BEHIND THE SPOTLIGHT

While it took a little longer than I expected to get the video from our workshop of The Golden Ticket edited, I’m glad to report that the sound quality is excellent, and today I am posting a short excerpt for your viewing and listening pleasure! As one of my earlier posts discussed the casting of Veruca Salt, I thought that I would include a scene from the opera in which Veruca is prominently featured.  

In this scene, we see Veruca for the first time. Mike Teavee was just interviewed on television about finding his Golden Ticket, and she is none too pleased that her rich father has yet to buy enough chocolate bars to find her a Golden Ticket. I can’t wait to see how the production team brings this scene to life: a factory floor full of workers opening chocolate bar after chocolate bar, all at the whim of a spoiled little rich girl!

If you are amused by these photos form our workshop of The Golden Ticket earlier this month, the best is truly yet to come… Next week, I will be at the Opera America conference with my colleagues from Opera Theatre of St. Louis, who will be presenting preliminary design research for the world premiere production.  For now, enjoy these photos of our wonderful workshop cast! Design details will be coming soon…

All photographs by Michael Chadwick, Chadwick Creative Arts.

I was not surprised to receive so many emails about my last post. While the debate continues, a few responses that I’ve received have prompted me to be a bit more clear about my feelings on this topic!

Many people emailed me directly about this, or posted comments on facebook (please, post your comments here so everyone can see and get involved in the discussion!).  One very strong opinion against making the workshop process public came from my friend Eric McNaughton in Atlanta:

Public opinion is the enemy of creativity. Far too much value is put on the thoughts and opinions of the faceless (myself included). Production by popular vote/comment/survey will only lead to bland and easily digestible works…like white bread. Fewer risks will be taken, and everything will become benign…like a tumor.

To some extent, I agree, but I believe a comment like “public opinion is the enemy of creativity” has to be qualified. Certainly, there are many masterpieces - in all genres, including opera - that would not be the masterpieces they are if their creators sought public feedback and then changed their vision in response to negative feedback.  Richard Strauss’s Salome, a piece that I love and think is rather brilliant, was banned in London for two years, and the original performers were reluctant to perform the piece. When it did premiere in London, it was actually modified, much to the amusement (and apparently, later, annoyance) of Thomas Beecham.  In New York, the premiere was suppressed by wealthy patrons, and it wasn’t until 1918 - 13 years after the premiere - that it premiered in Vienna, despite the passionate advocation of no less than Mahler! 

If Strauss had done a workshop, conducted an audience survey, and changed all of the parts of both the music and libretto that the audience did not “like” or found offensive, the world would have lost one of the greatest operas ever written (IMHO).

So, what’s the point?  Yes, public opinion can be the “enemy of creativity”. The key here is that it can be - it doesn’t have to be.  I would never suggest that creative artists bow down blindly to public opinion.  But I do feel that often, the public’s feedback on CERTAIN issues can be very useful when a piece is developing.

One of the challenges we face in opera is that in any country and in any period of time in which it was really thriving, it was a POPULAR art form, in the language of the people, that was both familiar and relevant. That simply is not the case in opera in the US today.

New operas can be a very useful way to attract new audiences to opera (in fact, 25% of those at our workshop this weekend had NEVER been to an opera before.) Listening to audience opinion is different than production by popular vote - which I agree, would be disastrous! But is it really wise not to at least listen to the opinions of the audience we hope to serve - the audience that we hope is going to buy tickets and tell their friends how much they enjoyed the opera? 

I think the real issue is balance. Do we bow down to public opinion? No. But do we listen? Is it possible to learn useful information? Absolutely. That simply cannot be done if we hide behind closed doors. That being said, there are a few issues I’d like to expand upon:

1. IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE WHEN IN THE PROCESS YOU OPEN WORKSHOPS TO THE PUBLIC

This is very important point that I didn’t address in my previous post. The Golden Ticket will go into production in a year. The piece has been under development for many years, and there have been a number of closed workshops prior to this open one. (ALT did a closed workshop in May 2007, and much has been done to develop the piece since that time).  I feel that workshops should be open to the public when those involved feel a work is very close to completion, and once they feel their vision of the piece is clear.  Opening earlier workshops to the public would be counterproductive. In other words, an open workshop is potentially useful to the creative process only when the overall shape of a piece, musically and dramatically, has been determined by the composer and librettist, AND once they feel they have fulfilled that vision.  I do not believe a workshop should ever be used to determine what a piece should be.  I do believe a workshop can help writers see, from an invaluable outsider’s perspective, if they have been successful in fulfilling their own vision.

2. WHAT YOU ASK THE AUDIENCE TO TELL YOU MATTERS?

Market research is an art in itself. Surveys can be useless and even counterproductive if not properly executed.  We ask our audience answers to questions we want answers to.  For example, I didn’t ask:  Do you like that Augustus falls into the chocolate river?  That’s the story. Period.  As pointed out by Eric, it would be like asking a preview a audience at West Side Story if they would have preferred that Tony and Maria ride off into the sunset. We’re not looking to the audience to write the piece.  What we DO want to know is this: is what we are doing being clearly communicated to the audience? Is the storytelling clear?  These are areas where audience perception is very useful.  We don’t ask - how could this be more clear? We ask - is this clear? It is up to the composer and librettist to make the storytelling clear. YOU CANNOT LEAVE THAT TO A DIRECTOR!  A gifted director may be able to make a weak piece stronger, but ultimately, a piece should be - as Mark Adamo calls it - director proof.  If it’s not in the score and it’s not in the libretto, at some point, in some production, it will not appear on stage. (I’ll write another post on the concept of being “director proof” because, as both a stage director and producer, I find this a very useful concept.) If  the telling of the story through the music and words is not clear to an audience who has no previous exposure to a piece, that is a problem - and it is a problem that is not always apparent to those deeply involved in the writing process.

Of course, a few people at our workshop of The Golden Ticket suggested modifications to the opera that the creative team vehemently disagreed with.  You can be sure that the writers aren’t going to change anything that modifies their vision of the piece.  At the same time, there were some very constructive comments made that can be used by Peter and Donald to reinforce their vision.  I think that is really what it boils down to:  audience perceptions during the development phase of a piece can help writers identify opportunities to make their vision of a new work stronger.   Opening the process is not intended to influence what that vision is in the first place. Tony should die in West Side Story. Bernstein, Sondheim and Laurents knew that (of course, so did Shakespeare!).  In The Golden Ticket, Wonka should give the Chocolate Factory to Charlie.  That was Roald Dahl’s decision, and one that Peter and Donald bring to life in the opera. The public is not being invited into those kind of decisions!

I know public workshops will always be a contentious issue.  Workshops can be an incredibly useful tool in the development of new works, but how one workshops a piece is crucial. Too often, workshops don’t do as much as they could - periods where a new piece is heard by those directly involved, without the ability to get invaluable distance from their own work. 

By opening the workshop process, we are not asking the audience to write our new operas for us. What we want is to discover how well the creative vision of our artists is being communicated in the work they write. You can’t communicate with an audience if they are not there. If we wait until a work is complete, a valuable opportunity - if properly used - is lost. Does that really serve audiences or artists?

The response to our workshop of The Golden Ticket last weekend has been incredibly positive. Interestingly, both before and after the workshop, there has been a lot of discussion as to whether or not workshops should be open to the public. I strongly believe that inviting the public in to see pieces in development is a crucial part of the process.  

As composers and librettists (not to mention producers and directors) are working on a piece, we all become very close to the work at hand.  Regardless of how objective we strive to be, there is incredible value at being able to look at an opera being developed with a completely fresh perspective, and simply put, that is impossible when you are part of that process.  Most opera companies develop new works behind closed doors.  I understand why they do this.  The last thing anyone wants is for a new opera to be prematurely ‘judged’ or evaluated. Other companies invite select guests to their workshops. Again, I understand the protective rationale; however, I believe that by only inviting ’select’ guests, a company is effectively stacking the deck and not getting a representative sample of the public that is ultimately going to be the audience for the piece.  Feedback from opera ‘experts’ is valuable, but equally valuable is feedback from our intended audience. 

This is not to say that ALT is the only company that opens the workshop process to the public, but we are in the minority. The development process should not be a mystery.  It can take a LONG TIME to develop a new piece.  Let’s acknowledge that, and honor that. Too often, operas are rushed to the stage well before they are ready.  While I’m not going to cite any specific examples, I’m sure we can all think of pieces that could really have benefited from further development and ‘audience testing’ so to speak.  A new movie or television show would NEVER be launched without extensive consumer testing. Plays and musicals are increasingly being put through a more extensive workshop and audience testing process.  For Broadway Musicals, this is what out of town tryouts are all about.  In opera, we don’t have the money for ‘tryouts’, and generally, operas are more complicated musical documents in which it is not easy to pull out one song that doesn’t work and replace it with another.  If we want to properly revise works in progress, we need to give our writers sufficient time to really address the issues at hand.  Hence, ALT feels that the workshop process is absolutely essential if we are to provide opera writers with the best environment in which to develop their work.

At our workshop of The Golden Ticket last weekend, we had an audience of 150 people.  While we had our entire design and production team in attendance from Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, as well as representatives from other opera companies considering co-producing the world premiere, the majority of those in the audience were not directly connected to the piece. We created an online audience survey that was distributed via email to that segment of the audience in which we asked a wide variety of questions.  We start off with basic information about their attendance habits for both opera and musical theater; their age; and their previous knowledge of the book and both film versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We then ask them about how they felt when they heard about an opera based on this famous story, and how - if at all - those feelings changed after hearing the reading. This information is very valuable from a marketing perspective.  Then we dive in deeper.  Were they able to follow the storytelling? Were there parts where they didn’t understand what was going on?  If so, where did this happen? What did they really like? What didn’t they like?  And finally, we simply open the floor to any comments they might have about the piece.

Scary? Not really if you think of a couple of things.  First of all, we are not developing new operas for ourselves - we are developing new operas for AUDIENCES.  Yes, we care what they think.  Are we going to respond to every issue raised in an audience survey? No. But, we are going to look for areas where there is a strong consensus among audience members. Sometimes, those issues are already apparent to all of us working on the project. More useful, of course, is when the majority of the audience has a strong feeling about something in a piece that we had not previously thought to address. Ultimately, the composer and librettist - working with the producer and director - need to stay true to their vision of the piece. But, we really do urge the writers to consider audience perception, and to consider how that perception can be used by them to improve their own vision for the piece.

So that, in short, is why we open our doors to the public!  Without the public, there is no reason to write new operas. Being defensive about what we are creating - or scared of public opinion - is not only going to hurt the work at hand, but ultimately will have a negative impact on the art form. Opera needs audiences.  Let’s take time to listen to them whenever we can. They may not always be ‘right’ to us, but they are always ‘right’ to themselves, and they are the ones who are going to buy the tickets or stay home!

If you weren’t at our workshop this weekend, I’ll be posting short clips to give you a sample of The Golden Ticket. We had two cameras recording the workshop - mostly for archival purposes and so that The Golden Ticket team could listen to the piece repeatedly. But, I do want to share some highlights with you!  Today, a scene from Act I, where Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregarde are interviewed by Candy Mallow - a TV talk show host - just after they have found their Golden Tickets.   

Timothy Redmond conducts Andrew Drost (Augustus), Kiera Duffy (Violet), and Elise Quagliata (Candy). Brian DeMaris, piano.

More video soon!

A quick post today to thank everyone involved in our workshop of The Golden Ticket.  The reading was a tremendous success, and the entire workshop period was incredibly helpful for all involved in the project.

I know that I said I would post more regularly during the workshop, but artistic duties called and had to take priority! That being said, we have tons of photos and hours of video footage to review.  After a couple days of much needed rest, I will be posting a wide variety of things from the workshop…

Last week, I was asked to do a quick Q&A session with Kyrian Friedenberg, our wonderful Charlie in The Golden Ticket.  I don’t know if this mini-interview will ever be published, but some of Kyrian’s answers were so entertaining, I thought I would share it with you…

How old were you when you started performing?

 I was 5. I was Hercules in The Sorcerer, at a theater near my house.

Do you play any instruments?

Piano and Violin.

Were you nervous working with Broadway legend Patti LuPone in Gypsy?

I wasn’t nervous – I just tried to stay out of her way and do what I could to please her. She was very nice to us.

What has been your favorite role to perform?

That’s quite a question – I have no idea.  I’ve done a lot of fun shows.

What musicals have you seen recently?

Lion King, A Catered Affair, and West Side Story.

What is your dream role?

Billy Elliot.

Aside from performing, what are some of your other hobbies?

I like to go on my laptop and play games, go on facebook and  hulu. Oh, and  look at armadillos – I’m kind of obsessed with armadillos.  They just interest me so much. I’m gonna get an armadillo when I’m older. So what, they can carry leprosy – I still want one because now they have cures!

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is written by beloved children’s author, Roald Dahl. What is your favorite Roald Dahl story?

The Witches.

What is your favorite candy?

Twix.

You are playing the role of Charlie Bucket in American Lyric Theater’s workshop of  the opera The Golden Ticket, which is based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Are you like Charlie at all?

Yes and no. I don’t get chocolate that often, and Charlie only gets it once a year. Also, I think that when people around me are acting  spoiled and getting into trouble, I’m usually just sitting there trying to be good .  Oh, and I think it would be very nice to own a chocolate factory.

What is biggest difference between performing theater and opera.

Theater is, in a way, a lot easier, because you can read lines anyway you want or however the director wants, but with opera, all the rhythms and pitches are set. You absolutely have to be sure to get those right!

Why do you like doing opera?

I love how it all comes together. I just like the music and how there is so much around you, so many singers, the chorus… It’s overwhelming…  but in a good way!

Following our work through yesterday, we spent today working in detail on specific scenes. We took the morning off, and started the afternoon with a private coaching for our Mike Teavee, countertenor Jason Abrams.  Peter has written an incredibly amusing and virtuosic parody of a baroque aria for Mike, in which he very creatively uses coloratura to portray a boy obsessed with television violence.  One of the best things about an extended workshop period is the opportunity for singers to work directly with the composer.  Jason actually started an email dialogue with Peter to discuss this aria before rehearsals started, and today, he had the opportunity to work through some of the ideas they discussed with our music staff. It was a very productive session, and by the end of it, Jason was transformed into a very disturbed and funny teenager!

We then moved on to an extended session for Veruca and Lord Salt.  Tim spent most of the session working with Abigail Nims (Veruca) and David Kravitz (Lord Salt) not only on the musical structure of the scene, but also on the fantastic dysfunctional relationship between the spoiled little rich girl and the father that stops at nothing to make her happy.  

After a dinner break, the full chorus assembled for a three hour session with Tim.  The chorus had two weekends of preparation time with our wonderful chorus master Jennifer Peterson before the formal workshop period started last Wednesday. Now that Tim is with us, he is building on the foundation Jennifer laid, and getting them to embody - both musically and dramatically - all of the different roles they have to portray.  In The Golden Ticket, the chorus plays the role of Oompa Loompas, Workers in Lord Salt’s Factory, Townsfolk, and Turkish Nut Sorting Squirrels in Wonka’s Factory…  Is there any other opera in which the chorus play such an wonderful array of characters?  Our chorus is fantastic and is embracing the challenge with an enthusiasm that is contagious!

Tomorrow, more individual scene work, with video footage to follow…  

As promised, today I took the video camera into the rehearsal studio as we did our first work through of The Golden Ticket.  I have to preface this with a note of thanks to our wonderful cast for being willing to share the process on this blog. Rehearsals can range from performance caliber to very bumpy, but I think it can be really interesting for people who are not singers to see into the studio from time to time. Today’s work through went incredibly well, thanks to all of the preparation our wonderful cast has put into the piece.

The session was incredibly productive.  We read through the entire opera from start to finish - stopping along the way to fix some sections, and making notes about other sections that we want to call more extensive rehearsals to address. Ultimately, the main purpose of the run was for the full cast to get a sense of the overall shape of the piece.  We also were able to take preliminary timings and start assessing certain production related factors, like how long we have for scenic transitions.   

The video above features about nine minutes from our three hour work through.  The rehearsal is led by conductor Timothy Redmond, with our Assistant Conductor Brian DeMaris at the piano.  

Tomorrow, the chorus will have an extensive session, and we will work individually with a few singers on their scenes.  Donald and Peter (the composer and librettist of this amazing opera) arrive tomorrow as well, and I feel good knowing that we are well along the way to very polished performance next Saturday.

Do you have your tickets for the showing yet? If not, CLICK HERE to buy them now!

OK, I know I said I’d post daily - It’s day three of our rehearsal period for The Golden Ticket, and this is truly the first time I have a few minutes between rehearsals and grant proposals to quickly let you know what’s going on… I promise to post more regularly from now on…

The first day and a half of the workshop, all singers were provided with individual coachings with a member of our music staff.  Before “throwing them into the fire” with ensemble rehearsals and a work through of the opera (which we will do tomorrow, on day 4), we wanted to give everyone a chance to work through their parts individually with a pianist. After those sessions, which ranged from one hour to four hours, depending on the size of their parts, we started putting scenes together with small groups of singers. Again the emphasis was on gaining comfort with the score, and getting a sense of where each person / character / voice fits into the overall texture of each scene.  Last night, we brought the full cast and chorus together for the first time to work on the finales of Act I and Act II - enormous and exciting pieces that filled the studio with electricity, laughter, frustration, and ultimately, some beautiful music making.  First rehearsals are always bumpy, but I must say I’m incredibly impressed at how well the cast is prepared.

Tomorrow, we will work through the opera.  What is a work through? Well, exactly that. We have two three-hour sessions where conductor Tim Redmond will work through - from start to finish - the full opera with the entire cast and chorus.  Tim will stop and start as necessary to give notes, make corrections and adjustments. The main purpose of the work through is not to polish the piece in any great detail, but  for everyone to get a sense of the piece as a whole  - dramatically and musically.  Only after the preliminary work through will we really dive into fine tuning both the music and the dramatic shape of the piece.  I will be video taping this work through, and promise to post some footage on Sunday so you can get a look into the rehearsal process. 

Of course, while we’ve been having full rehearsal days, I’m busy juggling press inquiries, meeting with potential producing partners, ensuring that grant proposals go out on time, confirming arrangements with our venue, and even sampling deserts for our Wonkalicious reception at Bouchon Bakery on April 4th.   Yes, there are some perks to this job, and chocolate is one of them!

Well, last week was a bit more dramatic than expected!  Just as all of the arrangements for our upcoming workshop of The Golden Ticket were being solidified, my appendix decided it no longer wanted to be a part of my life, forcing me into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy!  Fortunately, they got it out before it burst, and I’m rather amazed that they were able to take care of it with a few tiny incisions. Must say, I’m glad I didn’t have to go through this 30 years ago in less sophisticated medical times! Other than an achey belly button, I’m back ‘in the saddle’ so to speak, and very grateful to my artistic staff - especially chorus master Jennifer Peterson - who were able to keep everything moving forward during my absence.

Today, I am confirming all of the little logistical details for the workshop, and issuing the first four days of rehearsal schedules so that the cast can have a sense of the intensive days ahead.  Our fantastic conductor Timothy Redmond arrives tomorrow, and Wednesday, we’re off to the races (or the opera!). Once we get started on Wednesday, I’ll be posting daily from the rehearsal studio, and inviting our guest artists to make posts about the workshop process. We also plan on posting rehearsal video throughout the workshop, so come back often!

In the meantime,  ALT was featured in some pretty prestigious company in an article about new opera published in Opera America magazine. I’m so grateful to all of the artists, administrators, and of course, donors, who have helped ALT to have a real influence on contemporary American opera.  The best is yet to come…