Good afternoon. This is Bill Parker speaking to you from the Walker Art Center Auditorium in Minneapolis next door to which at the Guthrie Theater. The Minnesota Opera company will soon be giving the World Premiere Performance of a new American Opera Claudia legare by composer Robert Ward and librettist Bernhard Spindler. Both of whom are with me on stage right now to discuss their work along with Paul Hume music editor of the Washington Post Roy close music critic for the Minneapolis Star & J Wesley ball stage director for the Minnesota Opera Company.Our topic today is how to get the most from a new Opera and I'm sure that our audience here and listening at home will soon be enlightened would like to mention that this special live broadcast is made possible in part with funds provided by the Minnesota Humanities Commission. Not having heard or read one note or word of this new Opera. I like all of you listening and completely in the dark as of this moment, but I am on abashed knowing that some of our very distinguished guests are more or less in the dark as well call him has been the music editor of the Washington Post since 1947 Professor for nearly 30 years. I've music at Georgetown University and currently visiting professor of Music at Yale. University is the author of four books one of which I have read and the NPR listeners to the Saturday afternoon met broadcast will recognize him as a regular guest on Metropolitan Opera intermission features. How much besides ourselves do we bring to the opening night of an unknown quantity such as a brand new Opera? Well, I always have a great feeling of curiosity and excitement about going to a new Opera since Opera is my favorite form of entertainment and the oldest form I guess in music that we have these days in terms of it's still being written much as it began nearly 400 years ago. So I like to find out as much as I can. Before the Opera before I hear the Opera if I know the composer, I have a feeling already owed some familiarity and acquaintance with his music from past compositions his style though. You never are sure that that will be continued in a new work by any means necessary early and then I like to know always before any Opera. I'm going to what the libretto says. Sometimes you can't get them to you walk into the 48th at 9. When I heard about Claudia legare. I thought who's she so I asked some people who were able to tell me what the Minnesota Opera that it was an adaptation of the Epson play head of gobbler and I grown from moment simply because that's never been one of my favorite place, but then I brightened immediately when I heard that deliver breakfast at move the scene of head of gobbler to Charleston, South Carolina, and I said what I suppose it's and fans would think irreverently. Well, maybe that's what that's plays all. That play is always needed. I'm not sure but I am certainly then. Immediately given a point of reference and before I came here a few days ago. I read read read head of gobbler so that I would know the bases from which mr. Stambler begin. I am therefore full of questions for him about how when where and why he moved header over to South Carolina and who this Claudia legare is and then of course, I'm most eager to hear what mr. Ward is done who's opera The Crucible I know well for many years and much of his other music. I have admired for many years. I will do with this new situation. That's the background. I would bring if I were going in to see this Opera tonight. I wonder if some of our Minnesota audience where we have tremendous Scandinavian Heritage here right now. Like it better kept back in the North country, but I have to explain very hard to them why we might be moved to the Carolinas. Robert Ward born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1917 has composed I believe for operas in addition to a mini works for orchestra chamber Ensemble band chorus and voice. He's one of the most respected American composers is opera The Crucible won him both the Pulitzer Prize in music and the New York music critics Circle Award in 1962 is the other operas include he who gets slapped originally called pantaloon. I believe 1957 the lady from Colorado 1964 Opera and Claudia legare, which is the new one that has never been performed before and will be done by the Minnesota Opera Company for the first time. He is at currently composer-in-residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and already I suspect something here, but we'll see. Mr. Ward. How much do you want us to know about body legare before we come to it? Well, I find it very helpful. Also, if the audience knows the basic story before they go because we would like to believe that when we hear a new Opera that we're going to understand every word of it is when it's sung, but in fact that this doesn't happen didn't ever know. It never did happen indeed. I've experimented on a couple occasions with German audiences an Italian audiences and ask them how many of the words they understood in a Verdi opera if I can drop her when they were hearing it performed and did the answer. I usually God was all we don't understand the words very well, but do we know the Opera of course, so it's a great help if the audience knows the basics story before they arrive in the hall and we have always wanted to have a good synopsis in the program and depth and if possible to have them have librettos. After that, we just want their full attention and an open mind, I think there that's my feeling about it. And so that they will be willing to try to take the whole work in because it's a lot to take in at one sitting it's a visual thing. It's a matter of words. It's a matter of music and it one of the Terrible Things We have today is that people are inclined sometimes to say I had go1 stand up and say oh, yes, I know that Opera and of course, they couldn't whistle a tune of it or they really don't know what at all and you have to go more. But so that's what I would like the beginning. Everyone will study this story. I'm sure replay before going Bernhard stambler is the librettist of the Opera and he has collaborated with Robert Ward in the composition of all of his eye and has a written Opera texts for other composers as well. He has that published two books and three articles on Dante and many other articles in the fields of literary criticism musicology music criticism, but you're not the same and the olive James retired professor of English and like to talk to you today to about that when we go back to that first question with which semester humans bursting over here about why we changed from Mom. from the far north to Deep South The Deep list of protected questions is going to be answerable by me in terms of syndromes. But since they're common element today shouldn't present any problem. the original intent was to Right. I had a gobbler reasonably straight. Almost immediately though. I ran into internal trouble. Not for the Locale but where they contest the tension producing mechanism by which Everything in the play turns, although I never seen that in 30 years of knowing Heather until I started to pair it down for libretto and it turns out that everything turns on the contest between two men for a university professorship. And being a university Professor with the time I was the first one to be able to say a big deal. Where is your dramatic emotional motivation going to come from and in any case the even larger Elementos that in this country University professorships or not game by public contest So that it was the motion of changing this Nexus of the play that came first and along with that. Those long long process. I think it may have taken over a year to change this dramatic tension making thing and the place to transfer it to. So that we had racing car competitions in East Hampton. Straight out political contest in New Orleans and three or four other side. Things starting from somebody said years ago that there are only three cities in this country that are worthy of an opera. That was all Henry beside another connection crossing my fingers crossing my fingers if you don't mind, thank you. Mr. Hume. Particularly because they let you see what I'm talking about is jacking up the structure of the play and putting a new motor the new motor turned out to be. a contest between two ideas for Reconstructing the south after the Civil War Charleston turned out to be a good Center and the two ideas are legitimate ones. In fact, the opera Embraces a great deal of Unwritten on happened yesterday because one of the ideas was that the child immediately industrialize and Orlando of our Libretto had been working. Because of his previous involvement with had a Claudia had fled Charleston to work in the Mills of the north and it come back with a colossal complete program. For industrializing overnight in 1877 when this story takes place and if our plan if I would have rather had been followed the 1877 the things that began to happen on the south and 1930s would have had 60 years. More upright of time, but that's why I went to South Carolina. Charleston is not merely what are the corresponding word for the Opera genic but your choice then of changing was not a result of that censorship by the authorities as the case in history. Sometimes they feel you're free to see here waiting for that take novels and plays and reduce them to Opera libretti is a method of getting to the core of the matter and understanding them. I've had said he needs to find more uses for Apple than we ever dreamed. Play Wesley balk is the stage director of the Minnesota Opera Company XIV Seasons. We decided he doesn't remember. He's been there so long is associate professor of theater at the University of Minnesota as well and is very much involved. You're one of the people who's not in the dark about the after I guess. I like to think I'm in the dark until it opens cuz I don't think you really do know what any dramatic work is about until you experience it with an audience and I had that well as a young devil tail operate with my father to see an opera for the first time and I had persuaded him, you know that this will be grand fun and I love it. So and I have never had a more depressing it through into the offer my life because I was more concerned about the audience my father. Then I was about my own reaction and I always find when I sit in an audience it an opening night. You suddenly understand things about the work that you never understood and you of course wish that you could undo certain decisions. And and and when you're really lucky you say I made all the right decisions and they understood everything but there are always there's an incredible psychic understanding that you get from an audience. So I I I will hopefully be a little bit in the dark. Up to that point, of course not in the dark in the same sense as the audience will be when they're coming to see it. But how about the performers the singers and so far? How do they feel about doing a brand-new Opera as opposed to standard Repertory happier new operas by this time and I think the real challenge here is that it's a different kind of Opera then we ordinarily have done it say that was via play. I like a lot Mister human. I think a lot of people feel the way you do, but I've always adored the play and I also adore mister. Samplers adaptation of it and it was fascinating to hear more so I know it's my own comments on the way and I said precisely what you said and we had never confirmed. Of course, we never talked about it, but that was what struck me as being the real reason to give it some vitality and terms of the contest in the choice at all. So I don't write very good Swedish or Norwegian music another aspect that makes the Opera work better in this context is the the more romantic setting of The South The where there's a whole me so it's about the Sallis and in terms of American drama and Opera and I think it's towards gorgeous. Music which is quite romantic and lovely the singers are enjoying it tremendously working on it fits into that. I was at far greater. Oh, I think compatibility. I'm always concerned about style and substance when I look at new operas. Is the substance sleep like a story and the style of the music applied to it? Are they really compatible? In this case? I think they're just gorgeously compatible. I think it's one of the best things about it a question. I'd like to ask mr. Stambler. If I met the red in schools, I think as much as I used to be but even whether or not to have I mean if they have for whatever reason if they have not read it, will they not? Mr. Stambler? If you're the better works the way you wanted to see and hear a play which is completely independent successful. Happy healthy play by itself. In which a rabbit out of it if they know nothing about head of gobbler. They will still have an entire drama which is communicable to them and they're not going to miss something if they don't know head of gobbler in in ipsen's form. Is that correct? I hope correct. Special field of study for an English scholar subs and fit real or something of that sort, but they 59. how to be able to stand on their own independent feet and I think that Not know it not knowing that it will be distracting. but it'll be no more useful then reading a libretto in the play is a magnificent one. I hope the libretto has if not magnificent at least as complete and unified a traumatic experience as the original. I'm at mr. Samurai. Maybe I can send more removed you wrote it and it's hard for you to say I it will be but I I think it definitely is the story with great economy. I think that one of the the real gifts that you have brought to this particular thing is the ability to condense as you did with other Mister Awards Works to condense to play so that you remember reading it the eye red headed guy blur. The next day I read Claudia legare and I was shocked at how little without hearing the music how little I missed what you had left out and I thought well, I guess that's the mark of a good librettist the ability to leave out without making a person who knows how to go very well even miss a great deal. The things that have been left out. Does it beautifully my delivering that classroom lecture play into libretto but there are two or three things that might that I might say that would speed up a bit of this. I learned this particularly from working with a crucible where The play was I could soon see exactly three times as long as it has been a good day. But then not to disparage drama. It is an awfully word a thing and it's like a child walking up stairs one foot to The Next Step next four to the same step and was one particular part of The Crucible, which is very tightly built play. which would give a fairly good example of what I'm talking about at the opening of Act 2. Elizabeth and John Proctor are working up into a great quarrel. And luckily, I don't remember the exact words, but it's a series of one line interchanges. You shouldn't have done it. I didn't do it but you kept doing it. No, I never did it. It's a little more elaborate than that, but it's that pattern of a very real domestic conversation which works beautifully in the play and would drive a composer mad in about 2 minutes so that They're the solution is simple. That's why I chose this as an example was a matter of taking Florida five pages of that stichomythia that rapid interchange and saying what actually are they pounding away at and making all of that one big area for Elizabeth and then putting his lines and the corresponding area for John. It's not it's not better but it does about the same thing and in The Operators fit for an opera so that took you got all these things again and in combination you sound so organized for the diva before I prefer else would I tell you I've had some experience doing that once when we were under such heavy pressure on the deadline that there were two scenes. This was in the lady from Colorado that really weren't that important in terms of the the dramatic movement of the show. And so I was able to leave those out and So that if I got time to do them at the last minute I would do them, but the curtain could come up on the show without them and it happened at one of these was for one of the people who didn't have as much to do in the show as they thought they were up to and I finally did write that last minute area. I don't think it was very good myself and I never really wanted that to be in the area. So it never did get into the show. I've done it overnight and it but it's not very pleasant to do and it's not the way you like to do it predicted to die when the this Opera and I think most contemporary operas are not written with the very clear delineation of register TiVo and and area that were Ensemble that you have in earlier operas close asked me whether there are areas and ensembles in the Opera earlier and I said, yes that very definitely there but the way one starts them is not to have A nice big introduction the orchestra and then the diva walks to the Footlights and belts at Auraria. It doesn't work that way at all because our whole idea here has been to achieve the closest possible integration of the music and the text of the drama and as drama not as set pieces on the other hand, they are there and sometimes at an area will start and dramatically it doesn't call for the conclusion of that area that point so those when they study the score and work on it find the conclusion of that area coming later after this been a good deal in between. So there you find it that the nature of the work from which that are Beretta was drawn has a direct influence on the kind of music writing. Yes, as a matter fact. I thought of this one Paul mentioned earlier knowing the style of the composer. I think there is this About the style of an opera. I find that the hardest part of writing a new Opera for me is to get the first 10 or 20 Pages done because I feel that the first notes have to set the scene the time everything about it so that then they sort of emotional atmosphere of that particular work at until I have that there's no point in going further because if that's the whole Genesis musically of the worker and in the case of the office we've done one was a Shabby little circus in Paris 1910 that took some kind of music which would evoke that another was the Western during the days of the miners and so forth. That was a very different kind of music the Salem Witchcraft Trials or something else and this is something else again. And so until that get started. I don't feel I'm anywhere in that can take quite a while and the Very fact that I don't I could have started this Opera very well. If we kept it in Scandinavia was one of the reasons I felt so strongly about making the shift advice. If I was going to write it then I felt this was very important in a broader sense to pick the form of Opera to write anyway, well love or it isn't because it's the easiest form to write in as a matter fact. It's the most complex. I believe it isn't because I like to collaborate necessarily, but in fact the ultimate response I get from the final product product. I turn out if I felt that I've succeeded in what I've done is subdue. The great is the satisfaction of me of any that I can get them in the elevation at the final curtain or Very often get it in my studio before it's ever opened and if I don't get it there and never opens you feel more accomplishments controlling all those despair at forces in one work Bob for the same reason that a lot of it. So, I mean, it's not a form that is for most of us grateful in it Financial sense. It costs a lot. It's very complicated, but somehow when something is achieved operatic form in Music Theater, it makes it all all worth it and there's no other form that offers that same kind of payment for all the effort and energy expended anything for those who just tuned in your listening to a live panel discussion this noon hour a new Opera Claudia legare by American composer Robert Ward who was here with us today. We just speaking. And are the guests are Paula kue music editor of the Washington Post to my many other things Bernard stambler the librettist of the Opera J Wesley bought the stage director of the Minnesota Opera Company and Roy closely music critic of the Minneapolis Star since 1972. Why you slept in there with that one question. I didn't get a chance to formally introduce you but you look like you're having fun listening today. We are all right here in the Walker Art Center Auditorium and getting ready for the world premiere of the Opera be coming up a very shortly Minnesota Public Radio will be broadcasting one night at the Opera and the BOK. I wondered if we might run down those dates of the performance far as right now the alternative course with The Marriage of Figaro and Claudia will be seen on April 14th. 20th and 22nd at 8 in the Guthrie Theater as you've mentioned. And will be broadcasting at on Minnesota Public Radio on Friday the 14th at 8 p.m. That's live and in Stereo that performance from a Shaughnessy Auditorium. Is there anyone there or do we have the wrong thing here? That's what it says, but they're all at the Guthrie. They're all so there's a wonderful relationship between the two we found out why you don't know how chaotic it would be because one of the things which has posed some very real problems for us here, which I think are being solved very well. It's the fact that the Opera is actually written for a proscenium stage originally it with that interview because most Opera Houses are that so when the the Minnesota Opera decided to do it and said they were going to do it the Guthrie Theater, which I knew I thought all what are we going to do about certain things that a child leave the first discussions that I Add with Wes and Phil Burnell wear these very specific points, which had to be cope with and it's very curious how a necessity can be the mother of invention. One of these things is an area which a Claudia starts to sing to the portrait of her father and then the portrait came alive that was as it was written for a proscenium stage when you can't do that sort of thing on a stage like the Guthrie which is thrust and where you don't have the depth of stage and run Sidelines for that kind of thing. So West came up with the idea of a bust of the general being brought onto the stage. And the more we talked about it the more we liked it and then between that time when we first discussed it and I came out here this week for the rehearsals. It's been incredible to see the other little inventions which now can come out of that and it will be more effective. I'm convinced that way then it would have been otherwise so situations if provoked stated some alteration in the score to refer to the to the bus is cleverer than any of us actually it's one of those situations where as long as she doesn't say, oh picture of my father or whatever. It's no problem, and she That might be a bus though, but I think the whole the advantage the essential realism of the peace I think will be brought to Greater Life by the sculptural three-dimensional qualities that they that they got their has an eye. But I've just enjoy it tremendously working on it even though and there are a sitting in our rehearsal Hall which is not they got through you keep thinking this feels proscenium and you have to keep reminding yourself that people will be watching from all sides. And as a result it moves a great deal more than I think it would the people are a task to move a great deal more than they would in a proscenium context in my problem has been to have that happen without The audience feeling like they're moving a lot. It should simply be as realistic and normal and natural as possible. But with a great deal of additional physical energy will add this opportune the list of items that have talking paintings and statues. We could count Don Giovanni commendatore isn't talk to pack. Of course. It has no Charlie McCarthy most special effects like to talk about the musical style a little bit the mister word that you are known as one of them are accessible modern composers. And I mean that as a compliment for my own standpoint I hasten to so what we have here I assume is basically we could call it a romantic Opera modern romantic Opera and if so or not there, why do you do that though? I don't think of it as a romantic opera or any other kind of an opera. It is simply this particular work. However at the very core of the libretto is the fact that the Claudia Her problem is that she has these great romantic fantasies which grew from her upbringing of the father and Deb but so far as the style is concerned. I have never felt that it was valuable to me or anyone else to take the point of view that music started the last five years to me. It has a very long tradition, which I know very well and Deb my feeling about this is that if the proper music for a given situation and drama and his calls for music of a particular kind that's the kind of music I must write and if it's very simple and very tone let's that on the other hand throughout the course of my this work and other works. I've used most of the Contemporary techniques but not in the from the stand for a feeling. I have to write a whole work that way. And use some electronic music Sandler, there's some 12-ton passages which no one recognizes is 12 tone music but that there and I think if they're right for the situation that no one even ask that question of what's the style I always think of the fact that for instance The Rite of Spring which many people considered Tara being accessible and a piece of music they'd say, I don't want ever hear that crashing distance again, and then when Walt Disney did it and Fantasia This Big scenes, they didn't even realize till afterward that they were listening to the same music and accepted it without any question at all Subway at this is my feeling about style and I think the only other thing I should have said is that I happen to love the human voice. I'd rather be with it than against it. Original instrument after all the oldest one around I believe you have any particular special influences in your musical background affect you when you're writing an opera. Do you think back to Abilene and you sometimes or do you keep your that off your mind while you're writing? Well, I guess probably opera composer who think of more often and who's helped me out of more spots than any others fairly simply feel the rhythmic Drive of verity and to say nothing of everything. He could do the right to the orchestra the voices and new a good dramatic situation the to me though there many other operas that I love Mozart Vagner and so forth, but Verity is still to me it like Beethoven the in the field of Opera. I'm so glad you said that I like more people to say that mr. Hummus author of biography of But I know it's there as I believe the world's most recent biography Bryant biography a Verity I couldn't be more pleased with your answer Bob. I've been sitting here wishing that everybody was going to come in here. This new Opera could hear some of this conversation because already we've touched on practically the major steps in the whole development in the history of Opera Wesley Park used a very strong word. When he said he was shocked after reading head of gobbler and then reading this establish tobacco and how little he missed what was left out. That's always the feeling I have speaking of going from play the Opera when I hear Verdi's otello is that I'm really shocked at how not missing at all the holes first got a great time and we don't need it and you don't need it even as a play. There's the argument that the Opera by Verdi in boy toys. The Greater Works in the play like we don't have to worry about that. But there it is. And then mr. Ward talks about the Aria that begins but doesn't end yet because dramatically doesn't time for the end of that Aria and we have examples of that in the office of Strauss and you can think of certain passages written for certain singers or left out because of certain singers in abilities by Mozart and we've gone over all kinds of situations here, which takes me back to the thought I had earlier that Opera is still being written in many ways in a direct line from those first grade operas of motive are Dee and his great librettist. And that's one of the things I think I like about it is a tradition that it is not a brand new for it's a new edition in an old form and that there are always ways that the Roots come out and show with shows a new branches. I'm afraid that's a hackneyed simile, but I left it there now. We're a very interested. Of course in the midwest here in the Twin Cities to have this brand new work. I am done might wonder what can we do with all of you distinguished and knowledgeable people here to further involve audiences that in this part of the world in the in Opera Emmy that enthusiasm for Opera varies. I think some topographic like do we need more performances or more education information or what is not the Opera capital of the world but we have the Minnesota Opera Company is the leader in around here and doing as much as they can as we know what else can we do? I can't tell you how much time we spend sitting around trying to say what can we do to get people to to come to give us a chance? I think that's the main thing. We we recently had a survey done and it's incredible in the in the Public's mind. What a what a bad name Opera has been unfairly I think in so many ways and what we would like to say He's come on out and try it once because with their apparently the bass percentage of people that are would give us a chance just sort of how I don't know if I would like it. I it sounds interesting. But that's why we do it in English. For example, even though they don't understand everything. I think it would be fair to say that in the Guthrie. They will understand. Bully 80 to 90% And up. There are people who have told us to hear they've heard every word and it is an exciting for him. I think all of us sitting here at the dedication we have I hope would be convincing to people to give it a chance. If you haven't done it before first answer is the Practical one how to get people involved in Opera. It's my own experience. It starts when your 10 years old and your violin teacher poop happens on the side of the Play leader of klax for hire at the Metropolitan one day to take you along and thinking that a ten-year-old enthusiastic. He punched me whenever I was just go wild would be a good idea. And so it may have been the second but let's make it the first the first one to hire us was Enrico Caruso and to be a part of a paid clock for him. Let something happen to me then but also and this gets back to some of the other questions that I was a pest what's happening up there tell me and this poor chap had him to keep explaining backwards and forwards and Clack system is nearly dead. That won't work. But I am really saying that. To get involved in Opera is a matter of learning everything. You possibly can about a particular Opera. Dragging people into the Opera theater is is good, but it won't. That make them bounce back again on their own. Opera is as nearly all of us up here at Gray's the most wonderful thing that men have ever created or women. Hello Mormon. Is unfortunately like most great things that something not given to you on a platter and Americans are not necessarily more artistically than other people just not the same. but how a German acquires his love for opera or an Italian the car as it is is a process actually very much like the one that mentioned you are dragged at the age of 9 or 10 screaming perhaps wonder about this that and the other But Alfred does require homework on the part of the audience and this is not a pleasant thing to have to face, but I think it's the only thing that will develop their homework responsibility at making less and less homework necessary. I would I would guarantee. Now maybe contradicting what you say Bernard but I would guarantee that you can come to both of these operas without doing any advance preparation and have a good experience with right there. And if we don't do that, then we will never build an audience for Opera and that's what I take upon my shoulders as a burden as a producer of Opera is it we've got to accept the fact that people are not going you're not going to build an audience on people that have done their homework. You going to build an audience of people that come and have a good experience with it the first time no more homework, but I think we have to turn them on immediately within a sufficient understanding of the story of what's going on in the excitement of doing it and make it a Genuine Music Theater piece as opposed to what too often people have thought it was being a traditional Opera. Concert in costume or whatever that is implied by which is why your traditional performing office in English is so important because all of the things aside the audience can come in and hear what is being performed in English. I was intimidated at the beginning on wrist award. So that audiences regardless of listening in their native tongues that don't hear most of the words. Are you for or against topper in the vernacular on 81 and Always been that and I would like to see all after done in English, but I am talking about also some of the realities of operatic life today. We are in a time when because of of cost of mounting Opera and so forth the holes and which Opera is gear given are coming becoming larger and larger they used to so to stop at 2500. Now you many of them are up to 4000 seats. And I know when the Metropolitan goes on tour France and Cleveland they play in the city hall where they play to 8000 to 10000 people and the first offer I ever heard Carmen was there and believe me. I wasn't sure I was seeing anything moving on that stage or not. It was so far away. And up at this is hardly any way to get it but I'm glad I had that experience when I was 10 or 11 years old because afraid since I know that the symphony orchestras have made a study in this country and that they find that the surest means of developing a solid Symphony audience is through getting children while they are in school to concerts the good kind of concerts for them and developing at them. Those are the people that become their subscribers later. I remember that the auditorium by the way, I lived in the Cleveland area for 9 years and was pretty gruesome. If you didn't have your opera glasses. How did you know who started this did you say that before as far as Claudia legare to who dreamed up the original idea of making the Opera? Well the way it came about was our first two operas had been involved baritone leaves in men is main characters and we decided that we would not like to make an offer for with a a heroin rather and a hero and so we almost immediately came to head of gobbler. We both knew the play well in the end it had many qualities that we thought were right and what I think of going to get in would rather rapidly except then we were commissioned does it do the lady from Colorado which was another fascinating woman. So we did that first and then got around to this. I was thinking of course. So you're operating done at Douglas Morris The Ballad of baby doe which also takes place out in Colorado. When was any relation are at all and as matter fact than the other was the musical which came along and and just really didn't help bars with The Unsinkable Molly Brown. So we were set of third in line at the trough on this and I just did have some effect. I think they had sort of saturated some of the interest are in that particular time and place and that kind of character since we have today on our panel a couple of Music critics as we call him and composer and librettist as well. I don't often see this everybody sitting down at one table being so pleasant. who would like to comment on the relationship between composers and critics or between she silenced I leave at all you simply can't generalize about these because I know some critics that I've been able to I've known over the years talk for an easily with them about a work. They're interested to know the way you know, the person who writes the work is thinking about the work. I've known of others who feel that they must be an enemy of the performer or of end of the composer because if they're friendly they're going to somehow be compromised and what they do and it's a ridiculous attitude because what I never, I would always always prefer a good review but far beyond that, I would prefer an honest knowledgeable review would you will change your Opera if the critic you respected made some terrible comment about it? So this wasn't right. This act was too long. You wouldn't wouldn't go as far as meyerbeer though in Buy Champagne for the critic. What's up said can be generalized that this is what the critics have done to themselves. They put themselves into two categories. They critic as antagonist in like Whitaker as someone helping the art and After reading 2 reviews of and a Critic, you know where it is. What do you think mr. Humor? And or mr. Clothes should what should the critic dude from your Viewpoint be dispassionate lending here offer help or what? It seems to me that that just means that he's not much interested in music and I think has to go with a passionate unquenchable love of music and of course, I ain't great to have the same feeling about offer which I do and always hoping that out of the infinite variety of operas. There will be a new Opera by pintoo wretzky later this year and I heard a new Opera recently by Miss capacity cherry and mr. Ward has a new offer and I came out St. Paul a few years ago to hear another fascinating Play Summer and smoke in an opera by Lehigh be got to ask Tennessee Williams what he thought about this which is the first play of is that it ever been made into an opera. He said I don't have anything to do with that thing up there on the stage anymore. Thanks, but I love it cuz you know, I'm a great fan of false counter Faust and I would be happy with the Minnesota Opera could play in the East more often. So would we end this responsibility? I saw an opera last year in Baltimore. That was a bomb as far as I mean bomb as far as I know practically everyone except the composer thought it was an absolute. It was one of the most expensive Opera Productions. I have ever seen it had a magnificent cast it had a wonderful story. And the best I could say was there just was no music. Nothing happened for a long time until we think ended our Chopper was that has to Costco on a capacity. I said wonderful story though, you know today. By what happened to it? But I I just make a little Point hear about this whole business. He work because except for Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein most of the time the librettist things are kind of Forgotten. We don't happen to feel this way about it. I I fully honor what the libretto contributes to work. And I remember when The Crucible was given in New York the first performance the New York Times asked us to do an article about it and they wanted a picture. So Bernie and I went to the studio and we got a picture that was so close. You didn't know whose hair was hoes in this picture cuz we thought we were going to fall The New York Times always cut out the brightest and gave them no publicity at all. It came out in the paper that done the neatest razoring job of bringing you ever saw. There was my picture and add this is a very bad thing because we can because they're I've been at symposiums where writers say what what's in it for me? And that's the truth very simple you develop to other careers so that whatever happened to you, but I have to make some answer the Mystic Cobra not for the sake of me because I told her I just don't care about I can take care of myself and other areas is one ingredient in Opera that we've remained tactfully quiet about and luckily here. We don't have to and I just a matter of the direction of it. I'm not going to mention my name. It's about that Baltimore shambles. the director of it one of the great geniuses quotes in the field today reversed the drive on that whole piece designed unusual sets which reprise by almost every critic incidentally that they're not merely a pathetic to the tone of the music on the words, but they endanger the lives of each performer if each performance in which The hero does something very peculiar. It's quite true. He marries a woman three years dead husband's to follow but it made a promise to marry her and after she was killed he kept the promise as soon as he could about the director. Ali got a job or something like most of you I C solution was to have the arrow turn insane and then died in a paroxysm at the very end the piece showed Don Pedro triumphant and why does having Justified not on the his whole life with its promises but the whole theory of courtly love? Not that I'm trying to revive that either but it's about so what directors can do one who happens to be here. Now. What I can do is absolutely killing Opera you you know, this is one of the have to face all the time. Now, I write the notes and those are pretty specific the temple might be a slightly different but assuming those are performers who can create or reproduce the notes the pitches and rhythms and so forth. You're going to get something fairly close on the other hand the stage directions to Scenic directions the lighting directions which are only very skeletal really and it's only the starting point from which the director begins to work now in the experience is good. This adds a whole creative element. Final production which is glorious, but when it is bad and I think anyone in this business has suffered through this you just go through Italy agonies of hell. You can't do anything you get into big fight you've already I'm sure and heard about the operas are the plays which gets adjusted and opened because of a big battle which went on and find it. So this this is one of the things that we have to deal with constantly, thank you. Mr. Ward speaking of agonies. The clock is against us at the moment and the delightful as this has been and I know that we could go on for a long time yet and maybe after the microphone to shut off. I don't know about that. We're going to have to wrap up today's discussion and I reminder audience so we've been doing their homework by listening today that there we want them to go out and see and hear this work and the West so would you give her those dates again quickly? Other dates which I won't mention this time, but dumb and the Guthrie Theater at the Guthrie thrust stage where the action will be right in your laps and you will hear and understand everything and it was a fabulous experience each evening. And of course Minnesota Public Radio to what you're listening will be broadcasting Opening Night Live and in Stereo from the Guthrie at 8 p.m. I think that is some Friday night as usual. We are like to thank the Minnesota Humanities commission who have provided funds to partially support this special broadcast today and like to thank all of our guests here for being with us J Wesley ball stage manager of the Minnesota Opera Company William close some music critic of the Minneapolis Star to Bernards temblor the librettist body like it with you with Robert Ward the composer of the music one of our outstanding composers in our country day. Mr. Pollock you in one of the outstanding music critics with Washington Post many years and I hope that you appreciate I never mentioned Harry Truman and this entire broadcast those who remember that famous incident will in just a few moments. We are going to be rebroadcasting by delayed the national Press Club conference and talk given by prime minister in Moonachie. Begging of Israel today that'll be coming up in just a few moments. Thank you all for being here and our audience at listener-supported radio and non-commercial broadcast service.