A Story That Sings

“This is what you live for,” says Minnesota Opera artistic director Dale Johnson, referring to this month’s world premiere of The Grapes of Wrath, co-commissioned by the Utah Opera. Composer Ricky Ian Gordon is not yet a household name, but the opera, based on John Steinbeck’s classic novel, is creating an unusual amount of buzz.

There is little cachet in repeat engagements, so typically a new opera premieres and then disappears. This time, though, after a world premiere here and a run in Salt Lake City, the production travels to Pittsburgh and then Houston, which is particularly notable considering that the Houston Grand Opera has produced more new work than any other opera company in the nation.

“It’s about finding a hit show,” says Kevin Smith, the Minnesota Opera’s president of twenty years. “We tried a lot of things and feel like we found the right combination of subject and composer and librettist to take Minnesota Opera to the next level.”

A world premiere is a major undertaking, and the Minnesota Opera has a lot more than its reputation riding on this one. An opera usually costs around $1 million to produce. Commissioning fees, workshop expenses, and dramaturgical support for a new opera add more than $800,000 to that. Smith expects the final total to approach $1.9 million. When asked why the Minnesota Opera does it—taking on all the extra work, expense, and risk—Smith admits there isn’t a logical reason.

“It’s all about the creative impulse,” says Johnson. “Recreating and interpreting work is wonderful, but this is why we’re artists. It’s why Kevin and I work here.”

“And from an institutional point of view, as a community provider of this art form, we have a responsibility,” Smith says.

“After 400 years, opera still is a vital art form,” Johnson says. “Look at Green Day’s American Idiot album or My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. They’re both very operatic. Telling a big, epic story with music is an expression of our humanity.”

The Grapes of Wrath is that kind of “big, epic story.” It follows the Joad family who, in Depression-era America, is driven out of Oklahoma by poverty and the Dust Bowl and struggles to survive. How the opera came into existence is something of its own epic. Even acquiring the rights from the publisher to adapt the book took several years.

The journey to this world premiere began in 1998. “I reread the book,” says Johnson. “I don’t know why. It seemed operatic. I was setting up a training program at the Berkshire Opera Festival and sharing a house with [director] Eric Simonson. I was thinking of lots of other ideas—an Isabel Allende story, Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne, that Tobias Picker is now doing—but I kept coming back to Grapes of Wrath. Eric had performed in a stage version of it at Steppenwolf in Chicago”—the production eventually went to Broadway—“and he convinced me that it could sing.” Simonson quickly became the clear choice as the opera’s director.

“We were looking for something that had contemporary resonance,” Smith says. “The element of displacement echoes the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And the book’s story of the deterioration of the middle class is certainly relevant to this world of outsourcing and diminishing access to health insurance.”

Thinking of the work in musical terms, says Johnson, “it seems inspired by Verdi. Like Aida, it has an epic quality with a personal component. There’s a national event told through the eyes of a few people.”

It wasn’t until Johnson and Smith agreed on the novel that the discussion turned to finding a composer. Most of the candidates were music-theater composers, rather than strictly opera composers. “What was especially important was addressing the audience’s expectations,” Smith says. “We wanted an American sound, something quintessentially American.”

“Ma Joad singing in an atonal European style would not be believed,” Johnson says. “We wanted a ‘numbers opera’ with connecting recitative, but wanted the audience to feel like they’d heard it before, continuing along the same line as Porgy and Bess and Showboat. We were looking for a crossover composer.”

Ricky Ian Gordon, a rising star in New York’s music-theater world, seemed the right fit. In 2005, he won an Obie Award for Orpheus and Eurydice: a song cycle in two acts, a genre-straddling piece performed off-Broadway. He’s known particularly for his songs, which have been recorded by the likes of Renée Fleming and Deborah Voigt on the classical end of the music spectrum and Audra McDonald and Betty Buckley on the pop end. “When I was growing up,” says Gordon, “nobody talked to me about the difference between classical music and pop. I was obsessed with Porgy and Bess and West Side Story, and Blitzstein’s Regina and the operas of Menotti, and Neil Young and The Beatles. I loved Joni Mitchell enough to correspond with her.”

Much is made these days of how classical music has become more tonal, eschewing the twelve-tone dissonance and overly academic writing that dominated the latter part of the twentieth century. But listening to Gordon play through his score points out what is still missing from much contemporary work. Tonal does not necessarily mean melodic. This man knows how to write great tunes. He then weds them to rich orchestrations, creating what he calls “internal complexity.”

“It was a no-brainer with Ricky,” Johnson says. “We knew him most from his prolific collection of songs. He sings with an American voice. He exudes energy and power and optimism.” But even more than that, says Johnson, “he moves the compositional world into the twenty-first century, embracing rock and pop. His music has heart, and he is unafraid to be emotional, which will help the audience find its way into the dark story.”

When it came to selecting a librettist, however, Gordon, Johnson, and Smith weren’t on the same page initially. Gordon had suggested Michael Korie, but, says Johnson, “Kevin and I didn’t think he was right. He had a great body of work, but it had an edgy, contemporary quality. We wanted the story to speak for itself.”

“But he came up with a scenario that was very moving,” Smith says.
“He had that sense of epic scope, likening Grapes of Wrath to a biblical story,” says Johnson. “We were blown away with his sensitivity to Steinbeck and the characters. He felt humbled by the subject, but not intimidated by it as others were.” Korie has since gone on to some prominence, including writing the book for the current Broadway hit musical Grey Gardens.

As the creative team fell into place, the quest for the book’s rights heated up. While performing in Steppenwolf’s production of The Grapes of Wrath, Simonson had met Elaine Steinbeck, the writer’s widow, and she persuaded the publishers to attend a recital of Gordon’s work. “They wanted to see what he could do,” Smith says. “They were very picky.” Ultimately, the publishers were convinced, and, in October 2002, awarded the Minnesota Opera the rights to the book.

Eight months later, in June 2003, contracts with the artists were signed and work on the opera began in earnest. In a flood of inspiration, Korie finished the libretto in less than six months. “Librettos usually take more than a year to complete,” Johnson says, “but Michael was inspired by the story.”

“The libretto retains the structure of the book,” Gordon says, “juxtaposing chapters about the Joad family with chapters about what’s happening in America more generally. All the characters for those alternate scenes emerge out of the chorus. It’s a chorus of individuals.”

Gordon spent a year and a half composing the first draft of the score, completing it in September 2005. He admits he was intimidated at first. “It seemed insane to me,” he says. “It’s such an icon. Everyone has an opinion about it. You take that on. But I reread the book and felt that I was not worth my weight in salt if I did not let that magnificent story come through me. I struggled every minute to be true to the work and the people and to Steinbeck.”

Orchestrating the score took another year, but before that was finished the process of revising it began. In March 2005, the Minnesota Opera hosted a workshop in Minneapolis for the unorchestrated first act. “We were going down the right track,” Smith says. “But even then we began to tighten it. Eric was adamant that the Joads get on the road more quickly,” which necessitated rewrites in the opening scenes.

“We’re still working on pacing,” Johnson says.

“And doing some editing,” Smith says. “The score is still three and a half hours long.”

“We want it to be between three-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half hours,” Johnson says.

“Between three and three-and-a-quarter hours,” Smith says.

The two men laugh at their disagreement. “We can fight like cats and dogs, but we have a friendship based on mutual trust,” Johnson says. “And he lets me do what I want, most of the time.”

The Minnesota Opera has a long history of presenting world premieres. “We’re lucky that the audience is there for new work,” says Johnson. “They’re actually looking for new work.” But that tradition has been moribund in recent years. It’s been more than a decade since the last world premiere, Evan Chen’s Bok Choy Variations in 1995.

“That one pushed the envelope,” Johnson says. With The Grapes of Wrath, he has a different goal. “I would love to be able to move the audience’s expectation of new work, to get them as excited about new work as Verdi’s audiences were.” Is this opera a budding classic? “It is for smarter people than me to decide,” Johnson says. “But it exceeds my expectations. It has a real opportunity to have a life.”

That possibility increases the pressure and the sense of responsibility the company feels. “The score is very moving,” Smith says. “Our work has to bring out the best in the piece. By default, we’re doing the definitive production.”

William Randall Beard is opera columnist for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.