Vera of Las Vegas
Encyclopedia
Vera of Las Vegas is an opera
by Daron Hagen
based on a libretto
by Paul Muldoon
. The Center for Contemporary Opera
gave the staged premiere on 25 June 2003 at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre of Symphony Space
in New York City.
, determined to create a three act opera called Grand Concourse. The work as a whole is still considered "in progress" by the authors. The first act (in 2010 still awaiting adaptation by Hagen) was to be based on Muldoon’s preexisting play (originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre
, Princeton) Six Honest Serving Men. The second act was to be Vera of Las Vegas, with a co-written treatment by Muldoon and Hagen based on characters introduced in the first act. Hagen and Muldoon co-wrote a detailed treatment for Grand Concourse. The final act was set to take place on 9-11. In 2010, it awaits a libretto by Muldoon and musical completion by Hagen.
The University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Music
(as a showcase for its faculty and opera program) commissioned Vera of Las Vegas in 1995. Since the work was to be the centerpiece of a trilogy, Hagen elected to make a live recording rather than authorize a staged premiere. It was recorded to 24 tracks in March 1996 at the Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall in Las Vegas. Hagen, at the Bard College
Electronic Music Studio in April–May 1996, oversaw postproduction mixing, editing and recording of extensive overdubs, performing many of them. After final mastering in New York in June 2003, the opera gained the distinction of being the final release of Composers Recordings, Inc.
As such, it received no publicity, was not shipped to stores, and was not reviewed. Nevertheless, the first pressing sold out within nine months, partly due to the fact that Carl Fischer
, the publisher of the music, included the recording as part of the published vocal score. Although available as part of the Database of Recorded American Music
and as a "print-to-order" item in the New World Records
catalogue, physical copies of the actual release are extremely rare.
Hagen conceived of the title role specifically for countertenor Charles Maxwell, who recorded it. American drag artist and playwright Shequida
performed the role for its world premiere. The first non African-American to sing the role was Jonathan Peter Kenny, in Opera Theatre Company’s European Premiere and Irish tour during November–December 2006.
." Doll's fallen for Dumdum, and has decided not to pursue the two of them for being illegally on American soil. The two couples head for a wedding chapel to make it official.
In a preface to the vocal score, Hagen writes,"The musical score shifts style from moment to moment while, at a deeper level, the entire affair unfolds from a single D-A-Bflat melodic motive grafted to a rhythmic cell. The intentionally Technicolor, superficially-tawdry, seemingly raw, decadent musical eclecticism runs in febrile counterpoint to the libretto's verbal flights." In the same preface, Muldoon responds, "What has made working with Daron Hagen such a pleasure is the extent to which he understands the possibilities for tripping the light fantastic on the coal-carriage of a runaway train. Or, again, what seems to be a runaway train."
“[Hagen has] taken a polyglot approach to the music, and written it as a kind of mood-identifying background, sometimes in keeping with the words, but often deliriously, hilariously at odds with them, though in a way that manages to highlight them without undermining them. It's quite a clever ploy,” writes Michael Dervan.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
by Daron Hagen
Daron Hagen
Daron Aric Hagen , is an American composer, conductor, pianist, educator, librettist, and stage director of contemporary classical music and opera.- Early life and education :...
based on 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...
by Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
. The 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...
gave the staged premiere on 25 June 2003 at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre of Symphony Space
Symphony Space
Symphony Space is a multi-disciplinary performing arts organization at 2537 Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Performances take place in the 760-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theatre or the 160-seat Leonard Nimoy Thalia theater. Programs include music, dance, theater, film, and literary readings...
in New York City.
Background and premiere
Hagen and Muldoon, after the 1993 success of their first opera Shining BrowShining Brow
Shining Brow is an English language opera by Daron Hagen, first performed by the Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin, April 21, 1993. It is based on events in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright...
, determined to create a three act opera called Grand Concourse. The work as a whole is still considered "in progress" by the authors. The first act (in 2010 still awaiting adaptation by Hagen) was to be based on Muldoon’s preexisting play (originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre
McCarter Theatre
McCarter Theatre is a not-for-profit, professional company on the campus of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. It is one of the most active cultural centers in the nation, offering over 200 performances of theater, dance, music and special events each year...
, Princeton) Six Honest Serving Men. The second act was to be Vera of Las Vegas, with a co-written treatment by Muldoon and Hagen based on characters introduced in the first act. Hagen and Muldoon co-wrote a detailed treatment for Grand Concourse. The final act was set to take place on 9-11. In 2010, it awaits a libretto by Muldoon and musical completion by Hagen.
The University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Music
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
University of Nevada-Las Vegas is a public, coeducational university located in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada, USA. The campus is located approximately east of the Las Vegas Strip. The institution includes a Shadow Lane Campus, located just east of the University Medical Center of...
(as a showcase for its faculty and opera program) commissioned Vera of Las Vegas in 1995. Since the work was to be the centerpiece of a trilogy, Hagen elected to make a live recording rather than authorize a staged premiere. It was recorded to 24 tracks in March 1996 at the Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall in Las Vegas. Hagen, at the Bard College
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
Electronic Music Studio in April–May 1996, oversaw postproduction mixing, editing and recording of extensive overdubs, performing many of them. After final mastering in New York in June 2003, the opera gained the distinction of being the final release of Composers Recordings, Inc.
Composers Recordings, Inc.
Composers Recordings, Inc. was an American record label dedicated to the recording of contemporary classical music by American composers. It was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore, and Oliver Daniel, and based in New York City....
As such, it received no publicity, was not shipped to stores, and was not reviewed. Nevertheless, the first pressing sold out within nine months, partly due to the fact that Carl Fischer
Carl Fischer Music
Carl Fischer Music is a major publisher of sheet music based in New York City that has been in business since 1872. As one of the few remaining family-owned music publishers, it supplies educational materials to professional and beginning musicians of all ages, as well as new music works.Notable...
, the publisher of the music, included the recording as part of the published vocal score. Although available as part of the Database of Recorded American Music
Database of Recorded American Music
The Database of Recorded American Music is a continually growing, online resource providing on-demand, high-quality streaming access to nearly 9,000 essential musical works from 15 record labels, along with their liner notes, album art, and other related materials...
and as a "print-to-order" item in the New World Records
New World Records
New World Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in American music. The label was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to produce a 100 disc anthology covering 200 years of American music....
catalogue, physical copies of the actual release are extremely rare.
Hagen conceived of the title role specifically for countertenor Charles Maxwell, who recorded it. American drag artist and playwright Shequida
Shequida
Gary Hall, also known as Shequida, is a classically trained opera singer, songwriter, playwright, and drag artist, born in Jamaica. He attended Juilliard, where he studied with noted bass-baritone Simon Estes. As Shequida, he has been the USA Network's spokesperson for Latin America. From 1997...
performed the role for its world premiere. The first non African-American to sing the role was Jonathan Peter Kenny, in Opera Theatre Company’s European Premiere and Irish tour during November–December 2006.
Performance history
Originally scored by Hagen for 22-player "big band plus strings" and recorded in that version, Hagen reduced the instrumentation to quartet (piano / synthesizer; reeds; bass; drums) for its New York production, cut some of the "Wedding Chapel Chorus", added minimal underscoring, and bows music. It is in this version that the opera is most frequently revived. In 2011, Hagen made a "Kleine Mahagonny" (10 player) version for the West Coast premiere by Berkely West Edge Opera.Roles
| Role | Voice type Voice type A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types... |
Recording cast 8, 9, 10 March 1996 (Conductor: Donna Hagen) |
Staged world premiere 25, 26 June 2003 (Piano/Conductor: Robert Frankenberry) |
European staged premiere 29 April 2006 (Piano/Conductor: David Brophy) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vera Loman | countertenor Countertenor A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble... |
Charles Maxwell | Shequida | Jonathan Peter Kenny |
| Doll Common | soprano Soprano 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... |
Carolann Page | Patricia Dell | Charlotte Page |
| Dumdum Devine | baritone Baritone Baritone 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... |
Paul Kreider | Elem Eley | Alan Fairs |
| Taco Bell | tenor Tenor The 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... |
Patrick Jones | Dillon McCartney | Eugene Ginty |
| Catchalls | female chorus | |||
| Trench, Trilby | mute | Rebekkah Ross, Lisa Hargus | Bridget Knowles, Elizabeth Woods |
Synopsis
"On one level, the opera ... concerns a journey to the center of modern America ("center" is a word that gets bandied about a lot in Vera, and undermined). It is a place of materialism, greed, mechanical pleasures and phony appearances, an alienating labyrinth in which the Irish travelers become lost and transformed. To this extent, the book hints at allegiance with Hunter S. Thompson's nightmare novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, another phantasmagoric journey to the heart of darkness. Early on, in reply to Dumdum's remark "the heart of America" Taco responds, "Built of sand," Yet, the opera announces its origins in the nightmare of Northern Ireland's Troubles by repeated references to Ulster place names, horrid flashbacks to obscure scenes of murder. The flashbacks revolve around the brutal killing of Dessie Gillespie, to which Taco confesses towards the close," writes Jonathan Allsen. "This "nightmare cabaret opera" extends Six Honest Serving Men and implies a way, through conscience and "something like a confession", to a point where things might begin to become more clear." reads the dust jacket of the libretto.Scene 1
Taco, a forty-five-year-old man, originally from Northern Ireland, illegally living in the Bronx and driving a cab, is in an interrogation center somewhere in Northern Ireland. Two heavies, Trench and Trilby, take turns slapping him around. As he slips into unconsciousness the sound of his own breathing, the blood rushging in his ears, and an airplane landing announce his dream's beginning: he dreams that he and his friend Dumdum Devine (also forty-five and living illegally in the Bronx, where he tends bar) have just arrived in Las Vegas. They are between planes. Doll Common, a forty-five year old woman, formerly a blackjack dealer, now an undercover agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is costumed as a stewardess. She invites them to meet her pal, Vera Loman. She could be "your Girl Friday, or more," she teases.Scene 2
Taco and Dumdum meet Vera at the Forum Shops. Trench and Trilby shadow them. Doll suggests they go to a casino called the Hippolyta.Scene 3
Dealers sing about their customers. Vera wins big at the slots. We learn back stories—especially Vera's: Trench and Trilby may have been sent by one of her assignations, a corrupt judge she's suing for aggravated assault. The four slip off to a stripper bar called the Delphine.Scene 4
Taco and Vera slip off as the strippers sing of their lot. He returns, rattled: Vera's not what she seemed. "You wouldn't have missed it," says Dumdum, "if you'd seen The Crying GameThe Crying Game
The Crying Game is a 1992 psychological thriller drama film written and directed by Neil Jordan. The film explores themes of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles...
." Doll's fallen for Dumdum, and has decided not to pursue the two of them for being illegally on American soil. The two couples head for a wedding chapel to make it official.
Scene 5
Trench and Trilby lurk. A canned chorus sings bromides. Vera sings a torch song about her past. Vera proclaims that she has a solution. "I'll rip up my card so that it says 'Vera Loman LAPD' instead of LAPDANCER. That will scare them off." She confronts Trench and Trilby, who flee. Taco, just as he is about to plight his troth to Vera, slumps to his knees. Seconds later, he is back in Northern Ireland. He confesses to a grisly assassination. Vera wails into the night, "Where's my Taco Bell?"Aesthetic
In an interview with John Clare, Hagen described the opera's score as "[Walking] the fine line between pastiche and inspiration. It is meant to sound as though the music is wildly postmodern, even self-indulgently "out of control." This effect could only be achieved through painstaking technical procedures that are, if anything, distinctly modernist." In the liner notes to the recording, Russell Platt describes the authors' creative chemistry: "When joined, each artist's singular complexity complements the other's. If Muldoon's tone can seem cool, then Hagen's music can turn up the heat; if Muldoon's words sometimes distract us with their dazzle, Hagen's passionate sounds magnify the human element."In a preface to the vocal score, Hagen writes,"The musical score shifts style from moment to moment while, at a deeper level, the entire affair unfolds from a single D-A-Bflat melodic motive grafted to a rhythmic cell. The intentionally Technicolor, superficially-tawdry, seemingly raw, decadent musical eclecticism runs in febrile counterpoint to the libretto's verbal flights." In the same preface, Muldoon responds, "What has made working with Daron Hagen such a pleasure is the extent to which he understands the possibilities for tripping the light fantastic on the coal-carriage of a runaway train. Or, again, what seems to be a runaway train."
European critics
European critics responded enthusiastically to Opera Theater Company's premiere and Irish tour: "Hagen’s music … blends idioms — neo-Gershwin, jazz, soft rock, Broadway — with soaring melodies that send the characters looping off in arias of self-revelation. He has a gift for pastiche and musical surrealism as well as a distinctive voice for moments where words and music coincide.”“[Hagen has] taken a polyglot approach to the music, and written it as a kind of mood-identifying background, sometimes in keeping with the words, but often deliriously, hilariously at odds with them, though in a way that manages to highlight them without undermining them. It's quite a clever ploy,” writes Michael Dervan.