Emmanuel Music Blog

May 6, 2013 | Ryan Turner, Emmanuel Music Artistic Director with Susan Larson

Gatsby is back! F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel continues to haunt us with its portrait of glitter, frivolity and bad behavior. There have been TV, radio, theatrical, literary, even computer-game adaptations. The fifth major Gatsby movie is playing in theaters; and on May 12th at Jordan Hall, Emmanuel Music will present in concert form, the New England premiere of John Harbison’s brilliant Grand Opera The Great Gatsby. We are doing a revival of the opera because I believe it is a major American work that cries out to be heard in its final, mature form.

Harbison has remarked that all operas are always under revision. He has effected many changes in his Gatsby since its official premiere—which we Bostonians might enjoy thinking of as its first out-of-town tryout—at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1999. It is a persistent, appalling, and mercifully fading operatic tradition that new operas undergo, to use Harbison’s words, a “cold-bath opening night.” Thrown onstage before the paying public with no workshopping, no preview performances and no out-of-town tryouts, they can be as new in the ears of the composer as in the audience’s. Opening night at the Met was the first complete run through of Gatsby. Show-doctoring came later, including creation of a reduced-orchestra version for Ensemble Parallele’s 2012 San Francisco production. Years of the composer’s rethinking and adjusting the work culminate in our forthcoming performance. Now Emmanuel Music has the privilege of presenting for the first time ever, the original full-orchestral version of this brilliant, evocative, pungently imaginative work, in its [possibly] final shape.

Not only do operas often suffer from white-knuckle premieres, many don’t ever make it back onstage after their first runs. The lesser or the merely unluckier ones of any era can fade into oblivion before performers or listeners get a handle. By contrast, Harbison’s Gatsby seems destined for a place in the canon. It is a true Grand Opera, with an authentic American vernacular flavor: its pop-tango-bluesy-waltzy strains interweave with a brooding musical subtext that underscores that ’20s tinsel and tinkle with a sense of darkness, despair and emptiness.

A bit of performance history of Gatsby: The full opera has never been performed in New England. After its premiere, in 1999, it stayed in the Met’s repertory until 2002. It was produced, with Harbison’s first set of revisions, by the Chicago Lyric Opera in 2001. It was performed by Ensemble Parallele in 2012 and in Aspen last summer with further adjustments—both in Harbison’s reduced-orchestra version. The composer says, “The productions in San Francisco and Aspen convinced me that the opera’s survival in this form is far better than its not being seen at all.” Our Boston and Tanglewood performances incorporate the revisions but use the original lush orchestral score.

Bits of Gatsby came back in the form of “snapshots of the opera that could be passed from hand to hand,” as ways of keeping the Gatsby music in the public ear. These pieces include the Gatsby Songs (13 witty ’20s -style tunes for voice and piano, with equally witty lyrics by Murray Horwitz); Gatsby Etudes for piano (adapted from the vocal score and dedicated to Judith Gordon); “A Gatsby Suite” (at the suggestion of conductor David Zinman); and Remembering Gatsby (commissioned in 1985 by the Atlanta Symphony, it became the opera’s overture).

Emmanuel Music’s relationship with Harbison dates back to the days when the ensemble was still just an idea of the late Craig Smith. Both John and Rose Mary Harbison played in the Emmanuel’s first Bach cantata, and in 1970, helped Craig officially found the group. Over the years, Harbison has written wonderful pieces for us, and has been our Principal Guest Conductor since 2007. He has been a steadfast friend and mentor both to Craig Smith and to me. His altruistic and generous spirit is present in his music as well — always in search of, and in service to, the most meaningful expressions of the human spirit.

My first introduction to Harbison’s music was as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University in 1993, through my singing in his choral piece The Flower-Fed Buffaloes, which,  as Harbison has written, deals with “the American paradox — the dualistic nature of the country, its capacity for generosity and selfishness.” Little did I know at the time that some 20 years later I would be returning to this compelling theme in The Great Gatsby.

Emmanuel Music’s involvement with Gatsby has also been a longterm thing. In 1997, two years before the premiere, and at Harbison’s request (and expense), Emmanuel Music assembled the biggest orchestra in its history into MIT’s Kresge Auditorium to play the first two scenes of Gatsby under Craig Smith’s direction, with a cast drawn from the Emmanuel chorus. That reading allowed Harbison to hear his score for the first time. Ten players from that reading will reprise their parts in the May 12th performance with eight soloists from Emmanuel Music.

John Harbison has given his talent, creativity, knowledge and soul to Emmanuel Music. He has been my mentor and teacher; I have had the privilege of working with him as both singer and conductor. Now I am overjoyed to collaborate with him and my colleagues to present the New England Premiere of his masterwork, The Great Gatsby. May it come back to haunt us time and again.

 

THE GREAT GATSBY

The Orchestra and Chorus of Emmanuel Music
Conducted by Artistic Director Ryan Turner
Artistic Advisor, John Harbison
May 12th at Jordan Hall, reprising at Tanglewood on July 11th
Information and ticketing here.

 

October 24, 2012 | Ryan Turner, Emmanuel Music Artistic Director

Ten years ago, I sat in the audience hearing and experiencing the Christmas Oratorio in its entirety for the first time.  Perhaps it was admiration for my colleagues in the orchestra and chorus, or the mystery of the season (or that I was sitting next to the woman who, although I did not know at the time, would become my wife), but I recall being awestruck at the beauty, genius, clarity and ambiguity of the Christmas Oratorio.  Now ten years later, I am excited to rediscover what Bach thought of this amazing story.

It’s a special privilege to making this rediscovery by leading the Emmanuel Music Orchestra and Chorus. No one performs the Christmas Oratorio like Emmanuel Music because we’ve been living with Bach weekly for over 40 years. But if Bach’s musical language molds us as an ensemble, I am also conscious of the challenge to keep the experience of this performance fresh.  Because most of our ensemble has performed the piece before – maybe at our last performance ten years ago, maybe with other ensembles – I have assigned soloists to roles they haven’t sung before at Emmanuel. These new solo assignments will make the performance a discovery for the musicians as well as the audience.

In my own preparation I’m thinking a lot about the dramatic arc of the complete Christmas Oratorio. Many groups perform portions of the piece, and it’s true that there’s value in that. Individual arias are beautiful and dramatic, and each of the six cantatas has its own arc and character and it tells a little vignette of the mystery of the season. But the complete Oratorio tells the whole story for the six days between Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany.  And musically the transitions enrich the structure. Notice how each cantata has a different instrumentation that together widens the palette of sound colors. The second cantata, depicting the shepherds in the fields, begins with the most divine pastoral in all of Bach.  The first, third and sixth cantatas all feature a trio of festive trumpets and timpani symbolizing Christ’s kingship and heralding the joy of the season.
Now ten years later, moving from the audience to the podium, I look forward to exploring this sublime, jubilant and profoundly human music with my colleagues and our audience.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT GATSBY

September 13, 2012 | Kate Kush, President, Board of Directors

As we begin our 42nd season, the buzz is building about our exciting finale – the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s opera, The Great Gatsby. Many people wonder why Emmanuel Music is the ensemble that’s introducing Gatsby to composer’s home town more than 12 years after its Metropolitan Opera premiere. The answers lie in the intertwined histories of John Harbison and Emmanuel Music.

You might say that John Harbison’s influence on Emmanuel Music began when he introduced future Emmanuel Music founder Craig Smith to the Bach cantatas. Smith began the ensemble to perform all 200+ Bach cantatas, and Harbison was at his side from the beginning. Their close collaboration continued until Smith’s death in 2007, when Harbison stepped in as Acting Artistic Director for almost three years to ensure that Emmanuel Music would survive. Today he remains as Principal Guest Conductor, and this season has been named “Season Composer.”

Here are key facts about the creation of The Great Gatsby: 

• The Metropolitan Opera commissioned the opera to celebrate the 25th anniversary of maestro James Levine’s tenure.
• Harbison asked Emmanuel Music to record two scenes of the work to give the Met a preview of its commission. Craig Smith led the Emmanuel Music orchestra, chorus, and soloists.
• Harbison also asked Emmanuel Music to create and record a piano score to use during Met rehearsals. For this recorded preview, current Artistic Administrator Michael Beattie prepared and recorded additional segments of the piece with Emmanuel Music singers.   Eventually a complete study recording of the entire opera was given to the Met. It was edited by Rose Mary Harbison, with John Harbison performing the vocal parts on electric piano and Judith Gordon playing the orchestral parts on the piano.

So the Gatsby partnership between John Harbison and Emmanuel Music was there from the beginning, and it’s more than fitting that Emmanuel Music brings this piece home to Boston.

Why hasn’t Gatsby been performed in Boston since the Metropolitan Opera premiere in December 1999?  One reason may be that it’s an opera with a big orchestra and chorus – too large for the pit of any Boston theatre.  To bring it here Emmanuel Music will present a concert version in Jordan Hall – finally allowing Boston opera lovers to savor the music that brings this jazz era-inflected drama to life.

Stay tuned for more on this exciting event, including a video interview with John Harbison, Emmanuel Music Artistic Director Ryan Turner, and former Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer.