16th & 17th February, 2007 8:00 PM
pre-concert talk 7:15 PM
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

 

Young Caesar opera poster

Celebrate Lou Harrison’s 90th Birthday and join Ensemble Parallèle for the World premiere of the composer’s final version of his opera Young Caesar - a lavish transethnic work exploring the love affair between Julius Caesar and Nicomedes, King of Bithynea. Inspired by Chinese opera, Harrison created a new operatic style where the East meets West. Young Caesar grapples with many contemporary issues that were at the heart of Harrison’s exploration – the Pacific Rim and its exotic colors, new theater and homosexuality.

Artistic personnel: This opera will bring together a strong and experienced artistic crew including Artistic Director/Conductor Nicole Paiement, director Brian Staufenbiel; costumer Richard Battle; lighting designer David Cuthbert; wig and make-up artist Jeanna Hurd; choreographer Larry Pech; set designer Legend Theatrical. The principal roles of the opera will be secured by reputable lyrical artists including Eleazar Rodriguez as Caesar; Eugene Brancoveanu as Nicomedes; John Duykers as the Narrator; Wendy Hillhouse as Aunt Julia; Joseph Myers as Zilo; Jonathan Smucker as Dionysus and Sheila Wiley as Cornelia. The professional Ensemble Parallèle from San Francisco will be joining the strong cast of singers and the male chorus. This non-profit organization is a leading contemporary Ensemble, in residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, who has recorded many of Harrison’s works.

Background information:

Lou Harrison: Lou Harrison (1917-2002) has for fifty years been in the vanguard of American composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundaries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world. Born in 1917, Lou Harrison grew up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area where he was influenced by the music of California's Spanish and Mexican cultures, Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chant, and developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music. As a young man, Harrison worked closely with John Cage and studied in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg before moving to New York in the mid-forties. He returned to California in the early fifties. Residence on the West Coast intensified Harrison's involvement in a synthesis of musical cultures bordering on the Pacific. Over the decades he maintained an interest in dance, theater and the craft of instrument building. Harrison traveled extensively, adding to the global resonance his artistry, performing and studying with the musical masters of varied cultures.

Young Caesar: Harrison’s opera Young Caesar was originally conceived in 1971 as a puppet opera. Beautifully designed by Bill Jones, the more than twenty puppets were mostly rod-puppets over three feet tall, capable of very detailed action. A brilliant panoramic backdrop was provided by two seemingly endless rolls of moving painted scenery (scroll method). The scrolls, painted in full colors by Harrison, gave the possibility of rich and varied stage design without too much cost. The libretto, written by San Francisco playwright Robert Gordon, centers around the young Julius Caesar and his love affair with King Nicomedes of Bithynia. This innovative theater work had many of the elements for a successful new direction in opera, but it was largely rejected by audiences and critics alike. The puppets could not render the broad emotional spectrum of the work, the piece lacked developed arias and the subject matter was extremely daring. While the subject of homosexuality would always remain central to the opera, Harrison undertook a series of revisions for the next 20 years – the main one being that the puppets were abandoned in favor of live singers on stage. To enhance the dramatic power of the piece, significant cuts were made and lyrical arias were added to balance the recitatives and to comment on the action. In the early 1990s, the New York City Opera planned to premiere a performance of this newer version. This received quite a lot of publicity in the opera world and was eagerly anticipated by the public. Unfortunately,
miscommunications and artistic differences within the organization resulted in the cancellation of the project. In the last years of his life, Harrison continued to make small revisions that would make the work even tighter. Unfortunately, Harrison died before the final changes were completed. For the last two years, conductor Nicole Paiement, who had a close relationship with Harrison and has recorded many of his works, worked with librettist Robert Gordon and Harrison’s assistant, Charles Hanson in securing the final changes of the work. The final version of the work is now ready for performance.

This project proposes to finally give life to this important work- a work that germinated and developed for over thirty years. Progressing alongside Harrison’s other achievements Young Caesar was transformed into a ravishingly beautiful and innovative masterpiece that encompassed major contemporary trends in the art– the Pacific Rim and its exotic colors, new theater, gay issues and the study of humanity.

Unconventional theater:

a. The music- innovative: Spending two years in Korea on a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and being an artist in residence at the Honolulu East-West Center, Harrison became a great devotee of Eastern culture. Julius Caesar gave him the opportunity to write a work in which the East and the West met in the persons of Caesar and the King of Bythinia. With the influence of Chinese opera, Harrison designed a new operatic style that clearly expands the conventional limits of opera and that synthesizes many musical cultures bordering on the Pacific. The work introduces a new recitative style where orchestral punctuation, pedal tones and ostinatos sustain a minimally pitched line sung at conversational speed. Contrary to traditional opera, the work makes use of a narrator to situate the action in the style of a Greek tragedy. Finally, the orchestral colors introduces a wide palette of Eastern flavors through the large list of percussion instruments played by five musicians (three pitched percussion and two non-pitched percussion) and its untraditional orchestral orchestration.

b. The libretto-risk-taking: Very few operas up to now have forwardly addressed the issue of homosexuality, much less made it the center of its libretto. Though gay elements have seeped into opera plots for centuries, gay opera is still considered a risk-taking endeavor and a rarity. One must in fact wonder if the subject matter of this work was part of the work’s difficult survival and its original controversy. Young Caesar violates the image of Caesar, the strong emperor, and presents him in his beautiful youth, going through a complex gay relationship. In this passionate love story, Gordon and Harrison brilliantly presents the subject of homosexuality in two very distinct centuries through the combination of the ancient story and the contemporary musical language used. In this way, Young Caesar uses the medium of new opera as the lens to comment on controversial issues that go beyond the borders of time.

Project goal and impact
Artistically, this project will bring to San Francisco the World premiere of a new form of contemporary chamber opera- an emerging genre for which there is growing interest around the world. The production will be an extremely strong contribution to American Contemporary Opera and an important homage a leading contemporary composer.

Artistic Crew Bio

Singers' Bio

Ensemble Parallèle Male Chorus

Lou Harrison

Cossutia's house