Latest news with #MissyMazzoli
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Houston Grand Opera, ‘This Is a Good Time'
On a recent morning at the Wortham Theater Center, home of Houston Grand Opera, the orchestra was playing through the intense score of Missy Mazzoli's 2016 opera 'Breaking the Waves.' Led by the conductor Patrick Summers, the players fine-tuned eerie glissando slides and dug into Mazzoli's creaking, scratching effects. At the same time, a few floors down, the young bass Alexandros Stavrakakis was at a coaching session, trying to find depths in the often dry Landgraf in Wagner's 'Tannhaüser.' Stavrakakis was singing his role for the first time, like the rest of the 'Tannhaüser' cast — a bold move for a Wagner opera at a major company. It was a reminder of another moment when old and new came together in Houston. In 1987, the Wortham opened with a pairing that was also a kind of manifesto: Verdi's 'Aida' and the world premiere of John Adams's 'Nixon in China,' a statement that opera's past and present could surge toward the future in Texas. At that point, it had been just over 30 years since Houston Grand Opera's scrappy beginnings, but it already had a reputation for being the rare American company fully invested in fostering new American work. It has been an early adopter of populist innovations like above-the-stage translations and outdoor simulcasts. It has shown resilience, too: Displaced for a season when the Wortham was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the company moved to a convention center and didn't miss a performance. Now, at 70, it continues to be a model for the field. With many opera companies in a doom loop of shrinkage caused by rising costs and stagnant (or worse) earnings, Houston has proved an exception. Driven by creative leadership and generous donors, its programming budget has risen steadily. By this summer, its endowment will have increased to nearly $120 million — almost double what it was five years ago. 'I'm trying to push the boundaries of self-esteem for H.G.O.,' said Khori Dastoor, 44, the company's chief executive since 2021. 'It starts with deciding and feeling that we can be leaders, instead of always comparing ourselves with bigger markets and larger institutions.' Even a success story in opera is one of struggles: for audiences, for fresh repertory, for relevance. The larger of the Wortham's two theaters has a capacity of about 2,400, significantly fewer seats than some major American houses, yet a standard like 'La Bohème' was only 70 percent sold this winter. Still, the company's ticket sales are stronger than just before the pandemic. Labor relations are calm. A robust reserve fund created after Harvey has provided a cushion for experimentation. Over a few days of rehearsals and interviews recently, the high quality of the work was clear. The orchestra has an easy rapport with Summers, the music director since the late 1990s. The chorus rehearses nights and weekends, with a group that includes teachers, doctors and lawyers as well as professional singers — but, led by Richard Bado, who has been with the company since 1984, it made a nuanced, mighty sound at the close of 'Tannhaüser.' More unusual, everyone attested to a palpable sense of stability and warmth, in a field better known for deficit cycles and fraught relations among employees and management. 'A lot of the time you don't really recognize the good times when they're happening,' said Dennis Whittaker, a bassist in the orchestra for almost 30 years. 'But this is a good time.' As Houston grows, its larger peers are on ever more tenuous footing. The Metropolitan Opera, still the country's titan, has been forced to raid its endowment and trim its performance schedule. Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera's seasons have been slashed to roughly 40 main stage performances of six titles, around the same volume Houston has maintained for years. But because of legacy labor contracts and other overhead costs, Chicago's annual budget is over $70 million and San Francisco's nearly $90 million, figures that are perilously difficult to cover as productivity declines. Houston spends just $33 million for a similar output. Without consistent sellouts, Dastoor is not looking to add more main stage productions any time soon, but she is insistent that the company does need to get bigger. 'Maintenance of the current audience will lead to failure,' she said. 'The only viable path to sustainability is growth.' After World War II, the city's appetite for opera was whetted by touring visits from the Met, and Walter Herbert, a German conductor who had fled the Nazis, saw an opening. Houston Grand Opera was inaugurated with Strauss's 'Salome' — then still a daring choice that showed the venturesome spirit at the company's core. Finances were touch and go in those early years, but star singers like Jon Vickers and Beverly Sills began to appear, and in 1972 David Gockley, just 28, succeeded Herbert as general director, remaining in the position until 2005. Gockley had vision and charisma at the right moment, with Houston's wealth exploding as the oil industry boomed. In 1974, the company produced Thomas Pasatieri's 'The Seagull,' its first commissioned work of dozens to date. Over the next few years it gave the first fully professional performances of Scott Joplin's 'Treemonisha' and a landmark version of Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess,' with both productions transferring to Broadway. The company formed a close relationship with the composer Carlisle Floyd, who helped found its young artist program. Gockley brought in some audacious interpretations of the classics, as well as musical theater that made sense alongside Verdi; in 1984, Houston was the first opera house to present Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd.' Few other big companies would have had the patience and flexibility to germinate Meredith Monk's unconventional 'Atlas.' The opening of the Wortham brought gleaming facilities, including an 1,100-seat second theater for more intimate pieces. When the Houston Symphony, which had collaborated with the opera since its founding, wanted to move on, Summers was hired to build a house orchestra. After shaping an ensemble up for the challenge of scores like Wagner's 'Ring' and Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 'The Passenger,' which toured to New York in 2014, Summers will step down as artistic and music director after next season. 'I admire Khori immensely,' he said, 'and I wanted to stay long enough into her tenure to give her continuity. Now it feels like a natural stopping point.' Finding his replacement is a priority for Dastoor, who trained as a soprano and attended 'Tannhaüser' rehearsal with an open score in her lap, tapping out the piano part on the pages with her fingers. She came to Houston from Opera San José in California, which she led after a period working for the Packard Humanities Institute, a large family foundation that gave her insight into the mind-set of wealthy donors. She has already shown skill at fund-raising: In 2023, a $22 million gift from Sarah and Ernest Butler was the largest in the company's history. But the city's donor base has long been said to be unusually committed. 'It's a very Houston thing: 'It has to be the best, and if it is, I will support you,'' Bado said. 'So the support has not waned.' Claire Liu, the chair of the company's board, said: 'Houston started as a really entrepreneurial environment, full of handshake deals. So people trust each other; people help each other. You have an incredibly philanthropic community. They want the city to be successful.' Where will all that growth go, if not into main stage offerings? Marc Scorca, the chief executive of Opera America, a trade group, said that Houston, like its peers, needs 'to show artistic and civic value outside the walls of the opera house, the opera bubble.' Under Gockley's successor, Anthony Freud, the company invested in works that emerged from the community, like a mariachi opera and an oratorio based on interviews with immigrants in the Houston area. Dastoor successfully tried out a Family Day performance this fall, and recently brought child-friendly work to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which attracts huge crowds. Forays like this outside the Wortham, already a focus of the company's education and community partnerships, are expected to be an ever greater part of operations. 'If we're going to 70, 80, 100 venues every season,' Dastoor said, 'doing hundreds of events, that all informs the main stage. It isn't on the side.' Dastoor doesn't rest on the company's laurels or dismiss the obstacles it faces. 'We don't want to play to half-empty houses,' she said. 'We want to find a sweet spot, to grow with the community and see what they respond to.' The result, as everywhere in opera, is a mixture of chestnuts and riskier fare. Next season leans on 'Porgy and Bess,' an audience favorite that will get nine performances, and runs of the stalwarts 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'The Barber of Seville.' But there will also be Robert Wilson's enigmatic staging of Handel's 'Messiah,' the company's first production of Puccini's 'Il Trittico' and a revised version of Kevin Puts's 'Silent Night' that will travel to the Met. The young artist program, the Butler Studio, will put on Carlisle Floyd's masterpiece, 'Of Mice and Men,' in the Wortham's smaller space; using that smaller theater more often is an aim for the coming years. A major fund-raising campaign is in its early stages, of a size that Dastoor hopes will ensure the company's freedom from year-after-year anxieties, once and for all. 'We could get off this hamster wheel,' she said. 'My legacy, I hope, will be building an audience for opera in a modern American city.'
Chicago Tribune
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
In Lyric Opera's ‘The Listeners,' one little sound drives a woman to the edge
Some describe it as a giant, idling engine. Some say it's like the whirr of a generator. Others swear it comes straight from the center of the Earth. About 2% of the global population reports hearing what researchers and conspiracy theorists alike call 'the Hum.' The real-life phenomenon, which is still unexplained, inspires a new opera at Lyric Opera of Chicago from March 30 to April 11: 'The Listeners,' by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. The opera follows suburban schoolteacher Claire Devon (Chicago-born soprano Nicole Heaston, in her house debut), who is plagued by the Hum. Over the course of the opera, Claire learns she's not alone. She joins a cultlike community of 'Listeners,' a decision that alters the course of her life. The opera's scenario was devised by writer Jordan Tannahill, who has since adapted the story into a novel and BBC miniseries. After pandemic delays, 'The Listeners' debuted in 2022 at the Norwegian National Opera. Productions by co-commissioners Opera Philadelphia and, now, Lyric have followed. At the time she connected with the Tribune, Mazzoli — also the Chicago Symphony's composer-in-residence from 2018 to 2021 — had just arrived in Chicago from Essen, Germany, where 'The Listeners' is enjoying a second brand-new production. Not bad for an opera that's barely been in the world for two and a half years. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity and flow. Q: Over this opera's short lifespan, it's already inspired two different productions. What was it like to experience it with a totally new vision in Essen, and how did it differ from the production that we're going to see here in Chicago? A: Besides some Zoom meetings with the dramaturg and director, I was not part of making the production in Germany at all. It was really surreal to sit down and not know what was going to happen. The production is much more abstract, symbolic and psychological. For example, the house of the protagonist, Claire, is just this big neon sign that says 'ANGER' in huge, 10-foot-tall letters. At one point in the German production, a character came out into the audience waving a very realistic gun before a fake SWAT team arrested him in the aisle. That would never happen in America. I guess (the short lifespan) sounds quick, but the thing is, 'Listeners' was really delayed because of the pandemic. It was supposed to premiere in Philly in 2021; instead, they pushed it back by two years and Philly had to go second. And I've written one and a half operas since 'The Listeners' — I'm onto other crazy stuff. So, it's interesting. Q: Those years in question have been eventful, to say the least. Are there parts of the work you're hearing or seeing differently now? A: I hate to say this, but you can't get away from it: The piece was always in a small, small part a reaction to the first Trump administration. One of the major themes of the work is what happens when a charismatic leader manipulates a population's vulnerabilities and uses them to his or her own ends. Unfortunately, that has new relevance. There's also a line (from) back in 2022 where Claire is singing about all of her lost potential, which is another big theme of the work. She has this line where she says, 'I could have been the president of the goddamn United States.' Now, obviously, to see a Black woman standing up there singing that. … It used to be funny. It's not funny anymore. Q: Claire taps into her inner 'wildness' in the opera. That, plus the remote desert setting, reminds me a bit of 'Proving Up.' ('Proving Up,' Mazzoli's 2018 opera about American homesteaders, was supposed to be performed at Lyric in January 2022 but was canceled by a rise in COVID.) Both operas explore the edges of civilization, and the things that can happen in that liminal space. Do you see similarities between those projects? A: I think of both as being part of an American trilogy of operas. The first one is 'Proving Up,' the second one is 'The Listeners,' and the third is 'Lincoln in the Bardo' (Mazzoli's forthcoming adaptation of the George Saunders novel premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in fall 2026.) They all look at how people relate to each other in American society. There's one similarity I thought of just now, which is the way that I write the villains in both 'Proving Up' and 'The Listeners.' The Sodbuster character in 'Proving Up' and Howard Bard, the leader of this group in 'The Listeners,' both sort of take up too much space. Everywhere else, it's a very fast-paced opera. And then Howard comes out, and the whole world needs to breathe with him. Same thing with the Sodbuster — he takes his damn time. Their control is what I wanted to convey. Q: The other two operas in that American trilogy are adaptations of existing stories — but then again, opera is an art form that's very friendly to adaptation. What made you and Royce Vavrek, your librettist, want to spring for an original story this time? A: We thought of that right away. So, when we contacted Jordan, our assignment was, 'What story would you tell first on the operatic stage?' Certainly, the sonic element of the Hum came out of that prompt. 1 of 3 Composer Missy Mazzoli worked with librettist Royce Vavrek to create "The Listeners" as a co-commission for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Norwegian National Opera and Opera Philadelphia. (Caroline Tompkins) Q: The Hum… How is it conveyed in your score? A: That was a big challenge. I knew I wanted the audience to hear the Hum at some point, but I decided I wanted them to hear it very far into the opera. You spend the first bit of the opera thinking these people are crazy, then you hear it. The question is, in a contemporary opera full of strange sounds, how do you create a sound where people are like, 'Oh, that's the Hum'? The answer is through electronics — it's the first electronic sound we hear. I worked with a great sound engineer, Daniel Neumann, who helped me with the surround-sound elements of it. There's no bad seat for the Hum. But every seat in the house has a different experience of it, which is also important. It's not just about hearing the sound of the Hum: It's about feeling the pressure that these Listeners feel. It's a very intense sound that swirls around and hopefully has an oppressive effect. Q: The sound is depicted as crazy-making, for lack of a better word. The act of going mad — and specifically women going mad — is something opera historically loves to depict. In what ways were you thinking about gender in this opera, if at all? A: I think gender plays into the cult dynamics a lot. So does this other, parallel theme of squashed potential. That idea was based on a lot of the women in my family. My mom always wanted to be an architect. But she was told she could either be a nurse or a teacher, so she was like, 'I guess I'll be a teacher.' Her strategic brain would have made her a great architect, but she filtered that skill into other things. Like, she will kick your ass at cards and chess. It also comes out in darker ways, like frustration and latent anger. That experience of feeling like you're not living the life you want to lead, despite everyone around you saying your life is great, you have this great family, this great job. … I see all the women in my family feeling that in a very strong way. I tried to portray that bubbling up in Claire.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
LA Opera drops Missy Mazzoli's `Lincoln in the Bardo,' which will premiere at New York's Met
The Los Angeles Opera dropped a contemplated world premiere for the second straight season in a cost-cutting move, and Missy Mazzoli's 'Lincoln in the Bardo' will instead open at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Adapted from George Saunders' 2017 novel and with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, 'Lincoln' was to debut in Los Angeles in February 2026, Saunders said last October. But it was not included when the LA Opera announced its 2025-26 season on Tuesday, 'With rising expenses, it's harder for us to manage the manifestation of all of our potential dreams,' LA Opera president Christopher Koelsch said. 'It's a wonderful project and I think it will be very impactful when it gets to the Met. What Missy and Royce have done in adapting something that is essentially unadaptable is really miraculous, a very beautiful and very moving piece.' Saunders' novel, about the death of President Abraham Lincoln's son William Wallace Lincoln, takes place between life and rebirth. Mason Bates' 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' was to have premiered in LA last October but was left off the schedule and instead given a test run with a student cast at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in November. It is planned to open the Met's 2025-26 season on Sept. 21. The Met announced it 2018 it had commissioned 'Lincoln' and by 2023 said the work would be seen first in LA. It will now debut in October 2026 at the Met. Koelsch, managing his company's return following the coronavirus pandemic, said he had never fully committed to 'Lincoln' and decided last fall LA couldn't afford it. Revenue was $46.8 million in 2023-24, up from $40.8 million in 2022-23 but down from $47.1 million in 2021-22. 'Expense and income ratios for the next season were coming more into focus,' he said. Met general manager Peter Gelb said an additional workshop of 'Lincoln' will be scheduled to make up for the loss of the LA dates. It will be the Met's 32nd world premiere. LA Opera's 2025 productions James Conlon will conduct three of LA's five main stage productions at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in his final season as music director, ending a 20-year run. He leads Francesca Zambello's staging of Bernstein's 'West Side Story,' first seen at the Houston Grand Opera in 2018, to open the season on Sept. 20. Conlon then conducts a revival of Lee Blakeley's 2013 staging of Verdi's 'Falstaff' starting April 18, 2026, and Barrie Kosky's 2012 staging of Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte' from Berlin's Komische Oper opening May 30. The season also includes revivals of Herbert Ross' 1993 staging of Puccini's 'La Bohème' and Philip Glass' 'Akhnaten' in a Phelim McDermott production first seen at the English National Opera in 2016. 'A victory lap for James,' Koelsch said. 'He has been music director for over half of the organization's history. The musical priorities of the company and its musical maturity and the sound of the orchestra and chorus are a creation of his expertise and imagination.' The five main-stage productions match 2024-25, down from six in the prior two seasons and a high of 10 in 2006-07. LA will present two world premieres at smaller venues: Sarah Kirkland Snider's 'Hildegard,' based the writings of Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, at The Wallis in Beverly Hills from Nov. 5-9, and Carla Lucero's 'The Tower of Babel,' a new community opera that Conlon will conduct at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on May 8 and 9. Koelsch hopes to hire Conlon's successor ahead of the 2026-27 season. Ronald Blum, The Associated Press
Associated Press
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
LA Opera drops Missy Mazzoli's `Lincoln in the Bardo,' which will premiere New York's Met
The Los Angeles Opera dropped a contemplated world premiere for the second straight season in a cost-cutting move, and Missy Mazzoli's 'Lincoln in the Bardo' will instead open at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Adapted from George Saunders' 2017 novel and with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, 'Lincoln' was to debut in Los Angeles in February 2026, Saunders said last October. But it was not included when the LA Opera announced its 2025-26 season on Tuesday, 'With rising expenses, it's harder for us to manage the manifestation of all of our potential dreams,' LA Opera president Christopher Koelsch said. 'It's a wonderful project and I think it will be very impactful when it gets to the Met. What Missy and Royce have done in adapting something that is essentially unadaptable is really miraculous, a very beautiful and very moving piece.' Saunders' novel, about the death of President Abraham Lincoln's son William Wallace Lincoln, takes place between life and rebirth. Mason Bates' 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' was to have premiered in LA last October but was left off the schedule and instead given a test run with a student cast at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in November. It is planned to open the Met's 2025-26 season on Sept. 21. The Met announced it 2018 it had commissioned 'Lincoln' and by 2023 said the work would be seen first in LA. It will now debut in October 2026 at the Met. Koelsch, managing his company's return following the coronavirus pandemic, said he had never fully committed to 'Lincoln' and decided last fall LA couldn't afford it. Revenue was $46.8 million in 2023-24, up from $40.8 million in 2022-23 but down from $47.1 million in 2021-22. 'Expense and income ratios for the next season were coming more into focus,' he said. Met general manager Peter Gelb said an additional workshop of 'Lincoln' will be scheduled to make up for the loss of the LA dates. It will be the Met's 32nd world premiere. LA Opera's 2025 productions James Conlon will conduct three of LA's five main stage productions at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in his final season as music director, ending a 20-year run. He leads Francesca Zambello's staging of Bernstein's 'West Side Story,' first seen at the Houston Grand Opera in 2018, to open the season on Sept. 20. Conlon then conducts a revival of Lee Blakeley's 2013 staging of Verdi's 'Falstaff' starting April 18, 2026, and Barrie Kosky's 2012 staging of Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte' from Berlin's Komische Oper opening May 30. The season also includes revivals of Herbert Ross' 1993 staging of Puccini's 'La Bohème' and Philip Glass' 'Akhnaten' in a Phelim McDermott production first seen at the English National Opera in 2016. 'A victory lap for James,' Koelsch said. 'He has been music director for over half of the organization's history. The musical priorities of the company and its musical maturity and the sound of the orchestra and chorus are a creation of his expertise and imagination.' The five main-stage productions match 2024-25, down from six in the prior two seasons and a high of 10 in 2006-07. LA will present two world premieres at smaller venues: Sarah Kirkland Snider's 'Hildegard,' based the writings of Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, at The Wallis in Beverly Hills from Nov. 5-9, and Carla Lucero's 'The Tower of Babel,' a new community opera that Conlon will conduct at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on May 8 and 9. Koelsch hopes to hire Conlon's successor ahead of the 2026-27 season.
