This year I’ve had the blessing of performing in the new opera A.F.R.A.I.D. by Susan Stoderl. Featuring moderately tonal music ranging from hummable melodies to crunchy dissonances, A.F.R.A.I.D. tells the story of feminists and their opponents in 1850’s New York City. It is her first opera, yet since its premiere at the New York Fringe Festival it has achieved enough success to secure an open run at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Here, she sits down to discuss matters important to us all: producing your dream, performing new works, and bringing opera to the people.
How did you get started composing?
I was a singer (opera) for many years, and then that seemed like it was not enough. I was not going to have a full-time professional career and my voice was not suited to other types of singing. I still wanted to sing, so I started an opera cooperative with friends and colleagues that was called OperaSpectives. That lasted just about five years, and then, again, I decided I wanted to try to go a little more in depth and just be a music director.
In the meantime, one of the people that had been singing with OperaSpectives was interested in doing the same thing and together we formed Opera Nova. His name was Robert Turner. We did standard and more obscure operas with new English librettos with the music arranged in some new way. After awhile I thought: Why am I arranging pieces that were fine the way they were? I had realized several Baroque scores in non-traditional ways, writing many bridges, and completely turning them around, and I thought: Why don’t I just try writing?
Additionally, I liked writing words but had been only doing the music. So when Opera Nova disbanded, I decided to go ahead and compose. The reason it had never occurred to me is that growing up in Western Kansas there were no composers that were female. (There were no composers, period.) In undergraduate school at Wichita State University there were no female composers. It was just not a consideration. You can’t want to be something if you never are exposed to it. So, my first compositions were two songs that later became part of a song cycle: Songs from a Jade Garden.
What I find interesting in all this is that you were co-running opera companies before you even started composing. That must have helped a ton when it was time to get your own show off the ground.
Absolutely! In anything, unless you stumble onto just the right path right from the beginning, you have to make your own way. Producing is a tremendous training for writing opera. First, I was a singer and have sung many roles. I participated in one way or another in about thirty different operas. That is a lot of stage experience. You learn what is needed from the performers’ stand point: how long to make a phrase for different types of voices, ways to write a phrase so there are options about where to breath, the exact time it takes to develop a certain emotion from an actor’s standpoint, how long it takes to calm down from a huge scene, how much emotional or plain physical rest a singer needs, the comfortable tessitura for different kinds of voice, and most importantly, how long an audience can be engaged with a particular scene.
I learned the pace from directing. Producing is really about having a product to sell—something that you find important to say. Then you have to find just the right people who understand what you want to say as a composer and want to help you say it. I have made many mistakes along the way but hopefully learned from them. Producing a show is sort of like learning to be a good parent. Usually you get better with successive children.
What was the process of writing an opera like? Was it much different from the arranging work you’ve done?
Actually, the process is very much the same. Since I am writing a theatrical piece, the words come first. The words always come first for me. Sometimes a snippet of melody or a rhythm comes when I have a very general outline for a certain section, but rarely do I have any music unconnected to words.
Since I write primarily about women and their ideas through a historical framework, I usually do quite a lot of research. Ultimately, I find a story I want to write that almost always has some relevance to what is
happening in this time period. I write the story, develop the characters as if it were a book, then I write dialogue as in a play. I see it happen in my head.
Once I know where I am going, the music comes out in different ways. I almost never know what is going to come out. I see the action as if in a movie—feel it, act it, express it. Out of my hands on the keyboard comes a melody or an accompaniment. I am not conscious of what is coming out. I do not think it. It just happens.
Like this particular opera I am writing right now, The Veil of Forgetfulness. I have a certain feeling about what it should be. This is a very poor way to describe it, but it is like a mist, or gauze in my psyche that guides and shapes what comes out. I am not aware of it. It is coming out in fully orchestrated, chamber ensemble form. It is close to arranging because if you are writing five or six independent parts, you have to concentrate on a couple at a time since you simply cannot type them in the computer that fast accurately.
It is almost like cooking. You just keep adding a little bit of that and a little bit of this until you get “Ah, that’s right.” Sometimes it is too much or not enough. And of course, after a live reading, you see things that need to be added or taken away.
Your opera A.F.R.A.I.D. had the honor of being premiered at the New York Fringe Festival. How did you pull that off?
A friend and colleague had done a musical work in the Fringe that I saw. I thought that might be a good way to premiere the show. There are some built-in helps in the producing part: such as a theater, publicity in place, etc. The subject was somewhat quirky for opera. And of course, at that point in the one act version, a cast of 11 female singers is a little strange. But they went for it. I finished the first draft exactly fifteen days before it had to be submitted, paid the entrance fee, and sent it in with the application. That was the simple part. Getting the show on was the hard part, and the actual festival was very grueling. But I had tremendous help and superb casts that really stepped up to the bat. It was a tremendous experience, but not to be taken lightly. It was probably the hardest production I have ever done.
This year the opera opened at the Brooklyn Lyceum as a continually-running weekly show. That’s very unusual for an opera.
It is very unusual. This one is the expanded two act version, which really needed to be done, compositionally and dramatically. Once a show is accepted by the Fringe, it cannot exceed the time limit, so necessary revisions cannot be done for the festival.
Going on really changed the show—characters were expanded, holes filled in, et cetera. It is a much tighter show now. There are still things that could be corrected, but that will probably always be the case. You learn as you go, and since I have never officially studied composition and am relatively new at it, I learn all the time. I am very fortunate in that all of my finished compositions have been performed in various guises, and several times. I am truly amazed that people want to continue producing the opera, and I thank the Brooklyn Repertory Company for pursuing it. It is very gratifying. I will be seeing it this coming Tuesday for the first time since I left conducting it.
How did you find a venue for this running show?
I did not. I actually wanted to take a rest because I was pretty burned out. I was approached by the technical director from the Fringe Festival, Brett Wynkoop, about keeping it running. He was a colleague of the Lyceum director. Brett persuaded me to go ahead and do the rewrites sooner rather than later—I had planned to take about three or four months off.
I got about thirty days! I rewrote the show beginning in October and began rehearsing it in December for the new people and in January for everyone. It was originally seventy minutes and is now about an hour and forty-five minutes. We opened in March, I think, and I continued conducting the show until mid-May. Brett then took over producing it after this initial run as I wanted to get back to composing.
This other opera was burning a hole in my head, so to speak, and I just had to get it out. I get very antsy and irritable if I am not creating what is inside. The muse is like: “Let me out of here. Now!”
New music is always a hot topic in the industry. It seems like everyone says we need it, but usually nobody likes it. How were the audience reactions to your piece?
I would say for the most part favorable. Many people who have heard it, who hate opera, have liked it. Many people who like traditional opera like it, and some do not.
I write for the general public. I love opera and I think it has so much to offer most people. However, it is getting them to listen. I think it should be relevant to what is going on and should speak to people at both a basic level and a high intellectual and emotional level. I try to have many levels. I have had construction workers say, “Wow, this is really cool.” That is when I am thrilled. I want people who do not know the wonders of opera to see what it has to offer. If they don’t like it after that, then that is fine. I always use the analogy: if you see a movie you don’t like, do you never go to the movies again?
Opera is so varied in all of the schools and their productions that I think there just may be one you do like. Some people like only Mozart, some like only Wagner, et cetera. One of the most telling things is that a long time ago I taught preschool. I had 30 four-year-olds, and I introduced them to Hansel and Gretel. They loved it. The next day they came back to class and the majority hated it. Why? Because they had told their parents or friends and it became an “Ick” thing.
It is breaking down the doors of prejudice of those who know nothing about it. When you do, sometimes it clicks. It is just getting people to be objective. But then that is true of just about everything in this life.
What advice would you give to people performing a new work?
Find out everything you can about the subject matter. If it is about a real person, read what was said about them and what they wrote, such as Fanny Fern [lead character of A.F.R.A.I.D.]. Try to find out what the composer is trying to say, then just communicate that to your audience. Get the “you” out of it and be that character and say what that character has to say to the best of your ability. When you have done that, you have done everything you can do. Just enjoy.
A.F.R.A.I.D. is being performed weekly, every Tuesday night by the Brooklyn Repertory Opera (www.bropera.org) at the Brooklyn Lyceum (www.brooklynlyceum.com).
Stoderl’s new opera, The Veil of Forgetfulness, will be performed in November 2007 as semi-staged readings at The Church of the Holy Trinity, New York. It will make up a part of the Music at Holy Trinity series, and help to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of their concert organ’s installation.
