In 2008, the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and Cincinnati Opera launched Opera Fusion, an initiative to share resources and nurture emerging talent in artistic and technical areas.
That spring, Mexican-American composer Daniel Catán worked with CCM students on an eerie staging of his opera Rappaccini’s Daughter and with Cincinnati Opera’s stunning production of Florencia en el Amazonas.
His sudden death in April 2011 was a huge loss for the countless students, colleagues and friends he made throughout his career. It also seemed to signal the end of a hugely productive life as a composer.
Catán was working on an opera commissioned by the Butler School of Music at the time of his death. His widow, harpist Andrea Puente, became a passionate advocate for completing her husband’s final work, Meet John Doe, based on the 1941 Frank Capra film.
There are certainly precedents. Unfinished operas that were completed by others include Puccini’s Turandot and Alban Berg’s Lulu. Catán’s work was three-quarters finished, according to Puente. The score was composed using the notation software Sibelius, and in addition to those files, Catán left notes, references and musical sketches.
Puente was undaunted by the challenge of finding composers who could work within a unique musical style. Shortly after Catán’s memorial service in September 2011, she enlisted his close friend and colleague of 36 years, composer, conductor and educator Eduardo Diazmuñoz, to oversee the completion and editing of the piano-vocal score.
“She told me, ‘No one is more versed in his universe than you, so you should be the music editor,’ ” Diazmuñoz says.
Meet John Doe tells the story of newspaper reporter Ann Mitchell, who fabricates letters from a desperate veteran who calls himself John Doe. All the perils of speculative journalism swirl into the mix.
The completion of Meet John Doe was selected for the winter 2015 residency of Opera Fusion: New Works, which evolved from the 2008 initiative bolstered by a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera in New York City. With deadlines looming, Diazmuñoz suggested recruiting one or two more composers.
Puente called on Sean Bradley, a musical polymath, entrepreneur and Catán’s protégé, to assist in finding the rest of the team. Bradley met composers Jairo Duarte-López and Michaela Eremiášová at a networking session for graduates of the University of Rochester.
“What caught Sean’s attention was that we were working on our own opera,” Duarte-López says of their setting of Lorca’s play Bodas de Sangre.
“We really clicked,” Eremiášová adds. “And next thing, we had an email from him that they were looking for a team of composers to finish Daniel’s last opera.”
Their setting of a text from Meet John Doe landed them a job that has more than the usual challenges of composing a new opera.
“An important component was that they loved opera,” Puente says. “And when I heard their music, they had a Latin style but there was also a European tradition.” She could also be describing Catán’s music, an exuberant mix of European styles and the rhythms and percussion effects of Latin America.
When Diazmuñoz received Catán’s files and materials, he was stunned by the amount of detail left behind.
“He left us a roadmap,” he says. “I knew Daniel for over three decades and though he made notes in his scores, he never left behind such a detailed outline. It was incredible: scene by scene, timing, even orchestration hints.”
“It’s as if he knew he wasn’t going to finish it,” he says.
Even with this roadmap, there were unknowns that the composers had to tackle and review on a regular basis.
“At one point, I found myself in a tunnel,” Eremiášová says. “I spent a lot of time with Andrea figuring out how it should work.”
For Diazmuñoz, the biggest headaches were transitions between scenes and sections where there was little more than sketches.
“There was a scene where I knew Daniel wanted hints of Stephen Foster songs. He didn’t say which ones, but what I chose worked beautifully,” he says.
The entire composing team is looking forward to their first visit to Cincinnati and the 10-day workshop that culminates in a performance of selected excerpts on Saturday night.
CCM and Cincinnati Opera perform excerpts from MEET JOHN DOE Saturday at Memorial Hall. Free but reservations required. More info: cincinnatiopera.org.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2015.
