TRANSPORTATION TRANSFORMATION: Not just your typical MTA Monday morning commute on the F train! Progress occurs when opportunity meets preparation. Such was the case when I got the call from … Continue reading Create an Opera in 24-hours? No Problem!
Some months ago I began a fascinating project with composer, Mike von der Nahmer, and writer, Anita Prestidge. Mike put me and Anita together and said “Go, write a libretto … Continue reading ‘Blue Hum’ an Art-Song in the Making
This is a poem for the one who pushed my Indiegogo campaign past the half way mark. Dark were the days where development slowed From such a strong start at … Continue reading A Poem for the One Who Pushed My
My silence over the last few months is an indication of how intensively I’ve been working on developing my librettist muscle. It’s been a mind-blowingly productive and creative time; I’m just getting started!
Currently I am working with composer, Peter Michael von der Nahmer on a VideOpera (it’s exactly what it sounds like, an opera created for video) about a woman and her tortured relationship with Twitter.
We are producing this ourselves and are about to launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise some money so we can cover the cost of production and pay our artists. If you want to learn more about this cool little project and would like to be added to our mailing list, use the link below to take you to our sign-up page. This will add you to our list so we can share campaign launch information and updates with you.
This is an inspiring project and many people are starting to get as excited about it as we are. Join the movement and follow the link below to join our mailing list!
Sign up and, please, share this with your friends and family.
Thank you! MMN & PMvdN
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/when-falling-dive-a-videopera-video-opera/coming_soon
So by now you know that I want to write librettos and I’ve been working at it on my own, in concentrated style, for a bit now. Last night I came to realize that I’m approaching the “horse” – as it were – from the wrong end (aka: ass backwards.) I am not surprised because that is how I seem to approach everything in life that is important to me.
Sitting in a Master Class with David Henry Hwang, author of many notable works of opera & theatre including M Butterfly, I was surprised to learn that he has never approached a composer with an idea for an opera. He has always been the one approached because he believes, and rightly so, that the composer is the one who truly drives an operatic piece. When he has an idea of his own he turns it into a play.
This had a double effect on me: a) I was depressed and b) relieved.
Depressed because I am brimming with ideas that I can totally visualize being sung on a stage and relieved at understanding the way I was going about being a librettist could be accomplished in a different way.
One does not simply 
walk up to a composer, hand her a script and say – compose something to this. Most people who have spent a lifetime honing their compositional skills would be justified in telling me to fuck off.
I get it now. In the dance of making this most complex of collaborative art forms come alive it has to start with an idea. A core idea. The librettist constructs good literary bones upon which, if inspired, a composer can take and make her own.
What I create is not mine to keep. What I create I create to give away to lift the creative wings of another. What I create lives on by the grace of others and along the way I relinquish control. It’s just like having a child: and it hurts just as much to let it go.
Writing librettos and working with composers is what I truly want to do with the rest of my life. So my course correct will be this: write plays. Fulfill on the visions I have and make them into something that can come alive on a stage for actors to work with. For purely operatic ideas all I need do at this point is write narrative, to compose my own poetry, to let the Fantazmagorium of wacky passionate ideas rolling around in my beating heart flow out on the page and trust. I must trust the ground I’ve laid out already and the new ground I’m building will bring me face to face with the right people at the right time. I must trust. I must trust, I must write and trust, I must write and trust and share my work.
Progress occurs when preparation meets opportunity
Time to get back to work – thanks for reading.
So Monday night I sat amid giants & idols like Missy Mazzoli, Beth Morrison, Royce Vavrik and David Devan; producers of contemporary opera in America – women & men spearheading the future of this medium for the rest of the world to follow. If you can imagine what a flea hovering about your head must feel like as you swat it out of the way, well, I was that flea Monday night
sitting in the Peter B. Lewis Theater underdeath the Guggenheim museum – only difference was I wasn’t buzzing around anyone’s head. That would have been weird. I was a well behaved flea who didn’t get in anyone’s ointment or march defyantly around the rim of anyone’s coctkail glass. I’m taking the metaphore too far…I am not a flea, I am a human being and if there is any great difference, truly, between a flea and a human being it’s that I make meaning of things where the flea does not. In fact I am unable to not make things mean things but that’s a story for another day.
So there I was, a virtual flea, listening to giants discuss the creation of a new opera, Breaking the Waves, that premieres at Opera Philadelphia next week. I paid the equvalent of a good seat in the Family Circle at The Metropolitan Opera on a Saturday night to listen to a select number of chamber pieces – performed by the amazing lead cast & musicians – and hear the composer, librettist, conductor and director discuss their process. Why would I do such a thing? Wouldn’t the value have been in networking like crazy and leave with at least one good contact? That is what a flea would have done.
That is not why I was there. At another time I will do that, probably yes, but this was the beginning of a grand adventure that I’ve been working my way towards for the better part of five years.
Attending the Works and Process event made manifest (even for just a tiny fraction of a moment) what I have been saying I want…to be a librettist and be part of the modern opera movement. I did have one interaction with a person-of-note (nobody mentioned here thus far) that didn’t go so well. We chatted a bit and when she asked me what I was doing there I blurted out “I want to be doing what they’re doing!” pointing at the stage filled with empty chairs and music stands. She quickly ended our conversation and I sat in my seat feeling the sting of having been swatted out of the way. I deserved it. Did I show up to this most intimate of opera events unprepared? Well, yes I did. I went in there with one intention; to fully immerse myself in the Society of Amazing Peole who Produce Opera for a Living. SAPPOL – and damit that’s exactly what I did!
Back to giants and idols: Being Jewish, I have learned that idols are bad, bad things to be shunned and avoided at all cost. I can and do ascribe to the principle that bowing down to a piece of brightly painted clay begging for salvation, or a new job, is something rediculus and potentially damaging. But then I went to the dictionary to broaden my meaning of the word.
- Word Origin of idol from Late Latin īdōlum, from Latin: image, from Greek eidōlon, from eidos shape, form – courtesy of dictionary.com
So breaking it down, an idol is basically a mental image or a physical shape or form worth one’s time to comment on. An idol stands out, an idol is attractive, an idol is – ultimately – unrealistic. So if I want to be doing what Royce Vavrik is doing, for example, and doing it in my own way and at my own pace then his status as an idol really morphs more into that of a model, a suggestion of what I could be some day. I admire the work he does as a librettist and I know he puts one foot in front of the other as he walks down the street. He just happens to be WAY further down the street than I am. I feel as though I keep starting even though each foray I take into the world of opera seems to bring me ever closer to the vision I have; perhaps there is nothing but starting from wherever I happen to be right now…hmmmm.
What’s my point here? So inspired as I was after Monday night I went back to investigating Master’s Degree programs in musical theatre. NYU being the logical place to look (‘cause that’s where Royce Vavrik went…probably when he was 25!) I got all excited all over again reading all about the program, how they put composition students together with playwriting students – colleges are starting to catch on about this medium called Opera – and then I read “applicants must be full-time students.” And I stopped. Here I am, 52 years old now, working a full time job ‘cause I have to, ready and so able to take this program on with more gusto and passion then I ever had as a 25 year old and I simply cannot fit my square-self into the NYU round hole: what I am is more of a hexagon, really.
And so, this realization brings me back to the idea I launched at the beginning of this year – to make my own course of study and stick to that course building my vision block by block by block.
The Mott Academy of Writing Librettos fall semester has officially started!
MMN
Ps. When I make it across the pond one of these days to visit family in Chichester I will make a point of dropping in on a coffee house near Dorset named Amid Giants & Idols.
Setting – Dressing room of team Peru at Estadio National in Lima, Peru May 24, 1964
Set up/opening orchestration: Peru is hosting Argentina in an important soccer match, one that Peru is watching to win with great anticipation. In the last two minutes of play referee, Angel Pazos, disallows a Peruvian goal that would have equalized the game. The ref’s actions cause two Peru fans to invade the pitch in an attempt to harm the ref. Police intercept and begin violently beating the pitch invaders, setting dogs on them in front of 53,000 rabid fans causing further reaction from the crowd. Leading in to this scene, police have just release fifteen canisters of tear gas into the seething body of predominantly Peruvian soccer fans. Terrifying panic ensues in the stadium.
Archival images of the Lima event as well as other national soccer stadium tragedies are splashed all around the theatre, audio of panicked crowds intermingle with the orchestration. The audience should be feeling the pressure of panic all around them. The orchestration quiets slowly as the sound of cleated boots walking heavily down an empty hallway in the sports complex rises over the panicked sounds. We hear a door being opened and the lights come up on the team dressing room. Hector stands in the doorway, holding onto the handle in an attempt to steady himself.
Hector
The police
the police
though they didn’t let their dogs loose*
they did let them tear his clothes off*
tear his clothes off
tear his flesh off just a bit
and the other one
the other one
beaten by many men with batons
blood on the pitch
blood on the bitch who bit his arm
tore his favorite jersey clean off his body
The people
the people were disturbed*
by the way in which they took the Pitch Invaders away*
dragging them like cadavers
in front of fifty three thousand people
This is why the crowd began to get very upset*
Audio rises over Hector’s voice of a new level of terror and panic echoing off the walls of the stadium. Hector is sitting now at his locker having taken off his shirt. He studies the dramatic red stripe that cuts across the chest of his new Peru kit. Angel enters holding a cup of water.
Angel
How about that?! Eh?
How about that?!
Those Pitch Invaders nearly got me
Did you see that
they nearly crushed me for that call?
What a bunch of crazy dicks
short on knowledge
never went to college
drunk on any cheap swill they can find
I don’t mind
it’s all part of the game
glad the police came down hard
to keep the yard from brimming over
Angel walks over to a radio on the wall and turns it on – music of 1964 Peru floats out over the air. As he turns on the radio his hand hits a hip-flask full of whisky that someone had stashed for later. He takes the bottle down and looks at it sitting there in his hand.
Are you ok, Hector?
Hector
The police
the police
Hector
How about that?! Eh?
How about that?!
The music stops abruptly and a reporter gives the breaking news about the riot at the stadium.
Newscaster
Ladies and gentlemen, this is breaking news about a riot that has broken out at Estadio National. Police are trying to contain the unruly mob with tear gas. Please avoid the area around Estadio National for the foreseeable future. Repeat, a riot has broken out at Estadio National. Please avoid the area.
Gun fire outside on the pitch is heard from the dressing room – men are screaming. Angel goes to put the bottle back where he found it but the disturbance scares him and he decides to keep hold of the bottle for now.
Hector
The world is broken
there is nothing to be spoken for
There is something terribly wrong here
which I am not able to fix
Angel
What’s going on, Eh?
Gun fire on the pitch?!
Son-of-a-bitch I have to get home
to see that my daughter is safe
She loves this game as much as I
though I forbid her from attending
this is no
place for good girls to be banging about
Hector
Don’t go out there!
Angel
Hector, that’s touching
I’ll be safe now
everyone has already forgotten about my call
that got them on their feet in a squall
Hector
Don’t you listen?!
Can you not hear the sound of people dying out there?
Our people
Our Peruvian people
I dread to see the sights that await us
when we emerge from this cave of cowards
Angel
Cave of cowards?! Speak for yourself El Capitan de America
Hector
Where is everyone then? Who else is in here but us, Angel?!
Angel
They all must have found a way out, somehow.
Hector
Maybe they are all dead
Maybe I should kill myself
Angel
Don’t be such a Shakespearian actor
There are other factors at work here
and I’m sure no one is dead!
Newscaster
Breaking News: there is a report coming in from Estadio National of thirty, no, no, excuse me fifty, fifty people dead at Estadio National! This is a horrible…wait, wait, another report…a hundred…an estimated one hundred people have been crushed to death in a stampede at Estadio National. This is terrible ladies and gentlemen, terrible
Hector
Ahhh, this is too much
There is nothing to do
no story I can tell to make the people laugh
no soccer ball to kick to make the people cheer and be happy about the day again
There is nothing I can do
There is nothing I can do
Mama, I am so sorry
There is nothing I can do to fix this
Angel
When I was three I wanted to be a footballer
I wanted to spend my life on the pitch
honing my foot work
practicing my kicks
Football was my life, my love, my path out of misery
My papa would be proud of me
if I was to be a footballer
Never was I good enough
Close but not quite good enough
so I took the only path that was by me
to be a referee – still I would stay close to the game
but it is not the same
Not the same in any way at all
Never am I happier then when I’m on the pitch
except, perhaps, for when I used to be able to drink a fifth
but that joy was fleeting
As the ball is in play and you chip it across the sky to land in the hands of the keeper
my heart wants to burst with love
The beauty of the rhythm of the game of my life keeps me alive and well and sober
My one regret is when the ball lands in the net
I see the glee on the striker’s face
perceive the pain of the keepers miss
and yet I am not part of that moment
I must endure while the world stops
to celebrate or lament the goal
I am not a part of it – I am separate – other – hated
or worse, ignored completely
A loud crash comes from outside
Hector
I am leaving the game, Angel.
Angel
El Capitan? No, no, you cannot do this
Hector
This I can do!
Angel
This you must not do! Peru, Peru needs you now more than ever
Hector
Football is dead to me just like those hundred people lying dead in our stadium
Newscaster
Breaking News: ladies and gentlemen, it grieves me mightily to tell you that Peruvian police have confirmed three hundred fifty eight deaths by internal hemorrhaging or asphyxiation in a terrible tragedy at Estadio National in Lima. There is rioting in the streets outside the stadium still – I beg of you to steer clear of Estadio National until order has been restored.
Angel
Three hundred fifty eight – gone
because of one lousy call I made
My call – my call made this happen
My call for footboll, the game I love
has brought death and destruction
to the world
The worst stadium disaster in history
is because of me
Hector
We don’t know what would have happened*
If the police had removed the Pitch Invaders*
in a peaceful fashion*
But I guess we can’t think about that now*
We have to face what’s out there
Angel Eduardo Pazos, you made the call you made
that is your job
I watched Kilo Lobaton rise his foot*
to block the ball*
and saw it rebound into the goal*
it was a foul*
in my humble opinion
though my opinion does not matter
Angel
El Capitain de America your words are sweet and powerful
I am the one on the wrong side of history
You, you are the one who matters now
You must help to heal Peru
You leave the game you kill a whole nation
Do not do that to your country!
Do not do that to your country!
Do not do that to your country!
I beg you – for love of the game
do not leave us now, dear Hector
Angel weeps at Hector’s feet as Hector sets his jaw and rises to put his jersey back on. He walks out of the dressing room leaving Angel alone with the bottle of whisky. Once alone Angel opens the bottle and greedily, tragically chugs the liqueur down.
Black out
©Marianna Mott Newirth
SCENE I Setting: An outdoor parking lot in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn behind a city hospital complex. It is two fifteen in the morning on a late summer evening. The parking lot … Continue reading Scapegoat: A Fairy Tale Opera in One Act
Scene: a cozy, darkened bedroom in the middle of the day. Sounds of the city float in through the opened window. A woman, Amy, lies in a hospice bed. Her husband, Sam, is bedside. It is the appointed hour of her death.
AMY
Are you there?
SAM
Yes I’m right here
AMY
Are you there?
SAM
Yes I’m right here
AMY
Where are we, Sam?
SAM
Home
AMY
One more hour, maybe
Take my hand
SAM
Yes
AMY
Don’t be frightened
I remember running in the park with you
You held my hand I wanted to let go
To run free
And you had to let me go
You are ever right here with me
Even in the tightest spots
Time to run
SAM
No
Are you there?
Are you, Amy
Please be there
Please be, Amy
AMY
Sam, let me go – now
Let me go
SAM
Amy
———————————
This libretto comes out of my studying theatrical beats this week, as in, moments that make up a play. I wanted to try making a one-beat opera. Lacking any sort of focus I went to my playlist and found Cylinder Six. It gave me a perfect structure to build this monumental moment between two people. I didn’t expect to end up in tears by the time I’d finished. Read the libretto, listen to Chris’ piece then put the two together. Tell me if any of it worked for you.
Thanks for reading!
© Marianna Mott Newirth
Happy Street in Somewhere Wonderful, America
Everything is shiny and bright – the sounds are perky and optimistic – the images are iconic, glamorous and captivating all along Happy Street
A woman in her 30’s, Dia, enters – well dressed with a slight flair for the dramatic. The year is 1994. Dia is at the peak of her awesomeness walking down Happy Street on a faire spring day in Somewhere Wonderful, America.
Dia – short for Diane or dialysis (also Greek for apart, through, across) Soprano
Ali – short for Alison or alien (also Greek for other) Mezzo Soprano
Choir of The Underserved – Mixed Choir of Women, Men & Children
DIA
This must be success
All of this for me
The silver sidewalk
The singing salted Pretzel man
The perfect way my pumps pound as I go purposefully ahead
Life is easy
Life’s so good
The sun on my back
The bounce in my step
No worries but to make my appointment on time
I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine
Isn’t everything divine?
CHOIR OF THE UNDERSERVED
Work and haul and push and pray
We strive to make it day by day
Under a growing cloud of doubt
We hold our tongue we do not shout
Working poor – the underserved
We are not proud we are not heard
Work so hard can’t catch a break
They tell us “All we do is take”
They try to rule us all with fear
And kill off all that we hold dear
Working poor – the underserved
We are not proud we are not heard
Working hard the under-seen
Won’t be long before we scream
A large woman emerges from the choir and approaches Dia
ALI
Excuse me – Can I ask you a question
DIA
(Flippantly as she walks past Ali) No you cannot
Ali stands momentarily rebuffed and then joins the Choir of the Underserved again
The timbre changes on Happy Street in Somewhere Wonderful, America. The year morphs into 2001 and the polish comes off the dazzling façade. The sounds are slightly flat, the images are tinged with cautious notes, the sky (a 911 blue) looks somewhat sinister, the light that once warmed Dia’s back is somehow colder.
DIA (pushing a stroller)
Let me see where I can go
So I can look like I’m in the know
It’s hard to keep up the game
With so much pressure to have a name in the world
My grandmother – my grandmother
She was an elegant lady of her day
The Greatest Generation
Social register – Women’s rights
Fantastic hats with feathers in them
She’s the one I emulate
The lady I want to be
It’s harder than I thought it was
I don’t understand, really
ALI
Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
DIA
I don’t have time – I’m late
I’m late, for a thing, ya know
Excuse me
Ali watches Dia bustle past her and turn the corner. She addresses the audience directly
ALI*
She’s thinking “There must be something wrong here”
Like I’m a problem that needs fixing
Lazy freeloader – welfare mom
That’s all she sees when she walks past me on Happy Street
Broke but not broken
Broke but not broken
The system’s not made for us
The rich folk always making a fuss
Broke but not broken
Broke but not broken
See me for who I really am
I come from a good family of people
People who love me
CHOIR OF THE UNDERSERVED*
Self reliant
Something gets broke we fix it
Self reliant
Somebody falls gather them up in a bundle of life
Until they can breathe on their own again
Self reliant
The system’s not made for us
The system’s not made for us
The system’s not made for us!
We walk for the lame
We drive for the carless
We wait for the brother whose still in jail
We sing for the bird that’s lost its song
We spring for the winter that lasts too long
We cling to each other in times of fear
And pray to a God who never seems near
But we keep praying – ‘cause – ya never know when
That God might just show up and make everything work again
Self reliant
The system’s not made for us
The timbre changes on Happy Street in Somewhere Wonderful, America once again. The year morphs into 2016 and the façade is removed exposing the rawness of the performance space. The sounds are sharp, the images are stark, the sky is flat and white. Ali sits on a box next to a tree growing out of the sidewalk. Dia walks by holding her hand to her jaw. She is sporting a hat with a big flower on the side, which contrasts sharply with the dark mood she appears to be in
ALI
Excuse me. Can I axe you a question?!
DIA
You always try and stop me at the worst times!
I cannot talk to you right now
ALI
But you don’t even know what my question is
DIA
I…look…I’m sorry. I have a terrible…
Aside to the audience: I’m not telling her my problems
My tooth hurts, yes, but I don’t have to explain myself to her
We all have places to be you know
We all have things to do
Aside to the audience: I really need to get to the dentist, excuse me
Audio of a dentist’s drill incorporates with the music of Ali’s She Don’t Even Know aria
ALI
She don’t even know my question
She so damn busy all the time
Bound up in her little world of lattes and opera
She don’t see who I really am
She won’t see who I really am
I am a woman who makes hats for a living
I am a woman whose daughter is pregnant with twins
I am a woman with a son stationed in Iraq
Who the fuck is she?!
Dia walks out moaning slightly and holding an ice bag to her cheek
DIA
I wonder what her question was
Such a bitch I was I know
But my aching tooth, oh my aching tooth
I’ll stop and talk with her now
I don’t know why I’ve been so cold
Although she has been very bold and tried to ask me several times about…something
I don’t know what
It always felt wrong
She did not belong in my world
My perfect little world – so stupid
I could not see for all the glitter that was in front of me
Perhaps I can start with an apology
Dia notices that Ali is no longer sitting where she was. Dia looks around but Ali is not there.
DIA
She is gone
I am an idiot
CHOIR OF THE UNDERSERVED
Ali – the other
Dia – apart from it all
______________________________________________________________
[librettist’s note] I actually have no idea how to end this at the moment…
*Thank you to Mia Birdsong for the inspiration and some of her words taken from her TEDTalk “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True” May 2015
©Marianna Mott Newirth 2016
Opera Abecedarian 