Cincinnati Opera, in collaboration with concert:nova, presents an opera about a fiercely independent woman whose life was operatic by any standard — and who was virtually unknown until composer Missy Mazzoli wrote Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt.
Isabelle Eberhardt was born into an unconventional family in Switzerland in 1877. By the time she was 20, her parents and brother had died and she left for Algeria. There, Eberhardt dressed like a man, converted to Islam, joined a mystic all-male Sufi sect and survived an assassination attempt. After a tempestuous romance, she married an Algerian soldier and died in a desert flash flood at age 27. Her journals miraculously survived.
In 2004, Mazzoli was an aspiring 24-year-old composer who had no interest in writing opera. She wrote music for Rock bands and had just begun composing solo and chamber works while studying at Yale.
Then she wandered into a Boston bookstore and bought a copy of Eberhardt’s journals. Eight years later, the multi-media Uproar — inspired by what she read — had its world premiere at The Kitchen in New York. It has since been performed in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Chautauqua, N.Y. and now Cincinnati. Its series of four performances at the Aronoff Center for the Arts’ Fifth Third Bank Theater begins Monday. It is a chamber opera with Eberhardt as the only named character.
She is lucky to be remembered today. “Isabelle’s husband and others pulled the papers from the water and dried them in these big urns,” says the Brooklyn-based Mazzoli in a phone conversation. “This opera literally comes out of the flood. I became obsessed with her history and started using her texts for the libretto.”
But the material almost overwhelmed Mazzoli, who had never composed an opera at the time. “I’d written about 30 minutes of music, but I wanted this to be a reflection on Isabelle’s life and not her life story, so I turned to Royce Vavrek,” she says.
Vavrek, a playwright, filmmaker and librettist trained as a musician, created a series of vignettes incorporating Eberhardt’s writings, as well as his own and Mazzoli’s poetry. Filmmaker Stephen Taylor became part of the team, using archival footage to enhance the dreamy, surreal landscape that Eberhardt inhabits in the opera. Staging also plays a critical part: A vocal quintet portrays multiple roles, from Swiss bourgeoisie to whirling dervishes.
“I came to believe that a woman as progressive as Isabelle Eberhardt deserved a story unmoored from any specific period in history, a world where distorted guitars, stuttering electronic voices and abstract films could find a home in her fantasies and dreams,” writes Mazzoli in her essay for Cincinnati Opera’s program book.
The 75-minute work, performed without intermission, draws us into Eberhardt’s brief life in vignettes separated by electronic sequences — what one reviewer described as “crackling like ancient shortwave.”
“(Mazzoli) is able to conjure up atmosphere in a couple of bars, like Verdi and Britten,” says Evans Mirageas, Cincinnati Opera’s artistic director. “She sets up not just the sound world, but also the historical and locational world of the piece.”
Mazzoli insists that an emotional connection far outweighs a sense of place.
“I never wanted to create music that says, ‘Oh yeah, Algeria, 1904,’ ” she says. “I do try to create that emotional response to being in the unknown, or being on the edge, or being ecstatic.”
The opera’s first haunting song, “The World Within Me Is Too Small,” is a deceptively simple melody propelled by insistent, urgent accompaniment, not unlike a pulse. And “I Have Arrived” conveys that sense of ecstasy with lively woodwinds and a giddy tempo.
The concluding vocal performance for Eberhardt and the chorus, which echoes the opera’s opening instrumental phrases and sonic accents, establishes Eberhardt’s presence. Abigail Fischer brings her lustrous mezzosoprano to the Cincinnati performances; she has performed the role in all but one of Uproar‘s subsequent performances since the premiere. Mazzoli wrote the role for her after hearing Fischer perform works by George Crumb and Nico Muhly.
“Isabelle is a huge, demanding part and Abby was fearless about everything involved in creating the role,” Mazzoli says. “She still is.”
The score calls for a piano, electric guitar, double bass, a few woodwinds and — in what has become a signature of Mazzoli’s compositions — electronics. Members of concert:nova will be in the pit under the direction of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Associate Conductor Keitaro Harada.
concert:nova’s artistic director, Ixi Chen, has been advocating for Uproar since its premiere and is thrilled to be collaborating with Cincinnati Opera. “I love Missy’s music — especially this piece,” she says.
Marco Pelle makes his Cincinnati Opera debut, staging and choreographing Uproar.
Mazzoli, now 37, regards her first opera with the circumspection provided by experience. “I feel like it’s a real honest reflection of where I was at that time,” she says. “I was responding to the opportunity that I had and the resources available, and all the original team had a huge impact on it. I won’t write about Isabelle again; this is my truth about her.”
Uproar’s success brought further opera commissions for Mazzoli and Vavrek. Last September, Philadelphia Opera presented the world premiere of Breaking the Waves, based on the 1996 Lars von Trier film. Mazzoli’s score garnered critical raves for powerfully evoking both character and landscape.
“I want to connect to people,” she says. “I want music to be a tool for connection. With opera, you have more opportunities for that.
“What I’m working on now is very different, and it’s an extension of Uproar,” she continues. “I’ve become more adept at experimental harmony and texture, but I had to write Uproar before I could get to that spot. It’s all part of one artistic journey.”
SONG FROM THE UPROAR is presented four times from Monday through July 21 at the Aronoff Center for the Arts’ Fifth Third Bank Theater. More info: cincinnatiopera.org.
This article appears in Jul 12-19, 2017.
