Date: 5 Feb 1994 10:35:41 CST From: Subject: Opera--Harvey Milk The following appeared on Operanet--Thought it was appropriate to send a copy to you all--Merle Foster This bounced once, but somebody asked... > Will somebody *please* tell us who the opera about Harvey Milk > is by? This is like all those ballet ads for "Balanchine's Romeo > and Juliet". You just have to ask nice ;-). I think this might have been answered by now, but just in case, here is the article that was in the SF Chronicle this monday. I thought it was interesting enough to post. Is anybody familiar with any of the other Wallace productions that they mention? After reading this i really don't know what to expect... - Steve ====================================================================== _Opera on the life of Harvey Milk_ by Joshua Kosman In the latest example of today's opera drawing from yesterday's headlines, the life of Harvey Milk will be the subject of a new opera to be presented here in 1996, the San Francisco Opera announced over the weekend. Called simply "Harvey Milk", the opera by composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie is a joint commission by the San Fancisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera and New York City Opera. It will have its premier in Houston January 21, 1995, followed by performances in New York in the spring of 1995 and in San Francisco in the fall of 1996. Like recent operas about Nixon, Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe, and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the new opera will attempt to create a musical drama out of the events of recent American history. But Wallace, reached by phone in Houston, insisted that there would be nothing "documentary" about the portrait of Milk, the slain San Francisco supervisor who was the city's first openly gay elected official. _Mythical Treatment_ "As soon as the subject of Harvey Milk was broached," he said, "it was very clear that this was something that cried out to be an opera, and the lens through which we look at Harvey is uniquely operatic." "We're trying to deal with the subject in a mythical way. For one thing, there are certain biblical paradigms that inform the shape of the work--- primarily the Moses story, of someone who is an ordinary man who for reasons that aren't immediately apparent becomes an extraordinary leader." The opera is scored for nine singers, with all but the principal baritone singing several roles as the piece traverses the decades of Milk's life. _Epitome of Each Era_ For instance, the tenor who portrays Supervisor Dan White, who shot and killed Milk in 1978, appears earlier in the opera as a belligerent policeman, while the soprano who plays Dianne Feinstein, then president of the Board of Supervisors, also appears as Harvey's mother. "The main focus of the opera is San Francisco," Wallace said, "but we do deal with the full scope of Harvey's life, and what we found was that Harvey Milk was really the epitome of each era. In the '50s and early '60s he worked on Wall Street, and he was the classic man in the gray flanned suit." "Then in the 1960s, as things opened up, he grew his hair long and adopted a more alternative lifestyle, and in the 1970s he moved to San Francisco. He was a barometer of each of these eras in a way." Casting for "Harvey Millk" has not been announced yet. Wallace said he had completed about two-thirds of the vocal score, which he plans to complete by May, and orchestrate during the summer. _From Satire to Mysticism_ Wallace and Korie, who both live in New York, have collaborated on a number of previous operas. "Where's Dick?" which premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 1989, is a maniacally comic satire of American culture through the prism of comic strips, with invocations of vaudeville and film noir. By contrast, "Kabbalah," which premiered in Brooklyn later that year, is a plotless, ruminative exploration of the world of Jewish mysticism, with texts in Hebrew, Aramaic and medieval German and Spanish. The piece--- which is available on a Koch International Classics CD--- features music that is lustrous and introspective, combining an almost liturgical sense of ritual with a New York brand of rock-tinged minimalism. A forthcoming opera, "Hopper's Wife," imagines a marriage between painter Edward Hopper and Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Oliver Stone has acquired the rights to film Randy Shilts' "The Mayor of Castro Street," although the production has had trouble getting off the ground, and Dan White was the subject of a 1985 play by Emily Mann, "Execution of Justice." $... The last paragraph says they don't know where they will perform it in SF because the opera house is undergoing repairs that year...