A scene from "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" (Photo by Carol Rosegg)
Composer Stephen Schwartz is no stranger to the dramatic marriage of words and music. He’s the composer of the musicals Godspell, Pippin and one of Broadway’s current mega-hits, Wicked. Schwartz’s first opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, based on an eerie 1964 film, was written for the Opera Santa Barbara and debuted in 2009. New York audiences will finally get their dose of the shivers when the opera debuts at New York City Opera on April 19th. Soprano Lauren Flanigan, a City Opera favorite, reprises the role of Myra, the unstable medium who sets a terrible chain of events in motion. Stephen Schwartz spoke with Ariama.com about his opera.
How did you hit upon the idea of composing an opera based on a film?
It was purely instinctive. I had seen the movie when I was a kid but hadn’t thought about it in a long time. About a year after Wicked opened I had lunch with a literary agent who was pitching story ideas for musicals. He mentioned Séance and that a friend of mine, composer Adam Guettel had considered it for a musical but passed on it. I didn’t think it was right for musical theater either, so decided not to do it. About a year later I got a call from Opera Santa Barbara offering me a commission to write an opera and I instantly thought of Séance. Ironically, I spoke with Adam very recently and he told me that he too is thinking about Séance as an opera.
Why do you think it works as an opera?
The piece is about tone and mood. The film is very moody and that style is very well-suited to the through-composed music you have in opera. The Séance characters are very extreme and even though the story is naturalistic, their wants and actions are very big. So what could be perceived as over-the-top and melodramatic in a musical theater version works in opera. It’s also a psychological thriller with lots of subtext – the characters are keeping secrets from each other and from themselves. They are saying things that are very different from what’s going on underneath and that’s suited to the motific writing of opera. The repeated motifs of opera give you emotional and textual information that’s not really there in what’s being said on the surface by the characters.
How do you come to a work that has already existed as a novel and film?
It was very helpful to me. While the film story is different in many ways from the novel [by Mark McShane], my opera is actually closer to the film. That being said, the novel and film had both successfully solved the story-telling aspect. I was able to rely on that a lot, particularly the extremely well-structured screenplay of Bryan Forbes. Yes, I changed some things in the story, but was able to follow the screenplay very closely. Being a musical theater guy I’m very accustomed to doing adaptations, so I’m accustomed to the sometimes arrogant way you take what you want and leave the rest.
The central role of Myra is sung by Lauren Flanigan, a role that was written for her. How was it working with her?
She’s been a great collaborator, generous with her time and very supportive of the project. Lauren was there very early in the process, so we went through all her music together and she had suggestions, this was all very helpful to me as someone writing an opera for the first time. I was told that it’s a good thing to write for a specific singer in mind and that turned out to be good advice. I accepted the commission and was thinking about singers and went to see a production of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina up at Bard College with Lauren in the title role. I thought that she was definitely a person who could be Myra and I started, as she says, stalking her. I didn’t have to stalk her that long though, she was completely supportive of the process.
What are the challenges in coming to opera after music theater?
There were lots of technical challenges for me with a steep learning curve, even though I’ve been an opera fan for most of my adult life. I’ve seen many operas, read about them, studied them, yet when I sat down to write one I encountered many challenges. I had to take a different approach from what I do in writing musical theater. I found that like Mr. Puccini and other composers before me, I needed to have a finished libretto before I began. I couldn’t begin with an outline or start in the middle. I had to know what the whole piece was and start at the beginning and work through it sequentially. I couldn’t take the path of least resistance where I say, “I know what that song is going to be” and start there. In the opera you are collecting motifs as you go along and playing them against one another, so the entire notion of through-composed opera was challenging, exhilarating and terrifying.
I also had to write every note out by hand. When working on a musical I would write at the piano and play it into a computer, I couldn’t do that with Séance. And there’s a different sound. I chose to write an opera that is traditional in the sense that it’s unamplified and played by an orchestra of between 46- 48 players. The singers have to be heard and understood. That required composing and orchestrating in a different way, so there was room for the voices. Of course it was also about writing for “legit” singers who have techniques that you don’t think about when writing for musical theater voices.
What about future operas?
Let’s complete this one. It was a great experience and I learned a great deal, but I don’t think I’m going to plunge into a new opera on the day after the premiere. Of course I also wouldn’t say “Oh my God, never again!”
Browse more editorial features here
by Craig Zeichner
