Transformations (opera)
Encyclopedia
Transformations is a chamber opera
in two acts by the American composer Conrad Susa
with a libretto
of ten poems by Anne Sexton
from her 1971 book Transformations, a collection of confessional poetry based on stories by the Brothers Grimm
. Commissioned by Minnesota Opera
, the work, which is described by its composer as "An Entertainment in 2 Acts", had its world premiere on 5 May 1973 at the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota
. Anne Sexton, who had worked closely with Susa on the libretto
, was in the audience. It went on to become one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer with its chamber opera format of eight singers and an instrumental ensemble of eight musicians making it particularly popular with smaller opera companies and conservatories. The 2006 revival production of Transformations at the Wexford Opera Festival won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production.
in 1972 by Minnesota Opera
, a company specializing in new works by American composers. Later that year, Susa approached the American poet Anne Sexton
with the idea of using her 1971 book, Transformations, a poetic re-telling of sixteen stories by the Brothers Grimm
, as the basis for the libretto
. Delighted with the idea of hearing her poetry as song, she cooperated closely with Susa in selecting and arranging the ten poems which would form the basis of the opera. Transformations premiered on 5 May 1973 at the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota
. The premiere production was conducted by Philip Brunelle
and directed by H. Wesley Balk
with set and costume design by Robert Israel and lighting design by Bruce Miller. Sexton herself was in the audience that night. She subsequently returned to Minneapolis for further performances and made a tape-recording of the opera which she listened to repeatedly and played for her friends and family. In August 1978, the opera received its US television premiere when it was broadcast on the PBS network in a slightly shortened version performed by Minnesota Opera and co-produced by WNET
and KTCA. Anne Sexton did not live to see the broadcast. Throughout her life she had suffered from mental illness with repeated suicide attempts followed by stays in psychiatric hospitals. On 4 October 1974, dressed in her mother's old fur coat, she killed herself at her home in Weston, Massachusetts
.
Transformations went on to become one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer. Its chamber opera
format has made it particularly popular with smaller opera companies and conservatories. Notable US revivals include those at the Spoleto Festival USA
(1980), Aspen Music Festival with Renée Fleming
as Anne Sexton (1982), New York Opera Repertory Theater in New York City
(1987), Center for Contemporary Opera
in New York City (1996), Opera Theatre of St. Louis (1997), Peabody Institute
(1999 and 2010), San Francisco Opera
's Merola Program with the composer in the audience (2006), University of Maryland Opera Studio
(2007), and the Juilliard School
(2010). Although it has remained relatively unknown in Europe, Transformations had its UK premiere in 1978 performed by the English Music Theatre Company
and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland. The Wexford production, directed by Michael Barker-Caven, won the 2006 Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production.
The original Minnesota Opera production was set in a mental hospital, a setting used in most of its revivals. However, the 2006 San Francisco production was set in an outdoor party in 1970's American suburbia
, while the 2007 University of Maryland production was set in a 1970's nightclub (complete with a disco ball
) and modelled on Studio 54
. The opera was given an arcadian
setting when it was performed in 1980 at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts
by San Francisco Spring Opera in a production designed by Thomas Munn.
The musical style is eclectic with multiple references to American popular music, dance rhythms, and artists of the 1940s and 50s.
s playing Anne Sexton as well as several other characters. The Division of roles is as follows
The original cast was:
. In both Sexton's original book and the opera, this poem introduces the sequence of re-told fairy tales to follow. As in the original book, each of the subsequent tales also has its own introduction and coda in which the poet comments to the audience on her perception of the significance of the story. Sexton and Susa selected nine of the original sixteen re-told tales for the opera. They are presented in the order in which they appeared in the original book. The first and last tales in the book (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Briar Rose) remain the first and last tales in the opera. According to Susa, "the poems are arranged with the author's approval to emphasize the sub-plot which concerns a middle-aged witch who gradually transforms into a vulnerable beauty slipping into a nightmare." The opera's libretto sticks very closely (usually verbatim) to the wording in the poems. The comments below relate to some of the themes which critics have highlighted in each of Sexton's "transformed" tales.
Scene 2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
– The vanity, fragility and naiveté of Snow White ("a dumb bunny" who must be protected by the dwarfs) eventually lead to her becoming the mirror image of her wicked stepmother.
Scene 3. The White Snake
– Sexton satirizes marriage as a kind of "deathly stasis", writing of the young husband and wife, "they were placed in a box and painted identically blue and thus passed their days living happily ever after – a kind of coffin".
Scene 4. Iron Hans – The wild man, Iron Hans, eventually freed from his cage becomes a parable for Sexton's own struggles with insanity and society's ambivalence to the mentally ill.
Scene 5. Rumpelstiltskin
– Sexton's sardonic view of motherhood, "He was like most new babies, as ugly as an artichoke but the Queen thought him a pearl", co-exists with an urge to identify not with the protagonist/winner of the tale (the former miller's daughter who becomes Queen) but rather with the antagonist/loser (Rumpelstiltskin), a theme which recurs in the following scene, Rapunzel.
– Sexton portrays the witch, Mother Gothal, as a lesbian
in love with Rapunzel, the young girl she has imprisoned. In the opera, Mother Gothal and Rapunzel sing a duet to "A woman who loves another woman is forever young". Roger Brunyate, who directed the 1999 production at the Peabody Institute, also sees clear allusions in the story to Sexton's beloved great-aunt, who died in a mental institution.
Scene 7. Godfather Death
– Sexton's version sticks fairly closely to the Grimms' narrative, and is used to explore the simultaneous desire for and fear of death. The first stanza portrays death as a state of sexual frustration rather than the beginning of an afterlife: "Hurry, Godfather death, Mister tyranny, each message you give has a dance to it, a fish twitch, a little crotch dance". The theme is reinforced by the explicit sexual desire which leads to the physician's fatal defiance of his Godfather.
Scene 8. The Wonderful Musician
– In the introductory lines to the tale, "My sisters, do you remember the fiddlers of your youth? Those dances so like a drunkard lighting a fire in the belly?", Sexton explicitly compares women's sexual response to music with the response of the animals whom the Wonderful Musician enchants and then cruelly entraps. The scene can be read as a cautionary tale about the demonic power of music, but on a deeper level about women cooperating in their own victimization.
Scene 9. Hansel and Gretel
– The Grimms' Hansel and Gretel is one of their darkest tales. Two young children repeatedly abandoned in a forest by their father and stepmother, narrowly escape from a cannibal witch by burning her alive in her own oven. Sexton follows the story quite closely but makes it even more disturbing by an introduction in which a mother affectionately pretends to "eat up" her little boy (sung in the opera as "The Witch's Lullaby"). The conflation of mother love with cannibalism
becomes explicit as the mother's language becomes increasingly sadistic. "I want to bite, I want to chew [...] I have a pan that will fit you. Just pull up your knees like a game hen."
Scene 10. Briar Rose (The Grimms' variant of Sleeping Beauty
) – Sexton eliminates Briar Rose's mother from the narrative and changes the ending of the tale considerably. As in the original, the Prince awakens Briar Rose from her 100 year sleep with a kiss, and the couple marry. However, her first words on being awakened are "Daddy! Daddy!", and for the rest of her life Briar Rose suffers from insomnia. The tale itself is fairly short, preceded and followed by lengthy autobiographical stanzas in which Sexton explicitly alludes to her own psychiatric history involving controversial "recovered memories
" of sexual abuse by her father and dissociative trance
states.
Chamber opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
in two acts by the American composer Conrad Susa
Conrad Susa
Conrad Stephen Susa is an American composer, particularly known for his operas. His 1973 chamber opera, Transformations, set to texts from the poems of Anne Sexton, is one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera...
with a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
of ten poems by Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967...
from her 1971 book Transformations, a collection of confessional poetry based on stories by the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
. Commissioned by Minnesota Opera
Minnesota Opera
The Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen...
, the work, which is described by its composer as "An Entertainment in 2 Acts", had its world premiere on 5 May 1973 at the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
. Anne Sexton, who had worked closely with Susa on the libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
, was in the audience. It went on to become one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer with its chamber opera format of eight singers and an instrumental ensemble of eight musicians making it particularly popular with smaller opera companies and conservatories. The 2006 revival production of Transformations at the Wexford Opera Festival won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production.
Background and performance history
Transformations was commissioned from Conrad SusaConrad Susa
Conrad Stephen Susa is an American composer, particularly known for his operas. His 1973 chamber opera, Transformations, set to texts from the poems of Anne Sexton, is one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera...
in 1972 by Minnesota Opera
Minnesota Opera
The Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen...
, a company specializing in new works by American composers. Later that year, Susa approached the American poet Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967...
with the idea of using her 1971 book, Transformations, a poetic re-telling of sixteen stories by the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
, as the basis for the libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
. Delighted with the idea of hearing her poetry as song, she cooperated closely with Susa in selecting and arranging the ten poems which would form the basis of the opera. Transformations premiered on 5 May 1973 at the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
. The premiere production was conducted by Philip Brunelle
Philip Brunelle
Philip Brunelle is an American conductor and organist. He founded VocalEssence in 1969 and remains the artistic director today...
and directed by H. Wesley Balk
Wesley Balk
H. Wesley Balk was an American performance theorist/coach and stage director. He was artistic director of the Minnesota Opera for almost twenty years, where he directed several world premieres, including Conrad Susa's Transformations....
with set and costume design by Robert Israel and lighting design by Bruce Miller. Sexton herself was in the audience that night. She subsequently returned to Minneapolis for further performances and made a tape-recording of the opera which she listened to repeatedly and played for her friends and family. In August 1978, the opera received its US television premiere when it was broadcast on the PBS network in a slightly shortened version performed by Minnesota Opera and co-produced by WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
and KTCA. Anne Sexton did not live to see the broadcast. Throughout her life she had suffered from mental illness with repeated suicide attempts followed by stays in psychiatric hospitals. On 4 October 1974, dressed in her mother's old fur coat, she killed herself at her home in Weston, Massachusetts
Weston, Massachusetts
Weston is a suburb of Boston located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States in the Boston metro area. The population of Weston, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, is 11,261....
.
Transformations went on to become one of the most frequently performed operas by an American composer. Its chamber opera
Chamber opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
format has made it particularly popular with smaller opera companies and conservatories. Notable US revivals include those at the Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, is one of the world's major performing arts festivals. It was founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who sought to establish a counterpart to the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy...
(1980), Aspen Music Festival with Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...
as Anne Sexton (1982), New York Opera Repertory Theater in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
(1987), Center for Contemporary Opera
Center for Contemporary Opera
The Center for Contemporary Opera is a professional opera company based in New York City, and a member of OPERA America. The company focuses on producing and developing new opera and music theater works and reviving rarely seen American operas written after the second World War...
in New York City (1996), Opera Theatre of St. Louis (1997), Peabody Institute
Peabody Institute
The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a renowned conservatory and preparatory school located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland at the corner of Charles and Monument Streets at Mount Vernon Place.-History:...
(1999 and 2010), San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
's Merola Program with the composer in the audience (2006), University of Maryland Opera Studio
University of Maryland School of Music
The University of Maryland School of Music is a music school located in College Park, Maryland outside of Washington, D.C. The School of Music is the largest performing arts unit at the University of Maryland, College Park.The UM School of Music is a comprehensive music school, with undergraduate...
(2007), and the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
(2010). Although it has remained relatively unknown in Europe, Transformations had its UK premiere in 1978 performed by the English Music Theatre Company
English Opera Group
The English Opera Group was a small company of British musicians formed in 1947 by the composer Benjamin Britten for the purpose of presenting his and other, primarily British, composers' operatic works. The group later expanded in order to present larger-scale works, and was renamed the English...
and was one of the featured operas of the 2006 Wexford Opera Festival in Ireland. The Wexford production, directed by Michael Barker-Caven, won the 2006 Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production.
The original Minnesota Opera production was set in a mental hospital, a setting used in most of its revivals. However, the 2006 San Francisco production was set in an outdoor party in 1970's American suburbia
SubUrbia
subUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburban Boston hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate who has become a successful musician...
, while the 2007 University of Maryland production was set in a 1970's nightclub (complete with a disco ball
Disco ball
A disco ball is a roughly spherical object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display...
) and modelled on Studio 54
Studio 54
Studio 54 was a highly popular discotheque from 1977 until 1991, located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York, USA. It was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming a CBS radio and television studio. In 1977 it...
. The opera was given an arcadian
Arcadia (utopia)
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
setting when it was performed in 1980 at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts
Palace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still...
by San Francisco Spring Opera in a production designed by Thomas Munn.
Score
Described by its composer as "An Entertainment in 2 Acts", the opera is has a running time of approximately two hours and is scored for eight singers and an ensemble of eight to nine musicians.- Voices: two sopranoSopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
s, one mezzo-sopranoMezzo-sopranoA mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
, three tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
s, one high baritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
, and one bass-baritoneBass-baritoneA bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
. - Instrumentation: clarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, saxophoneSaxophoneThe saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
, trumpetTrumpetThe trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
, tromboneTromboneThe trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, contrabassContrabassContrabass refers to a musical instrument of very low pitch; generally those pitched one octave below instruments of the bass register...
, electric harpsichordHarpsichordA harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
, electric pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, electric celesteCelestaThe celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, electric organOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, and percussionPercussion instrumentA percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
.
The musical style is eclectic with multiple references to American popular music, dance rhythms, and artists of the 1940s and 50s.
Roles and original cast
Each of the singers in Transformations is referenced by a number on a casting grid (rather than a character name) and takes multiple roles, with one of the sopranoSoprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
s playing Anne Sexton as well as several other characters. The Division of roles is as follows
- 1: The Princess/Virgin/Young Anne/Snow White/Rapunzel/Andrews Sister/Gretel/Briar Rose] (sopranoSopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
) - 2: Anne Sexton/The Witch/Step-Mother Queen/Aunt/Mother Gothel/Andrews Sister/Briar Rose] (soprano)
- 3: The Good Fairy/Mirror/White Snake/Talking Woman/Golden Spring/ Doppelgänger/Mother/Andrews Sister/Narrator/Witch/Twelfth Fairy (mezzo-sopranoMezzo-sopranoA mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
) - 4: The Wizard/Servant/Animal/Dwarf/Suspicious Man/King/Truman CapoteTruman CapoteTruman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
/Rumpelstiltskin/Vegetable/Tower/Wonderful Musician/Step-Mother/Thirteenth Fairy (tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
) - 5: The Magic Object/Animal/Dwarf/Dog/Animal/Caged Man/Gardiner/Baby/Vegetable/Tower/Hunter/Pebble/Bird/Fairy] (tenor)
- 6: The Prince/Worm/Boy on a Bridge/Messenger/Fox/Hansel (tenor)
- 7: The KingAnimal/Dwarf/Lunatic/Iron Hans/Husband/Tower/Wolf/Bread/Fairy/Father (high baritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
) - 8: The Neighboring King/Hunter/Dwarf/Bird/ Crying Man/King/ Miller/Messenger/Vegetable/Tower/Hare/Father (bass-baritoneBass-baritoneA bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
)
The original cast was:
- 1: Catherine MalfitanoCatherine MalfitanoCatherine Malfitano is an American operatic soprano. She is generally considered to be one of America's leading operatic sopranos...
- 2: Barbara Brandt
- 3: Janis Hardy
- 4: Vern Sutton
- 5: Yale Marshall
- 6: James Rogness
- 7: Barry Busse
- 8: William Dansby
Synopsis
The opera is set in a mental hospital, with the patients acting out the tales, although some subsequent revivals have altered the setting. (See Background and performance history above.) The first scene, The Gold Key, is not one of the Grimms' fairy tales, although the title is an allusion to their story, The Golden KeyThe Golden Key (Grimm's Fairy Tales)
The Golden Key is a fairy tale , which is in place 200 of Grimm's Fairy Tales.-Plot:A poor boy gathering wood with a sleigh wants to warm himself by a fire and finds a small golden key beneath the snow; then he finds a small iron box in the ground...
. In both Sexton's original book and the opera, this poem introduces the sequence of re-told fairy tales to follow. As in the original book, each of the subsequent tales also has its own introduction and coda in which the poet comments to the audience on her perception of the significance of the story. Sexton and Susa selected nine of the original sixteen re-told tales for the opera. They are presented in the order in which they appeared in the original book. The first and last tales in the book (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Briar Rose) remain the first and last tales in the opera. According to Susa, "the poems are arranged with the author's approval to emphasize the sub-plot which concerns a middle-aged witch who gradually transforms into a vulnerable beauty slipping into a nightmare." The opera's libretto sticks very closely (usually verbatim) to the wording in the poems. The comments below relate to some of the themes which critics have highlighted in each of Sexton's "transformed" tales.
Act 1
Scene 1. The Gold Key – The speaker, Sexton herself (as a "middle-aged witch", her frequent alter-ego), addresses an audience of adults by their first names. Children, the stereotypical audience for fairy tales, are nowhere mentioned. She then tells the story of a sixteen year old youth searching for answers, whom she proclaims to be "each of us". He eventually finds a gold key that unlocks the book of Grimm's Fairy Tales in their transformed state.Scene 2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White
"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
– The vanity, fragility and naiveté of Snow White ("a dumb bunny" who must be protected by the dwarfs) eventually lead to her becoming the mirror image of her wicked stepmother.
Scene 3. The White Snake
The White Snake
The White Snake is a German fairy tale included in the complete volume of the Brothers Grimm, tale number 17. It is Aarne-Thompson type 673.-Synopsis:...
– Sexton satirizes marriage as a kind of "deathly stasis", writing of the young husband and wife, "they were placed in a box and painted identically blue and thus passed their days living happily ever after – a kind of coffin".
Scene 4. Iron Hans – The wild man, Iron Hans, eventually freed from his cage becomes a parable for Sexton's own struggles with insanity and society's ambivalence to the mentally ill.
Scene 5. Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin is the eponymous character and protagonist of a fairy tale which originated in Germany . The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm, who first published it in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales...
– Sexton's sardonic view of motherhood, "He was like most new babies, as ugly as an artichoke but the Queen thought him a pearl", co-exists with an urge to identify not with the protagonist/winner of the tale (the former miller's daughter who becomes Queen) but rather with the antagonist/loser (Rumpelstiltskin), a theme which recurs in the following scene, Rapunzel.
Act 2
Scene 6. RapunzelRapunzel
"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698...
– Sexton portrays the witch, Mother Gothal, as a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
in love with Rapunzel, the young girl she has imprisoned. In the opera, Mother Gothal and Rapunzel sing a duet to "A woman who loves another woman is forever young". Roger Brunyate, who directed the 1999 production at the Peabody Institute, also sees clear allusions in the story to Sexton's beloved great-aunt, who died in a mental institution.
Scene 7. Godfather Death
Godfather Death
Godfather Death is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm as tale number 44. It is Aarne-Thompson type 332.-Synopsis:...
– Sexton's version sticks fairly closely to the Grimms' narrative, and is used to explore the simultaneous desire for and fear of death. The first stanza portrays death as a state of sexual frustration rather than the beginning of an afterlife: "Hurry, Godfather death, Mister tyranny, each message you give has a dance to it, a fish twitch, a little crotch dance". The theme is reinforced by the explicit sexual desire which leads to the physician's fatal defiance of his Godfather.
Scene 8. The Wonderful Musician
The Wonderful Musician
The Wonderful Musician or The Strange Musician or The Marvellous Musician is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm as tale number 8 in their Grimm's Fairy Tales...
– In the introductory lines to the tale, "My sisters, do you remember the fiddlers of your youth? Those dances so like a drunkard lighting a fire in the belly?", Sexton explicitly compares women's sexual response to music with the response of the animals whom the Wonderful Musician enchants and then cruelly entraps. The scene can be read as a cautionary tale about the demonic power of music, but on a deeper level about women cooperating in their own victimization.
Scene 9. Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel
"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...
– The Grimms' Hansel and Gretel is one of their darkest tales. Two young children repeatedly abandoned in a forest by their father and stepmother, narrowly escape from a cannibal witch by burning her alive in her own oven. Sexton follows the story quite closely but makes it even more disturbing by an introduction in which a mother affectionately pretends to "eat up" her little boy (sung in the opera as "The Witch's Lullaby"). The conflation of mother love with cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
becomes explicit as the mother's language becomes increasingly sadistic. "I want to bite, I want to chew [...] I have a pan that will fit you. Just pull up your knees like a game hen."
Scene 10. Briar Rose (The Grimms' variant of Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault or Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince...
) – Sexton eliminates Briar Rose's mother from the narrative and changes the ending of the tale considerably. As in the original, the Prince awakens Briar Rose from her 100 year sleep with a kiss, and the couple marry. However, her first words on being awakened are "Daddy! Daddy!", and for the rest of her life Briar Rose suffers from insomnia. The tale itself is fairly short, preceded and followed by lengthy autobiographical stanzas in which Sexton explicitly alludes to her own psychiatric history involving controversial "recovered memories
Recovered memory
Recovered memory is the description given to the apparent resurrection of the memory of events that had been forgotten or suppressed for a relatively long time. Retrograde amnesia secondary to physical or emotional trauma , or the suppression of painful memories from any cause, is an accepted concept...
" of sexual abuse by her father and dissociative trance
Trance
Trance denotes a variety of processes, ecstasy, techniques, modalities and states of mind, awareness and consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.The term trance may be associated with meditation, magic, flow, and prayer...
states.
Sources
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- American Psychiatric AssociationAmerican Psychiatric AssociationThe American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
, "Dissociative Trance Disorder" in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DisordersThe Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
(DSM-IV-TR), American Psychiatric Publications, 2000. ISBN 0890420254 - Brunyate, Roger, A Feminist Far from Grimm: Anne Sexton and her Transformations, Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, 1999 (accessed 6 June 2010)
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, 30 October 2006 (accessed 6 June 2010) - Harries, Elizabeth Wanning, "Sexton, Anne (1928–1974) in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, Volume 3, Donald Haase (ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008, pp. 854–855. ISBN 0313334447
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, 10 June 1997, p. 3D - Kosman, Joshua, "Medieval tales, Sexton musings fuse into graceful Merola opera", San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, 17 July 2006 (accessed 6 June 2010) - Martín Gonzalez, Matilde, "Fairy tales revisited and transformed: Anne Sexton's critique of social(ized) femininity", Revista española de estudios norteamericanos, No. 17–18, 1999, pp. 9–22
- McGowan, Philip, Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. ISBN 0313315140
- Opera AmericaOpera AmericaOpera America, officially OPERA America, is a service organization in North America promoting the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera...
, Transformations, North American Works Directory (accessed 6 June 2010) - Rich, Allan, "Music", New York Magazine, 26 May 1980, pp. 60–61
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- Victoria Advocate (via Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
), "'Transformations' Hit Opera", 12 August 1978, p. 6D - Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), Critical Essays on Anne Sexton, G.K. Hall, 1989. ISBN 0816188912
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External links
- Photos of the October 2006 Wexford Opera FestivalWexford Festival OperaThe Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in South-Eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.-Festival origins under Tom Walsh, 1951 to 1966:...
production - Photos of the February 2010 production at the Peabody InstitutePeabody InstituteThe Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a renowned conservatory and preparatory school located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland at the corner of Charles and Monument Streets at Mount Vernon Place.-History:...