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Mary Beth Peil

When USOPERAWEB learned that Central City Opera would be doing a new production of Lee Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke we thought it would be a gas to arrange a conversation between the first Alma, Mary Beth Peil, and the newest, Jennifer Casey Cabot.

Mary Beth Peil played Alma in the 1971 world premiere (St. Paul Opera Association) and in four subsequent productions, including the Chicago Opera Theater version televised on PBS in 1980. She eventually left opera to devote her talents to acting and has appeared in film and on stage (including the Williamstown Theater Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hartford Theater and Playwrights Horizons) in a variety of classic and modern roles, singing and not. She currently plays Grams on the WBN series Dawson’s Creek. Jennifer Casey Cabot spent several years in Germany but has recently returned to the U.S. and given acclaimed performances with Washington Opera, Kentucky Opera, San Diego Opera, Dallas Opera and New York City Opera, among others. Her roles include Pamina in The Magic Flute, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Violetta in La Traviata and the title role in Carlisle Floyd’s classic American opera Susannah. Central City’s production marks her debut in the role of Alma.

Jennifer Casey Cabot

It took no small number of e-mails between Mary Beth, Jennifer and USOPERAWEB to find a mutually convenient time for a telephone conference call; when the appointed time finally arrived we discovered that Mary Beth and Jennifer both happened to be in Washington, D.C.; Mary Beth was appearing in the Kennedy Center’s Sondheim Celebration and Jennifer had just arrived home for a brief respite. It wasn’t the only coincidence between the two.

RWB: As I warned you, we like to start at the beginning. Could you tell us a little about your upbringings and how you became singers?

MBP: I was born and grew up in Davenport, Iowa. I fell in love with classical music when my father took me to hear the Messiah when I was in fourth grade. I thought I was going to go through the roof – the sound of that chorus, the voices and the orchestra. I remember my piano teacher was sitting in front of me and she was so mortified that my father would bring a nine-year-old to the Messiah. She kept turning around to see if I was falling asleep. But, I surely wasn’t bored; I was in heaven.

My very first performing experience was singing “In the Still of the Night” in front of the high school assembly. I remember taking off my glasses and thinking the only way I could do this was to not see anybody. I never had experienced such a rush in my life as being in front of 2,000 of my peers and having them respond and look at me like I was an entirely different person. And so I became an entirely different person. I sort of morphed from this awkward, fat, shy person to someone who felt like she had something to say.

JCC: “In the Still of the Night” was one of my earliest solos too! I’m totally serious.

MBP: Maybe we were destined to be Almas. I can see there’s going to be some connection here.

When I was a senior in high school, I had the chutzpah to do Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus – of course not having a clue as to what it was about – all the sexuality and so on. I was just imitating the director – all the sophistication and the gestures.

I majored in music at Northwestern University and afterward went right to New York and studied. I did the Met auditions and was in the Met National Company. The first performance I attended at the Met was Die Fledermaus in the same English translation I had performed. I was just howling at finally getting what it was all about.

JCC: I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Both of my parents grew up and lived there until they were married and moved to Long Island. I really only lived in Nashville for a year, but I still claim some southern roots. I grew up in Shoreham, way out on the north shore of Long Island. I started in folk music at about eleven years old. I took guitar lessons from my local primary school teacher and within a month realized I could sing and just became a complete minstrel. I had a lot of bravado going for me. I sang all over: in my church and in local talent shows and I sang the leads in most of the high school plays. Somewhere around my junior year in high school a chorus teacher told me I could sing opera if I wanted to and she tempted me with Handel’s “Rejoice” from the Messiah. I had never heard anything like it. My parents listened to a lot of classical orchestral music, but no opera. The only female voices I had related to were Joan Baez and Judy Collins because my father just happened to like folk music of the ‘60s and ‘70s...hippie music if you will! I was in love with Joan Baez especially. I know it’s hard when young singers sing only with straight tones, they never can identify with a classical voice, but I could. I got excited quickly about singing opera and classical music after I learned that one aria. A year later, I decided to apply to conservatories and got into Oberlin and ended up going there and loving it.

Then I went to Yale School of Music and after that I got a scholarship for year’s apprenticeship with Deutsche Opera Berlin. I sang in Germany for four years and loved it. But I decided I wanted to base my career at home. I didn’t want to get lost in a small German house; also my husband is American so I wanted to return to the U.S.

RWB: Mary Beth, you perform now in the theater and you’re in a television series. Was it your dream all along to be an actress?

MBP: It took me a while to realize that my hook with opera wasn’t so much my voice and the singing as it was the theatricality of it. I did my best and got the most excited and had the most totally committed time when I was working with theater directors. At that point in the ‘60s and ‘70s, theater directors were just beginning to work in opera. Frank Corsaro, who directed the world premiere of Summer and Smoke, was one of the first. I also worked with Jose Quintero in the La Bohème he directed for the Met National Company. People told me I was a good actress for an opera singer and I just sort of accepted that. I didn’t always feel as comfortable about my singing but I always felt comfortable and more sure of myself as an actress, which was a clue of things to come. I could have maybe paid attention to that clue a little sooner … [She laughs.]

JCC: We differ on this one, Mary Beth. I came into opera purely from the vocal standpoint and it took me quite a while before I realized I had to do more than just pump out sound. I was in love with the physical act of singing. I was absolutely thrilled by the my own technical achievements. I think I always had a sense of the drama in my head but I didn’t know how to incorporate it in my whole being. That might have something to do with the folk background where you’re hidden by the guitar and it’s all about what’s in your mind. My time in Germany was really useful because during those years the emphasis was on the drama. They couldn’t have cared less if you could sing well and that was frustrating for me because I cared so much about how I sang. On the other hand it was good because I was getting no pressure about tones. I was only getting theatrical advice.

MBP: When I was at Northwestern as a music student and an opera major they didn’t allow the singers to do anything in the theater department for fear you would spend too much time rehearsing or doing things over there that would interfere with your vocal studies or hurt your voice. Two fellow sopranos and I got permission to sneak over to the theater department and take a beginning acting class with Alvina Krause, this incredible woman who at that point ran the theater department. She was a living legend in her time and I was scared to death in that class. I was throwing up every morning before class and yet you couldn’t have kept me away from it. I remember doing a scene towards the end of the year, a dramatization of Wuthering Heights, and Alvina Krause, who was 80 years old, came up on the stage for the scene and I hauled off and whacked her. I hit her because I was acting and I thought – oh man. She loved it of course because she had broken through the propriety of the opera singer who could never be anything other than beautiful and graceful and blah blah blah.

JCC: I took all kinds of risks during my time in Berlin that I would never do now, but it was good to go that far. I did a world premiere of a piece called Mensch Wolfgang, a play with music by Mozart and libretto by Katja Czellnick, based on Mozart's letters. I was playing Aloisia Weber and an actor was playing Mozart. Mozart was quite in love with Aloisia and very frustrated by her refusal to marry him. One of the scenes was all about him trying to destroy me through the music and I was singing this incredibly difficult aria and he actually smacked me. He’d left his handprint on my face and I was singing this stratospheric coloratura and it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was such a telling moment when I realized, you know, there’s got to be some acting involved here, especially since all I wanted to do was cry. Opera singers are the opposite — always afraid to hurt you and never wanting to really touch you and that can be frustrating too.

RWB: Mary Beth, how were you chosen to sing Alma in the world premiere of Summer and Smoke?

MBP: As I recall it came through one of those serendipitous timing things. Lee was shopping somewhere and he ran into a friend of a friend of a friend of mine whom I had just worked with and Lee told him they were looking for an Alma. My friend mentioned me and Lee went back to Frank Corsaro and told him about me and they set up an audition. I had no idea what the project was. I had read the play once and I thought it was beautiful, but I didn’t know anything more than that. Certainly I had no idea what the music was. I’d heard of Lee Hoiby but I didn’t know his music. At that point I was strictly doing Mozart and Puccini and Gounod; I had sung a lot of opera in English but certainly had never done any American opera. But I was quite excited that I was going to meet Frank Corsaro. And the story goes that when I walked in the room, Frank turned to Lee and said, “God let’s hope she can sing because that’s Alma.” (JCC: I’ve heard that story too.)

RWB: Why did they say that?

MBP: I think Tennessee Williams had described her as tall and willowy and kind of refined and that’s the way I looked.

RWB: Jennifer, how did you become involved in the Central City revival?

JCC: I believe [Central City Opera General Director] Pat [Pelham G.] Pearce had seen me do the world premiere of Libby Larsen’s Eric Hermanson’s Soul in 1998 in which I played a woman from the same time period, not exactly like Alma but similar in terms of physicality. They pursued me quite hard for this and I had the feeling they were sure they wanted me to do it. (MBP: They had you pegged.) I knew Hoiby’s music was good for me because I’d sung many of his songs, so when they asked me I thought “God, I can’t go wrong with the music.” I went home and read the play and then rented the movie with Geraldine Page and I was so struck by the story that I passionately wanted to do it. Three months later they sent me the score and it all looked like it was in the right register — it had the right peaks and valleys for my kind of voice – so I jumped on it.

RWB: How much influence did you have on Alma’s music, Mary Beth?

MBP: It was pretty much finished when I first saw it. John Reardon and I went to Lee’s apartment and tried things out to find keys. There was some fine tuning but it was pretty much done. He damn well didn’t rewrite any of the things I had trouble with. [She laughs.]

JCC: This is a very good lead in for me to ask how you felt about going from the first scene between Alma and John to the final scene. I’m a little stuck on it as a play at this point and I’m still figuring out the characters. There is quite a bit of the dialogue that was cut from the play and at this point I miss it because I’ve read the play so much. I haven’t sung it with orchestra and I don’t know what it feels like as an opera. How did you deal with that?

Steven Goldstein as Asa Skinner and Jennifer Casey Cabot as Margaret Elliot in world premiere production of Libby Larsen's Eric Hermannson's Soul. Opera Omaha (1998).

MBP: Now I don’t know you well so I may be just jumping in here, but I would say to forget the play. Lanford Wilson who wrote the libretto knew the play about as well as anyone and I know he struggled mightily with what to leave aside and how to paraphrase what was there. I think he was the perfect choice of playwright to write that libretto and also Lee is a brilliant orchestrator. When you get with the orchestra you can trust the music to do for you what you feel is missing from the play. I would just let it go and trust it. You won’t go wrong – I promise you.

JCC: So you feel from your experience that the music makes it as satisfying as the play was?

MBP: Totally, as far as informing you where you’re living.

RWB: Tell us about the premiere, Mary Beth.

MBP: I was throwing up because people kept reminding me it was a world premiere, you know, and asking, “How do you feel?” Oh man, it was terrifying. But it was such a high. Thank God, I guess the miracle of the work is that you’re so involved in doing it you didn’t really think about how important an event it is. I do remember the importance of the opening night finally hitting me when we were taking our curtain calls. They brought Tennessee Williams on stage and there I was between Lee Hoiby and Tennessee Williams and I just thought, oh my God, I think I’m really in this moment. Tennessee at that point in his life, well I guess as he was at most points in his life, had started early in the day with his liquid refreshments and he was not well and had trouble walking and he didn’t see well. When we walked off stage he said, “awful lot of music for my little play.” But it seemed that he loved being there and all the fuss and the attention and everything. And he was happy with it. Interesting tidbit about his play: when it first came out it was moderately successful but not anything like later when it was done with Geraldine Page. It absolutely raised the roof then.

RWB: How do you bring the subtleties of a character such as Alma to life in opera?

MBP: To me all opera characters should be three-dimensional. The magic of opera, as opposed straight theater without any music and even musical theater, is that the actor, the singing actor, can literally evoke the music. That character can make the music happen as opposed to having the music act on you. When you as a singing actress get that music in your bones, you’ll see that it’s so brilliantly written and so beautifully married to the character and the text, it will help you find the character gesture which will then make the music happen. Does that make sense? This piece, of most of the operas I did, was the most beautiful marriage of character and physicality and music. It’s probably the perfect opera.

RWB: What do you each bring to Alma from your own life?

JCC: Alma lives in her own mind quite a bit, and growing up time I had a life that was very much like that. I was accused of being in my own world and I didn’t feel like I fit in at school at all. My mother was told by my teachers that I was out of my time, that I was not living in the moment while I was at school, that I was somewhere else. I did not date boys my own age and I actually fell in love with somebody much older. It was a relationship that was all in my own head. Thinking about Alma now I can hearken back to those days and remember what that was like. On another level I feel like because of the way I look now, I have some of Alma’s characteristics – the gracefulness, the elegance, that kind of thing. The harder part to play will be the underlying mannerisms that make her nervous and a little bit on the manic side. (MBP: Her panic button.) I guess I have a certain kind of natural restraint that I think is going to work for me.

MBP: I too feel I’ve never quite fit, although probably most of my friends and family would say that’s bullshit because I expend a lot of energy trying to make it seem like I fit. But I’ve always had my own fantasy life and a lot of it has to do with a kind of yearning for something but not being quite sure (even at this point in time) what it is I’m still yearning for.

RWB: How did you and Alma and the opera evolve through the various productions you did over the years, Mary Beth?

MBP: Oh dear. Evolved – the word “evolved.” I don’t really know how to answer that because I always sort of felt like she owned me or I owned her and that I was entitled to her. I think it was over about a ten-year period of time that I did her. (JCC: How many times?) Over ten years, I did five productions. She sort of just kept coming back; it was like my touchstone. So I’m sure that I did evolve because I was ten years older than when I first started it but I was not conscious of her per se being that different. I got more and more familiar with the music and I felt more comfortable vocally. Some directors had wonderful ideas and others not so and you had to do it yourself. But I can’t say I have a sense of that I evolved from A to Z in the role.

JCC: I’m finally to the point with the first aria – the gothic cathedral aria – that I feel like it sings itself. I feel very free with that. It’s been hard work because I don’t do a lot of contemporary music so sometimes it still seems like just pages of notes you know.

MBP: It’s a lot of notes. I can remember sitting at the piano – in fact I have pictures of me at the piano with my two-and-a-half-year-old sitting in my lap going over and over it.

JCC: My son is two-and-a-half at this moment too. Yet another parallel.

MBP: Oh my God, I love it. The cathedral aria is so beautifully written and it says exactly what she’s feeling. I had a hard time with that one because I wanted it to be perfect. To this day, that high b natural… I use that phrase as my standard vocalise every day.

RWB: Does the fact that it is in English help you learn the part?

JCC: Oh, yes. I’ve done very little singing in English because of starting my career in Germany. But in my experiences lately with the Libby Larsen piece and in recital I was so happy to get a chance to sing in English. Towards the end of my time in Germany I did a series of all-German recitals for a German audiences and I remember thinking that everybody was hanging on my every word. No wonder it’s so much fun to sing to an English audience in English because they don’t have to be reading translations. There’s an immediacy that really is so special.

MBP: I always felt that I sang better in English. There’s just the immediacy of getting right to it.

JCC: Mary Beth, my other question was about dealing with Tennessee Williams’ notes about the character. He says she has a nervous laughter, which sort of punctuates a lot of her sentences. That’s hard to do when you’re singing because there is not always time.

MBP: That’s what I mean about letting go of some of the play because you must find the mannerism that works for you, whether it’s the gesture or the breath or whatever. I remember the feeling of her measuredness, you know when your motor is going really fast and you’re trying to slow it down. It gives the idea then that things are going too fast without actually playing it fast.

RWB: We’ve come to accept 50-year-old Madame Butterflys and 60-year-old Lucias. Is there a different expectation of realism or naturalism with American opera? Do you have to be close to her age to play Alma?

MBP: Part of the reason I had to stop singing opera was because I couldn’t imagine being 50 and still singing Mimì. When I did that Summer and Smoke with Chicago Opera Theater I remember feeling that I was a bit long of tooth, especially to have it televised. But no one seemed to say anything so I thought, hell, if they think it’s ok I guess it’s okay.

JCC: I have sort of a visceral reaction to this. I’m so unsatisfied with the emphasis on youth that’s going on in this field. I feel that after singing professionally for twelve years I am at the beginning of my prime and I’m finally beginning to understand things. (MBP: You are so right). I’m so ready to do these complex characters. When I was 28 I was not ready.

MBP: You see, I was doing Violetta when I was 22, which was way too early. I was the right age for the character and because I was a good enough actress I could pull it off. I still swear I was such a good actress that they all thought I could sing. But I didn’t know what I was doing and I had no business singing some of that stuff at that age. But I don’t regret doing it. I had a wonderful time and I learned a lot. But you are exactly right. You’re right at the age where you can now reap the benefits of years of experience and of your vocal maturity.

JCC: I’ve done Violetta now in six or seven productions and it finally feels like I know what I’m doing. In the beginning I was just sort of getting through it. To really own these kind of complex characters you have to have some experience. It’s not as interesting to be the ingenue any more. I look at the movie with Geraldine Page – she was in her 40s when she did it and it didn’t bother me. They don’t really say in the play how old she is.

MBP: If she’s on the older side it’s that much more heartbreaking because she’s waited so long for love.

Editor’s Note: A few days before we went online we heard from Jennifer via e-mail who wrote:

JCC: After just three days of rehearsing I have so many new thoughts about Alma...I am just on fire with excitement about her and all the potential within her. I have realized that she is so many different people all wrapped up into one. Above all she is honest – that is her strongest attribute. And the music has entirely won me over. I do not miss the play any longer!

Summer and Smoke can be seen at Central City Opera July 13 through August 9, 2002

See also the USOPERAWEB Lee Hoiby Interview and Lee Hoiby Photo Gallery - Summer and Smoke