Seagull!

This is so cool! MSM (Manhattan School of Music) recorded an Operatic version of The Seagull. To purchase the album, go to this link:
http://www.dramonline.org/tracks/seagull-act-i-nina-i-am-alone

Here are some excerpts out of the liner notes from the production:

Composer's Notes:

(Written prior to the opera's 1974 Houston premiere:)

It is always difficult to describe why a composer picks a particular subject. It's an almost intangible quality…that cries out for music. I thought that I would be able to translate [The Seagull] into my own operatic terms. I think of the psychological levels of the characters and the way they relate and don't relate to each other. One is the character of Masha, who is not very important in the play; but she struck me as being so interesting psychologically, so deep, that she became a very important character in the opera. Musically, I have found it very interesting to describe the many moods of this girl.

First, Kenward and I sat down and discussed the shape of the opera. The play is in four accts; the opera is in three. We discussed and highlighted the potentially “musical” spots: for instance, I wanted a trio for the three ladies to sing, and he found a situation in the play where that could very easily happen; I wanted certain duets, certain solo pieces, certain ensembles, and he found spots in the play to fashion them. Then he wrote the libretto, and as he would send me a scene, I would set it.

When I had finished the first act, he came down from Vermont where he was writing the libretto to hear it. We then talked about the second act and proceeded from thee. We made some revisions. For example, there were first revisions of the libretto with Kenward himself. In one instance a duet in the second act that I wanted him to do. I described a certain feeling I wanted and he proceeded to write words that were not in the original p0lay. There were some things for Arkadina: I wanted her to sing a very impassioned second act aria to Trigorin. We discussed the kinds of things that she would say. We also gave her a scene from Oedipus, because she is an actress and it would make, we felt, an exciting finale for the opera. Then, when we worked with the director, there were still other changes. There is a scene in the last act between Constantine and Nina in which they meet for the last time. The director [Frank Corsaro] thought it would be better. So I rewrote the scene…

I wanted to write a piece which would speak to the audience with luscious vocal lines and beautiful orchestration. So that's what I did with this piece. I was no longer concerned - am I “modern” or not?

(Written prior to the December 2002 production:)

Over 28 years have passed since the premiere of The Seagull, half a lifetime for me. Of my 17 operas, it remains my favorite child. The musical atmosphere has changed greatly in the interim and the lyric, romantically tonal is no longer the exception, but now the standard. Critics are no longer shocked by a flow of melody from composers, and the love of audiences for a new work is no longer suspect. For this production, I have written two new interludes to accompany the act divisions and stagecraft. As I wrote them, I was flooded with the feelings of my 26-year-old self and so grateful that this opera has survived and is still being produced. It has been twenty years since I have written an opera and I have in all that time refused to do so. But now my heart and mind have changed and as I pored over the score for this New York production, and in preparation for next season's in San Francisco, I begin to hear faintly in the back of my mind…music…operatic music. Perhaps soon t!
here might be number 18.

*

Thomas Pasatieri

Librettist's Notes:

(Written prior to the opera's 1974 premiere)

I re-re-read the play. It seemed a hopeless mystifying project. It sat there on the page, a cryptic presence wanting only to be left alone. Then I went to see my friend Stella Adler, knowing that she knew about Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov. She sat down, a copy of the play in her lap, and began to talk about the play's opening moments - Mash…a storm about to break…the air is unbearable…it's dusk and Masha wears black…his dirty fingernails…no one makes love to her…

I realized the way to proceed was to mine the under-the-surface structure, the labyrinth of details that had at first put me off in Chekhov's plays. Time onstage moves like real-life time - in a muddled way, with stars and stops, with sad high points that are cut off abruptly, turning into absurd low points, which drift on and on, and become funny or suddenly heart-breaking, and sometimes nothing seems to be happening, and the initial boredom of nothing happening, the slowness, becomes riveting. That was the challenge: to try to create this complicated `real life' time sense for the first time in an opera.

- Kenward Elmslie