, numbers are down on both of those now. Brain activity and sound bites are so revved up and attention spans are shorter. We don’t live in a world that is sympathetic for being a creative artist. So, you have to create your own reality. I’ve been able to make my living as a full-time composer since 1998, which I never thought would happen. That means having to be a businessman and a publicist, as well as a creative artist and a human being and a partner with a life—we have an eight-year-old child. You just try to create a reality that is conducive to making the most important parts of your life work.

“Of course I get overwhelmed sometimes. This year was hard because everything came crunching in at the last minute. I can’t really write until I have the libretto. I can be formulating musical textures and ideas, but until I know the scene and how the people got there and how they are interacting and where they are going next, it really doesn’t make sense to write the music. Plus, I was trying to be present for my family. Plus, there were three productions of Dead Man Walking, in Austin and Detroit and the first international production in Australia. I was also performing concerts and recitals, many with Frederica von Stade. And, I represent myself so I always have to be thinking about future projects. Then, my sister died unexpectedly in August. All of that happening in one year while trying to write this new dramatic piece was overwhelming. And we’re a world at war again and that is preoccupying.”

In past centuries, composers turned out one or more operas a year. Now, the process is much longer.

“Eighteenth and nineteenth century composers had a different sense of scrutiny over them. They were being commissioned all the time. It was not unusual to have a hundred new operas every year in Europe in the 19th century, most of which disappeared after the premiere. In this day and age, it’s a very different game. There is a tremendous bar that has been set and we have to measure up against it. When I would talk to Carlisle Floyd about his operas, he said he always allowed three to four years to complete them. There was a gestation period, a period when he was actually writing, a period to orchestrate, and a period to workshop and revise and rewrite. Musicals don’t happen today in a few months as they used to. It often takes years of planning and preparation and support to get something to the stage now. The stakes are so much higher. You cannot stage something cheaply these days—opera or musicals. It takes a lot of people believing in you and championing your work. I don't have another opera commission lined up after this. I don't know if I want one.”

Still, why don’t American opera companies do a new opera every year?

“David Gockley does. The End of the Affair is HGO’s 29th world premiere. If every opera company did one new piece a year, the art form would move forward with an enormous leap. Think of the talents that could be unveiled that are waiting for an opportunity like this. Goodness knows I wouldn't have been given a second opera if I hadn't been given an opportunity for my first, which was sort of a Cinderella story. But there are other composers driving taxis or working at PR jobs or whatever who are waiting for an opportunity like that.

“General directors have a lot of pressures these days. They have to be concerned about two things primarily: the board and the audience. They have to be certain the operas they program are going to serve their community and have good results at the box office. They don't program the normal repertory lightly, so doing a world premiere cannot be done lightly either. The great thing that David has done since he arrived in Houston thirty years ago is to built that into his audience base—they expect and look forward to the new work every year. It takes a general director with that kind of vision to create that in the community. The symphony world does it a lot more, but it's less expensive for them. In opera, it starts with a general director building up enough support with the board and the audience to take that first daring step.

“A lot of this resistance is due to what we went through in music during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s with what Ned Rorem calls the “serial killers”—the serial composers—when music became academic and cerebral and very difficult. Audiences, for the most part, rejected that music and as a result, a lot of general directors shied away from commissioning new pieces. In this country, the financial support comes from the donors and the audience and the corporations. There isn’t the government support as there is in Europe. Audiences are afraid to go to something new, because there is still the stigma that they aren’t going to like it—that it’s going to be ugly and difficult to understand. If you give people unknown music, plus an unknown story, it’s a lot to ask of an audience.

“Plus, we're in a down economy now. HGO was going to do Dead Man Walking last year and they substituted The Merry Widow, because they were worried about ticket sales and sponsorship. People are much more cautious about how they spend their dollars and it's human nature to go for something known rather than unknown. There are exceptions, but the adventurous are much fewer. Not everyone trekked across the country to find the west coast. There is interest in new work, but people are generally going to go to something they're familiar with. There's less of a risk; it's a safer place to put their money; and they're going to know what they’re getting. It's tough to get an audience to the point where they're willing to take a chance. There is always tremendous media attention when Dead Man Walking is done because it is unusual for something new and topical to be coming to the opera house. It doesn't necessarily translate into sold-out houses, although it has done very well. It did very well in Austin and in Australia it was amazing. It was the closest thing I felt to the electricity of the opening in San Francisco. The audience didn't know what hit them, which was really wonderful.

“Audiences are shrinking for the arts and you have to prove to the community why the arts matter. There is basically no classical music or opera on television or radio or in the schools these days, and you see the effect of that on the potential audience. I think composers and performers have a responsibility in the projects they choose to create and champion, to answer the question, why does this matter? Why is this relevant? Why is it going to make a difference in your life? All those things are very important, especially in an economic downturn.

“People can't afford things that are frivolous. Look at the cost of getting a proper education in this country. Look at the cost of health care in the wealthiest country in the world. This is where people’s dollars go. So, to get them to take the time and show up is asking a lot. I’m terribly respectful of that. We have a big job: we have to create something that matters.

“But, I’m hopeful. It’s a very exciting time for the art form. There are smart people running opera companies and if they can make it successful through these economic times that says something. From all the different Opera America conferences and from the reports I read, opera companies are very eager to explore new territory. But they have to make sure it will work in their communities and that it won’t break the bank.”

Do you go to hear other new operas?

“I do if I’m not writing. When I’m writing I cannot go to anything, because I get very distracted. When I’m working on something, especially with a large structure where I’m creating a musical world, I have to stay true to that. I become a very boring, uninformed person during that process. It’s not that I’m not interested and supportive, because I am always eager to hear what my colleagues are doing. There are so many composers I admire and I’m always excited to hear what they are doing. Last year at Houston, we heard scenes from [Mark Adamo’s new opera] Lysistrata, scenes from Salsipuedes of Daniel Catán and a couple of scenes I had eeked out just in time for that presentation (which I basically trashed and rewrote afterward). It was so exciting to hear these other works in progress and I just thought they were brilliant. I have so much admiration for Mark and Daniel. Mark has gone on a whole new direction after Little Women and is using an amazing musical language. Daniel has gone even further in the direction he was going with Florencia en el Amazonas—it’s gorgeous music. The biggest compliment I could give both of them is that they made me really, really jealous.”

How has the success of 'Dead Man Walking' influenced the new opera?

“I am aware that there is a different expectation with End of the Affair. I set a bar for myself. That’s in a good way and a bad way. There were a lot people who were very moved by Dead Man Walking and they are looking forward to this piece. The people who didn’t like Dead Man Walking will probably be eager to see the new piece fail. There’s not much I can do about that, though, so what I tried to do was get out of my head as much as possible and just write and do what I can to serve the story. I also wanted to do a very different kind of piece for the second opera, so I wouldn’t be repeating myself. I think that’s my goal with every commission I take on—I want it to be something different that is going to push me in a different direction or take me a different way so I don’t get into that quagmire of repeating myself.”

“One problem was that I read all of the reviews of Dead Man Walking. I’ve learned since not to do that. What happens is that they become imbedded in your psyche. You start believing the stuff on both sides and letting it affect you. That’s not the way to go about it.”

Why does it seem as though New York doesn’t like new operas?

“I think the biggest strike composers from California has against us is that we don’t have the academic training from the northeast. All my training is from California. I didn’t go to one of the conservatories or study with any of the right teachers. I definitely feel with my work that there is a resistance in the east, certainly in the press. Although, I have champions in the press too, so I’m not complaining. General directors and audiences generally decide what will be heard, though, not the press. Some people perceived Dead Man Walking as not a critical success but rather a popular success. I would rather have a popular success than a critical success any day.

My friend Stephen Schwartz wrote the musical Wicked, which just opened in New York and got some very nasty things written about it. It’s selling $1 million worth of tickets a week, so I guess the audiences didn’t read those reviews. You really have to be concerned about the integrity of the work itself rather than what people are going to say. You can’t control that. You can only control the work you put on the paper and that’s what I focus on.”

What does the future hold?

“I’m looking forward to getting back to writing songs, which is where my heart and soul lie. I’m writing three big cycles this year, including another one for Flicka [Frederica von Stade] with a group called Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara. She’s writing the texts for that. Also, there’s a piece with Terrence, which is more of a musical theater piece than an opera. There’s one opera singer and the rest of the cast is musical theater singers—really well-trained musical theater singers. There are some really
marvelous singers on Broadway now that have marvelous technique and range. It’s an original story that Terrence wrote that was never produced. He’ll be here in March doing a residency at the New Conservatory Theatre and we’ll be working during that time.”

Are there other companies interested in 'The End of the Affair'?

“There are two companies that are interested, one in California and one in Wisconsin. But, a lot of companies have a wait-and-see attitude with new works. They want to know if it’s any good and if the audience liked it and whether it sold at the box office. But I feel very good about the piece. I think it’s a piece that matters. It tells an important story for our time, when we are a world at war, seeing senseless killing and destruction. The piece is really about what you do after loss and where you find that core of hope. Do you find it in other people? Do you find it in a higher power? Do you find it in yourself? That’s the quest the major characters are on in this story. What is my truth? Where do I go from here? It’s terribly dramatic. I think this has been my journey over the past few years, which is why I was drawn to this story. And there’s more sex than there was in Dead Man Walking [he laughs].

The End of the Affair premieres at Houston Grand Opera on March 4, 2004, and continues through March 21, 2004. Appearing are Cheryl Barker as Sarah, Peter Coleman-Wright as Henry, Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Bendrix, Robert Orth as Parkis, Joseph Evens as Smythe, Katherine Ciesinski as Sarah’s mother. Patrick Summers and James Lowe conduct; Leonard Foglia directs. Set design is by Michael McGarty; costume design is by Jess Goldstein; lighting design is by Donald Holder. For more information, visit www.houstongrandopera.org.