<\/a><\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> It\u2019s so hard to make a career, it really is. I don\u2019t know how I made this career. I\u2019m legitimately only writing libretti. Aside from doing a couple of classes at different universities and one-offs, I\u2019m not working in any other capacity. I\u2019m making no money besides from writing libretti and lyrics. But because it\u2019s such a hard industry to navigate, especially financially, you\u2019ve got to be very serious. You\u2019ve got to be very, very thoughtful, and you\u2019ve got to put the time in. These opportunities are gifts, truly.<\/p>\nWe\u2019re all working so hard and trying to use our voices to tell the best stories and make the best music possible; that\u2019s the name of the game. I think that if you\u2019re not contributing in that way, that\u2019s where I might have difficulty. Like if it\u2019s just sort of\u2014I don\u2019t want to say hobby, because I think making music as a hobby is a beautiful thing and I would encourage everyone to do that. But I do think that I work with people who are driven to really contribute to the form and to advance the form, and who do really cool things. We have that potential and, especially with these opportunities we have, it seems like we have this unlimited palette with which to create really dynamic stories.<\/p>\n
FJO:<\/strong> So what about the reverse of the music being wrong; let\u2019s flip the coin. Have you ever been in situations where you bring in a text and the composer turns around and says, \u201cThat\u2019s not going to work; that\u2019s not singable. I need something else there; this isn\u2019t right.\u201d What I\u2019m after with this whole line of questioning is trying to get a sense of what the give and take is in the collaborative processes that you\u2019re a part of.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> It\u2019s not so much that particular words don\u2019t sing, I don\u2019t think. The English language is so eccentric and awesome and there are just so many juicy, amazing words. I\u2019ve never had a composer come to me and say it doesn\u2019t sing. I\u2019ve had a composer say I\u2019m having a hard time figuring it out dramatically or finding my way through it. I always think that there are one thousand ways that one can write a scene. So if that ever happens, I\u2019m more than happy\u2014oh my goodness, send me away and have me re-write. I will try to find another way that will get the best music from you. My principle job is to write exciting words that really ignite the imaginations of my collaborators. So if my words aren\u2019t doing that for you, I\u2019m going to do my damnedest to find other words that do. I can give you an example. The final aria in JFK<\/em> is one big emotional outpouring before the end of the show. I had written a version of that aria and it sort of sat in the libretto for a good nine months, a year maybe. Then David finally got to it. He had worked all the way up to it, but he just couldn\u2019t find a way to make that particular text work dramatically in that moment. So we worked together, talking about what that moment needed to be, and I think I re-wrote that aria two or three times. It\u2019s infinitely better, and it feels so much more true to the dramatic pulse of that moment. So yeah, I\u2019m so open to re-writing and trying to figure out how to make it work for the composer. Not that I want to concede the medium to the composer, but the music needs to be really, really great. So if I can do anything that will help create really, really exciting, awesome music, then I\u2019m more than happy to oblige.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> It\u2019s interesting to hear you say that you go away and write another text. There\u2019s this clich\u00e9\u2014which is totally not true\u2014about Broadway collaborators and how they were portrayed by Hollywood and by promo photos back in the day. I particularly remember a photo of Rodgers and Hammerstein, where Richard Rodgers is sitting at the piano and Oscar Hammerstein is writing words. But probably the reality is they worked separately and then they came together to work out things. For you, at least, it doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s ever been that kind of Mickey Rooney, let\u2019s-put-on-a-show thing.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Very rarely. Little edits can be done in the room. For instance, I was just in rehearsal for Angel\u2019s Bone<\/em> a couple days ago, and there was a section that we all decided needed to have some words replaced. That was something I sort of did on the fly. But I much prefer to go home and just have my time and allow for the words to manifest. I have not yet had the experience where I\u2019ve sat in a room with a composer while they were plunking out melodies and saying, \u201cDoes this work?\u201d That seems like more of a musical theater thing. With opera there are so many more moving parts, so it often seems like the composer and I want our time to go away to sort of messy things up\u2014you know, so you can tear things apart and put them back together. But, just to be very good about honoring people\u2019s time, it might not be the best usage of time to sort of sit and pray that something comes out between the two of you. It just seems much easier to go away and make your work.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> So the process of making your work\u2014where and when does all of this stuff take place?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> I like to sit on the couch and write, but I really like to get out of town. My Breaking the Waves<\/em> libretto was written at home in Canada. I went home for three weeks and sat in my mother\u2019s house and watched the Olympics. It was right around the time that the Olympics were going on. So that was my time to enjoy that and get a full draft of Breaking the Waves<\/em>. JFK<\/em> was written in this house. For 27<\/em> I went up to my dramaturge\u2019s house, up in Hudson, and had a really good draft of that, but I had a week where I didn\u2019t leave the confines of the house. I would just write new scenes, and he would sit there and take me through every line and make sure that all my \u201cI\u201ds were dotted and \u201cT\u201ds were crossed. More and more, I\u2019m really loving the exodus from New York to get work done. That being said, a lot of work has to happen here. It seems like there\u2019s just so much time that is spent away from home. You tend to want to really make the time count when you\u2019re here. I\u2019m here for January. Then I have to go to Germany for the new production of Dog Days<\/em>. I\u2019m in Fort Worth for JFK<\/em>; I\u2019m in Philly for Breaking the Waves<\/em>. The big thing for me is that there are just so many events that happen in New York. I\u2019m working with so many people. I love the work of all of my collaborators and contemporaries and colleagues. So it\u2019s important for me to be a part of that. But that also means that a lot of writing time is gobbled up by events. It is really great to go away and have that time and to be sort of not within the machine that is the New York classical music community, because you want to participate so much. I\u2019m understanding more fully why residencies are so important and why people find that going up to MacDowell, closing that door and having weeks of uninterrupted art creation time, is so beneficial.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> But you can create a libretto while watching the Olympics?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Well, I did not do it at the same time.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> I know several composers who write music while watching television. I don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> If I did do that, I wouldn\u2019t be watching the TV\u2014it would just be background noise, which I\u2019m guessing would probably be the same thing for those composers. But I don\u2019t have that type of brain that allows me to do two things at once. I cannot split my attention. I love audio books, but I couldn\u2019t listen to an audio book and retain what\u2019s coming in and be able to make coherent thoughts on the page.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> Can you listen to a symphony while writing?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> It would all be sort of peripheral, background.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> So silence is the best?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> It\u2019s not necessarily the best, but for me listening means you\u2019re actually taking that information in. If I were to listen to a symphony and write, it would just be sort of a blanket of sound behind my process and I wouldn\u2019t really be retaining any of that musical information.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> Or your phrases would wind up being the same phrases of that symphony.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> Then you would<\/em> have music in your head that went with your words that would not be the same as the music of your collaborator.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> I certainly do listen to music while I write, but there are moments when I\u2019m just like aargh<\/em>, this is overload! I have to turn it off, and I\u2019ll have significant silent writing time. I think my ideal writing situation would be pretty much silence somewhere that\u2019s cloistered to a great extent.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> To follow up on what you just said about listening: you follow the work of your collaborators, and you mentioned the first opera CD you got was Cav<\/em>\/Pag<\/em>, and I see there\u2019s a Janis Joplin poster here in your apartment. I\u2019m wondering, how much time do you devote to listening to music that is separate and apart from your collaborations, and how does that listening then become fuel for your own creativity?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> I listen to so much music. And I watch as many movies as possible, and I do watch a lot of TV. I love taking things in, so that is an extremely important part of my life. I do think that every story you encounter and every piece of work that you even begin to understand becomes part of you, and you carry that. They become lessons.<\/p>\nI was given the opportunity to write about a particular poet that had really informed my work in some way. The poet that I chose was a singer-songwriter named Kathleen Edwards. She has lyrics that I encountered when I was in grad school that completely blew my mind and in some ways have informed my work more than any librettist. My narrative sensibility I think comes from being reared on Lars Von Trier, Neil LaBute, and Wong Kar-wai. I\u2019m able to not mimic them, by any stretch of the imagination, but to allow their ideas to be tools or methods with which to explore my own ideas. I just encountered Benjamin Clementine for the first time. He won the Mercury Prize last week. I\u2019m sure that my work will in some way benefit from, or will be informed by, just this absolute consuming musical world that is swirling around my head right now based on my insistence to continue going through Benjamin\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
FJO:<\/strong> And reading?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Oh, my gosh. I read so, so, so much. There are so many people that read more than me, but I feel healthier when I read. I really, really, really do. And I\u2019ve been exploring audio books a lot. I love lying in bed and just listening to hours on end of audio books. It\u2019s impossible for me to read these days and not wonder how I would adapt those works into an opera or music theater form. There\u2019s always something about, well, how would I do that?<\/p>\nEven going to the cinema, there\u2019s something about wanting to be in dialogue and how I would approach this particular narrative. Going back to reading, I read a lot based on books that people recommend because they may want to tackle them in some sort of opera or musical way. But I\u2019m always looking for interesting languages and how people tell stories just for my general narrative health.<\/p>\n
FJO:<\/strong> I\u2019m also curious about your intake of visual art. You mentioned the painting at the Brooklyn Museum that inspired Am I Born,<\/em> and while we were setting up the recording equipment you talked about this photograph behind you that is by the subject of your musical.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Visual art has informed so many of my projects. Thinking about 27<\/em>, my opera with Ricky Ian Gordon that was commissioned by Opera Theater of St. Louis and premiered in 2014, that piece was all about the art that hung in Gertrude and Alice\u2019s apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus. In JFK<\/em>, my opera with David T. Little that was commissioned by Fort Worth Opera and American Lyric Theater, similarly there is an amazing story where there was this woman Ruth Carter Stevenson who knew that Jack and Jackie were only going to have a very limited window in Fort Worth. She decided that because they wouldn\u2019t have time to go to the museums there, that she would bring the museums to them. So she went around and collected a really great sample of the works that were held in Fort Worth and put them all up in their hotel room. Right before the breakfast meeting, Jackie was about ten minutes late, and some people have this theory that she realized that the art on the walls was real\u2014all the paintings and sculptures. The Picasso owl was real. And she was arrested for those ten minutes and that caused her lateness, which is kind of amazing, and this is embedded into the opera. The art becomes these portals into dreams.<\/p>\nSo JFK<\/em>, 27<\/em>, Am I Born<\/em>, and the music I\u2019m writing with Ted Shen about Vivian Maier, who was a Chicago street photographer in the mid-20th<\/sup> century. She worked as a nanny and took a lot of pictures of children, but she would also just go to downtown Chicago and New York and take street photos. She certainly was not a famous woman by any stretch of the imagination and she died in obscurity. A young man named John Malouf bought a lot of her negatives in an auction and realized that they were extremely special. He put them online and was encouraged to take those photos offline because they were just so awesome. We are creating a piece that celebrates the mystery of this woman. We don\u2019t really know why she took so many pictures and then didn\u2019t develop them. She was sort of\u2014I wouldn\u2019t say an anti-artist, but she was compelled to take these photographs but then was not really compelled to complete the photographic process, which is really, really cool. Here\u2019s a woman who was taking selfies. Most of her portraits that are so truly beloved are these auto-portraits.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> The first work of yours that I saw on a stage was Dog Days,<\/em> and while I found it totally compelling, I also thought that it was really creepy and really dark\u2014extremely disturbing. You seem like a sunny person. What attracted you to something so grim?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Dog Days<\/em> was based on a short story by Judy Budnitz that was a little sunnier than our treatment. It was set in the \u201880s, so the Cold War was still on. The foundation of that piece was very much Judy\u2019s, but then it was sort of amplified and heightened and we made it a little bit more grim in concert with Robert Woodruff, the director. But we didn\u2019t set out to write a grim piece. And there are moments of levity and lightness, too, that I think are really funny. It is a hard piece. It\u2019s a heavy piece. I totally understand that. But I also think there\u2019s great life, especially in the Lisa character. I\u2019m writing Breaking the Waves<\/em> with Missy Mazzoli, which is similarly a rather dark, heavy work. Because of my being reared on international cinema of the late-\u201890s and early-2000s, those stories have always spoken to me. There\u2019s always been this desire to tell serious stories about the human condition. Look at Angel\u2019s Bone<\/em>. That\u2019s not fun and frothy. But also I love comedy, so thinking of David, Vinkensport or The Finch Opera<\/em> is as frothy and fun as they come. But even that ends with a twist where the final aria is this outpouring of emotion from this one particular character who is releasing his finch and is basically thanking him for years of companionship. So it\u2019s not that I\u2019m not interested in comedy. I haven\u2019t made a concerted decision to tell grim tales, although opera does have the potential to tell those stories in a really, really dynamic and full way. I think that that\u2019s why our artistic impulses often lead us to darker stories. But I think that you\u2019re going to see a lot of comedy, God willing, from me throughout my career.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> Well, definitely not in JFK<\/em>.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Not JFK<\/em>, although what David and I have been talking a lot about is our desire for audiences leaving JFK<\/em> to be grateful and to maybe hug loved ones just a little bit tighter that evening, to understand that life is precious. It doesn\u2019t end with his assassination; it ends with him leaving the hotel. We don\u2019t see the tragedy, but his leaving the hotel is taking him to Dallas, so there is that sense of doom. And the soundscape that David has come up with is extremely varied and there\u2019s something very ominous, especially after the intermission. It really feels like something very monumental is going to happen. The fates are aligning.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> I didn\u2019t realize that the audience never sees his assassination and only gets the hint through what the orchestra is playing when he leaves the hotel. It\u2019s reminiscent to me of what I think is one of the most effective moments in Dog Days<\/em>\u2014the end where the mother is on the table and there\u2019s a slowly building wall of noise that just blows out your ears by the end. It\u2019s the most intense thing. You never really see what you know is happening, but you know it\u2019s happened. All this stuff is going on, but curiously\u2014and I want to bring this up to you as the librettist\u2014it was all done without words.<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> But if you look at the libretto for that moment, there is a very particular stage direction. So it\u2019s done with words, but just not sung words. And she does sort of wail a little bit. And she snivels, and she pees. Right?<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> In terms of the collaborative process, how did a moment like that get decided upon and who decided it?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> The three of us. Judy\u2019s story ends with the dog being shot and eaten. In the dramaturgical sessions that we had with Robert, I remember very clearly he said, \u201cBut what happens next?\u201d That was the mind-shattering moment. There were these images that Robert brought up, I believe, about just seeing lions having eaten. I see lions, and I see an act of ablution, and then we went home. We went our separate ways. I came up with sort of the just the general idea, but we didn\u2019t find the washing of the mother with urine until\u2014that was Robert in rehearsal. In the libretto, it talks about how she performs, or she gathers snow and washes her mother\u2019s body. But we decided that water was gone at that point. So what is she going to wash her mother\u2019s body with? In this scenario where there\u2019s nothing, that was very much a directorial find.<\/p>\nI remember reading the stage management report and being like, \u201cOh, my goodness. What is going on at rehearsal?\u201d I tend to leave rehearsals to the singers and the director and the team for the first few days at least. I like everybody to get their bearings before the writers tromp in. So I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t really know what this is; this seems really wild.\u201d But it is one of the most beautifully heartbreaking moments that I\u2019ve had a hand in creating. I\u2019m so proud of what the whole team came to create in that moment.<\/p>\n
FJO:<\/strong> In terms of the hands-on\/hands-off thing, you\u2019re traveling around the world. You\u2019ve got productions happening here in New York in January and then in Germany and Texas, all over the place. It\u2019s going to get to the point where you probably can\u2019t be at all of these things. Hopefully there\u2019ll be productions of these works all the time. It\u2019s interesting to hear you say that you wait a little while before you come in. What about the process of letting go?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Oh, I\u2019m so excited for that. I\u2019m finally at the stage of my career where we do have projects that are taking on a life of their own. Dog Days<\/em> will come full circle. We\u2019re bringing it back to New York as part of the Protoype Festival in January \u201816, alongside the world premiere of Angel\u2019s Bone<\/em>. But Dog Days<\/em> after January will have its first new production [in Germany]. So David T. Little is going over and is going to have about a week with them during rehearsals. I\u2019m going to come for opening night. There is something really beautiful in that we feel like we have created the version that we need to oversee. We\u2019ve created one version that was very much hands-on; we were in the room. We worked with Robert to create the production that began at Montclair Peak Performances, then went to Fort Worth Opera and LA Opera, and is coming to Prototype. What we\u2019ve created is a roadmap that is intended to be interpreted in as many ways as possible. So I think that the most exciting thing at this juncture in the life of Dog Days<\/em> is that it\u2019s open now. We don\u2019t need to be hands-on. We can let other people come up with ideas that will inform the work in ways that we didn\u2019t even imagine.<\/p>\nFJO:<\/strong> And you\u2019re happy with that?<\/p>\nRV:<\/strong> Yes, because in order to make a living and to make a career in the operatic world, your work needs to be done. And I am obsessed and addicted to creating new work. So I need to be able to allow my earlier work to be interpreted in such a way that I can go make new operas with David T. Little and Missy Mazzoli and Ricky Ian Gordon and Du Yun and Josh Schmitt and Matt Marks and all these fabulous people. Missy Mazzoli did say at one point that you\u2019ve just got to hope to God that opening nights don\u2019t happen on the same night. Especially when I\u2019m working on so many different projects, invariably there are going to be things that overlap. But you do your work, and you attend whatever needs your love and attendance. And you hope that everything just sort of fits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While an extremely wide range of composers are writing operas in the United States today, many of these disparate operas share an important trait\u2014a libretto written by someone who was born in Alberta, Canada: Royce Vavrek. The gregarious Vavrek at first seems like an unlikely candidate for the mysterious, and regretfully somewhat anonymous, profession of writing opera librettos, but he loves telling stories and collaboration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":522,"featured_media":269501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,34],"tags":[45,98,116,663],"nmb_categories":[7],"how_to_category":[],"nmb_tags":[],"internal_taxonomy":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Royce Vavrek: So Many Juicy, Amazing Words - New Music USA<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n