Words for Music
A COMPANION TO THE TALK
GIVEN AT THE COSMOPOLITAN CLUB
NOVEMBER 7, 2024
“What if you ask me, ‘And the verse, the rhythm, the stanza?’ I don’t know what to say, but if the action demands it, I would immediately abandon rhythm, rhyme, stanza; I would write blank verse to put forward clearly and concisely what the drama requires. Sometimes in the theater it is only too necessary for the poet and composer to have the talent not to make poetry or music.”
Verdi, in a letter to Antonio Ghislanzoni, August 17, 1870
EAT THE DOCUMENT
A new opera by John Glover and Kelley Rourke, based on the novel by Dana Spiotta. For tickets and other information about the January 2025 premiere as part of the Prototype Festival, go here.
For more information about the opera, including a playlist, video from Joe’s Pub, and more, visit the opera’s website.
The job of the librettist is to furnish the composer with a plot, characters and words: of these, the least important, so far as the audience is concerned, are the words. The opera house is not a Lieder recital hall, and they will be very fortunate if they hear one word in seven. The verbal text of an opera is to be judged not by the literary quality or lack of it which it may have when read but by its success or failure in exciting the musical imagination of the composer.
–W.H. Auden, The World of Opera
LIBRETTISTS WORTH KNOWING (for starters)
Giovanni Francesco Busenello (L’Incoronazione di Poppea)
Nicola Francesco Haym (Giulio Cesare, Ottone, Flavio, Tamerlano, Rodelinda)
Lorenzo Da Ponte (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte)
Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa (La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly)
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die ägyptische Helena, Arabella)
W.H. Auden (Paul Bunyan, The Rake’s Progress)
Alice Goodman (Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer)
Mark Campbell (Silent Night, The Shining, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, As One, and 30+ more)
A good opera plot is one which provides as many and as varied situations in which it seems plausible that the characters should sing. That means that no opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing; an opera plot must be, in both senses of the word, a melodrama.
–W.H. Auden, The World of Opera
CONSIDER THE LIBRETTIST: SOME OPERAS IN ENGLISH
You can learn a lot about the craft of structuring a story for music by studying the works of any of the “librettists worth knowing” mentioned above. However, never are the lessons as immediate as they are when operas were experienced as the inventors of the form intended—in the language of the audience.
Dido and Aeneas (1689) Henry Purcell/Nahum Tate
Dido, Queen of Carthage, is united with Aeneas, a Trojan Prince. Their happiness is short-lived: The Sorceress schemes with her witches to deprive Dido of her life and love. They plot to send a false message, ostensibly from Jove, calling Aeneas to leave Carthage. When Aeneas returns, he tries to explain, but Dido rebuffs him. She dies, lamenting her fate.
libretto | PV or full score | audio
Fellow Travelers (2016) Gregory Spears/Greg Pierce
Based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling novel, Fellow Travelers takes place in 1950s Washington, D.C., and follows Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. A chance encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim’s first job in D.C. and – after Fuller’s advances – his first love affair. With senator McCarthy’s investigations into ‘sexual subversives’, Tim struggles to reconcile his political convictions, his love for God, and his love for Fuller – an entanglement that ends in a stunning act of betrayal.
The Ghosts of Versailles (1991) John Corigliano/William M. Hoffman
This “grand opera buffa” is set in the Versailles court of Louis XVI. In order to cheer up the ghost of Marie Antoinette, who is upset about having been beheaded, the ghost of the playwright Beaumarchais stages an opera (obviously based on La Mère coupable, although described by Beaumarchais as a new composition) using the characters and situations from his first two Figaro plays.
In a Grove (2022). Christopher Cerrone / Stephanie Fleischmann
A silent, expectant grove. A fatal encounter between a man, a woman, and a thief. Seven testimonies, each offering a different perspective on the crime.
The Knock (2021) Aleksandra Vrebalov/Deborah Brevoort
A group of military wives, whose husbands are fighting in Fallujah, gather together because of rumors about a possible incident on the war front. As the women await word about what has taken place, a young Army officer drives across the western plains to deliver them the news. A one-act opera for three soloists and a chorus. 65 minutes.
Later the Same Evening (2007) John Musto/Mark Campbell
“Later the Same Evening” is inspired by five paintings by New York artist Edward Hopper including “Room in New York” (1932) and “Automat” (1927). The three fully staged performances imagine the lives of the figures in these paintings and connect them as characters on a single evening in New York City in 1932.
Lucy (2010) John Glover/Kelley Rourke
A chamber opera inspired by the true story of a psychotherapist who raised a chimpanzee daughter.
audio | libretto & notes | podcast | film
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears, after Shakespeare
The Mother of Us All (1947) Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein
The opera centers around Susan B. Anthony, with a supporting cast of characters both fictional and based on other historical figures. The score suggests 19th century hymns, marches, patriotic airs, and parlor songs.
Nixon in China (1987)
John Adams/Alice Goodman
The opera uses Nixon’s 1972 visit to China as a starting point for an exploration of myth-making.
libretto | audio | composer’s note
The Rake’s Progress (1951) Igor Stravinksy/W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman
Inspired by illustrations by William Hogarth, the story concerns the decline and fall of one Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for the delights of London in the company of Nick Shadow, who turns out to be the Devil. After several misadventures, all initiated by the devious Shadow, Tom ends up in Bedlam, a hospital for the insane at that time situated in the City of London. The moral of the tale is: "For idle hearts and hands and minds the Devil finds work to do."
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2017) Mason Bates/ Mark Campbell
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs follows the visionary Apple co-founder as he looks back on his life and career and confronts his own mortality. The opera is described as taking place “at a moment in Jobs’ life when he must face his own mortality and circles back to the events and people in his past that shaped and inspired him: his father Paul, Zen Buddhism, his relationship with a woman whose child he initially disowned, his quick rise and fall as a mogul, and – most importantly – his wife Laurene, who showed him the power of love and connection.
Silent Night (2018) Kevin Puts, Mark Campbell
A Pulitzer Prize-winning opera that recounts the true story of a spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and Germans during World War I.
Strawberry Fields (1999) Michael Torke/A.R. Gurney
The setting is Strawberry Fields in Central Park on a warm autumn afternoon. A respectable but confused Old Lady, has wandered into the park and sits down on a bench, imagining that it is her seat at the opera, and that the events unfolding in the park constitute the show. A Student, intrigued, plays along with her fantasy. Some young people enter with guitars and sing in memory of John Lennon who, like the Old Lady's beloved Verdi, wrote songs of brotherhood and freedom. Her Son enters and tries to coax her to come along to a nursing home. The Old Lady refuses to go, saying that if she does she will miss the opera; the Student supports her position. Frustrated, her Son calls his sister on his cell phone, hoping that together they will be able to convince their mother to leave the city. Meanwhile, the Old Lady comes to believe that the Student is her lost husband; together they enjoy the "opera" as it proceeds around them. When the Son, Daughter and a Nurse approach with a wheelchair to take Her to the nursing home, it is too late: She is already gone.
video (with score)
Taking Up Serpents (2018) Kamala Sankaram/Jerre Dye
In TAKING UP SERPENTS, 25-year-old Kayla is the estranged daughter of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who is dangerously bitten by one of his own snakes. Kayla's journey home forces her to confront her troubled upbringing. With a score showcasing Sankaram's deft stylistic eclecticism and an original story inspired by Dye's roots in the Deep South, Taking Up Serpents calls into question faith, family, and destiny, with shocking results. 70 minutes.
WHERE WORDS AND MUSIC MEET: THINKING ABOUT A COLLABORATIVE ART FORM
When do the creators appear to be prioritizing information/exposition, and when do they appear to be prioritizing emotional expansion?
To what extent do the structures created in the libretto influence the structure of the score? To what extent does the composer create structures that could not be predicted by looking at the text alone, employing techniques like repetition, fragmentation, etc?
When more than one person is singing at once, (how) does the setting make each character intelligible? To what extent is verbal clarity the point? (Is information or emotion the priority?)
To what extent do orchestrational choices play a role in how we understand the characters and their journeys?
What do choices in the vocal line tell us about each character’s emotional journey – speed of text setting, range, rhythm, predictability/unpredictability, etc.?
When does the music align with/amplify characters’ statements? When does it hint at a conflict between what a character says and what a character feels/means?
What “punch lines” (comic or dramatic) land most successfully for you, and why?
Sanskrit is the best possible language for an opera libretto. It has the two necessary qualities: it utilizes predominantly open vowel sounds, and it doesn't invite you to try to understand the language, which is something you automatically do at the opera if you know a smattering of German or Italian or French. With Sanskrit, you are relieved of every bit of concentration except where it counts: on the music and the singing and, if you're interested in the story, on the surtitles.
–Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat
OPERA IN TRANSLATION
The Chandos label has produced an extensive Opera in English series, featuring some of the great singers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Check it out and see how it feels to immediately experience the alliance of words and music.
Translating for Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics (2016) focuses on challenges and practical solutions for creating translations meant to be sung to pre-existing music. Authors Ronnie Apter and Mark Herman also touch on translation theory and related translation practices, such as translations for surtitles.
Mark Polizzotti’s Sympathy for the Traitor—the title is a play on the Italian terms for translator and traitor (traduttore/traditore)—offers an engaging exploration of the goals, challenges, and delights of translation.
“Much of the finest art has been made for a designated space, an occasion, a time, a place, a person, or a purpose. For centuries the best artists earned their livelihoods not by yearning, threatening suicide or feigning epilepsy in an effort to obtain next to impossible materials but by fulfilling precise assignments while utilizing readily available means.”
—Lehman Engel: Creating the Broadway Musical Libretto
FURTHER READING
Longtime Opera News editor Patrick J. Smith’s The Tenth Muse (1970) is a historical study of the opera libretto. In addition to looking at how individual librettists transformed their sources into libretti, Smith tracks the shifting relationship between drama, dance, words and music, as revealed in typical libretto structures of each era.
Music with Words: A Composer’s View (1989), by composer-critic Virgil Thomson, is a practical and detailed handbook for those who will compose music with words; it also includes thoughtful essays on the nature of opera and opera in the vernacular.
Translating for Singing: The Theory, Art and Craft of Translating Lyrics (2016) focuses on challenges and practical solutions for creating translations meant to be sung to pre-existing music. Authors Ronnie Apter and Mark Herman also touch on translation theory and related translation practices, such as translations for surtitles.
Stephen Sondheim’s two volumes of collected lyrics and commentary, Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011), offer a deep dive into one aspect of his creative process. In addition to discussing his own work, Sondheim includes short essays on the work of other major lyricists.
Jack Viertel’s The Secret Life of the American Musical (2016) discusses structure in musicals and the numbers within them.
