School of Music
2023-24 Awarded Amount: $10,228
Title: Alice, an Operatic Wonderland Comes Alive!
College of Fine Arts
U Opera’s “A.L.I.C.E.” world premiered declares: you are enough
City Weekly
University of Utah School of Music premiere of A.L.I.C.E.
The Daily Utah Chronicle
Two Weeks Behind The Scenes of ‘A.L.I.C.E.’
School of Music Offers Its First Sensory-Friendly Performance
Thanks to a successful Dee Grant Proposal for the 2023-2024 academic year that was funded in the amount of $10,228, The School of Music successfully presented a world premiere of the fully orchestrated opera A.L.I.C.E. in April of 2024 at Kingsbury Hall. Production featured student singers and orchestra, and others from disparate areas of the College including Dance and Theatre. The grant made possible the invitation of composer Amy Scurria and librettist Zane Corriher to campus for a week-long workshop featuring discussions, classes, and workshops.
Description
Student performers are rarely offered opportunities to work directly with living composers and librettists. When I met singer Kelly Balmaceda and composer Amy Scurria at the National Opera Association convention in Houston in 2023, I began to contemplate what it might be like to bring the team to SLC to work with us on their newly-composed opera. Deeply intrigued by their presentation of Alice, An Operatic Wonderland, I was immediately impressed by their passionate and inspired enthusiasm. After a quick but intense score study, I learned why Amy is considered an incredibly compelling composer with a unique voice, and asked her to consider working together to produce the world orchestral premiere here at the University of Utah. After writing a proposal to bring Amy and Kelly here for a week-long residency, I was delighted to learn I had been awarded a generous Dee Grant. After learning this, I also learned that Kelly was not actually a librettist but was more the “producer” of the project. In fact, Zane Corriher was the true librettist. After consulting with Dee Fellow, Emily Mercado, I invited the composer/librettist team to Salt Lake City for the week-long residency which successfully occurred during our A.L.I.C.E. production week, April 7-14, 2024. (Scurria and Corriher changed the title of the opera to A.L.I.C.E. and made other excellent changes to the score after I first read through it in Houston.)
A Dee Grant made it possible for a residency, which made it possible for Scurria and Corriher to attend rehearsals and performances providing direct consultation with me as the Stage Director, Conductor Robert Baldwin, members of the Utah Philharmonia, the Choreographer Melissa Bobick, Associate Director of Opera James Bobick, and most importantly, the performers themselves. I would guess that they spent over sixty (60) hours each in direct contact with our students, production team, and faculty. Additionally, they generously spent time eating some of their meals with the students led to deeply appreciated collaboration. Their son, Finch, deeply appreciated the opportunity to work with our support team in the costume department.
Preparation for the week-long residency required numerous exchanges for me as a director and educator providing invaluable insight and inspiration. Before they arrived, we spent many hours in consultation. The most important outcome of this work resulted in an incredibly “informed” staging plan. By the time they arrived, work had been laid in place over a period of months. My artistic choices were grounded by a year of study of the score, source materials, and numerous other tellings of Lewis Carroll’s famous Alice story. Most importantly, I found inspiration talking with Scurria and Corriher about their unique take on the story. I learned that their “take” was inspired by Scurria’s real-life, 1st person, narrative and it was this narrative that drove much of our SLC version. In order to honor their perspective most thoroughly, I felt the need to be able to more easily and directly have access to them. I wanted to make authentic story-telling choices.
Over this past year, we developed a close relationship not only as artists but as human beings, too. I wanted to tell their version of the eternal story of Alice and I believe that, in the end, we were successful. They were emotionally moved by and deeply impressed with the commitment and skills of the students and they contributed a great deal by the feedback they offered for the week they were here. Additionally, they both contributed a great deal by Zoom before we began, and, post production in the same manner.
In short, they spent as much time contributing to our production in online discussions and emails which started long before we began staging on March 11th. The grant provided travel and housing costs for them to join us for a mere week but we ended up with much more than a week’s worth of their devoted time. When I drafted the initial proposal, I suggested that the funding would directly benefit a “large number of students including over forty (40) singers, the Utah Philharmonia, and faculty and students in conducting, dance, and theatre.” The outcome revealed a smaller number of singers (32) than anticipated but more dancers (5). Numbers also include students from the stage management program in the Theatre Department (4). Scurria and Corriher also had interaction with our voice faculty. Additionally, Associate Director of Opera James Bobick had significant access to them along with our Choreographer Melissa Bobick, Conductor Robert Baldwin , and student conductor, Oswaldo Machado. Scurria and Corriher additionally collaborated with Professor Elizabeth Craft (History) and, Jessica Rudman (Composition). Additionally, perhaps in a more ancillary manner, Scurria, Corriher and son Finch were accessible to the School of Music Chair Kimberly Councill and Cassie Taylor College of Fine Arts Development Director, Cassie Taylor who both organized and executed the additional sensory-friendly performance which, for us, was novel and excellent.
Perhaps most significant is the access that Scurria and Corriher gave to our teaching assistant, Michael Shoaf. Michael was responsible for coordinating the team effort to provide scores and learning materials for the students. He also coordinated the online Zoom meetings that aligned the students and production team. Scurria and Corriher were extremely generous with their praise for all of our production team, especially for our talented and hard-working set, costume, and, light designers. One slight outcome deviation came about due to the fact that Corriher, rather than Kelly Balmaceda, was involved. The marketing elements that the students heard about came not from the performer’s aspect but rather the artistic team. Balmaceda, as a singer who had sung A.L.I.C.E. in the early stages, had a strong artistic mission as a singer. I found it much more compelling to spend time with the creators and feel that this outcome in particular was far more beneficial than had Balmaceda been our guest as proposed.
We had also planned to provide a masterclass with Balmaceda. Instead, we replaced the masterclass with a session where Zane and Amy provided direct feedback to all of the performers both with roles and the ensemble rather than working with six soloists in isolation. This was rewarding for the students because it is rare to be able to receive feedback directly from the creators, themselves. The off-shoot of this is that the students have new career contacts that will be beneficial as they and the opera move on and upwards. Another wonderful but unexpected outcome was that Scurria was willing to alter the music to fit the needs of the singers. Long before she arrived, she modified a role (The March Hare) to fit the needs of our two countertenors. Instead of being sung by a baritone, in our case, the Hare was modified to be sung up an octave. Scurria and Corriher were very pleased with this due to the fact that they both imagined the role this way in the first place. Additionally, Scurria made changes to several roles by eliminating notes that were either too high or low for the voices. She also allowed me to re-write a cadence to fit the comedic drama elements in a trio dubbed “The Nonsense Song.” In fact, she encouraged us to experiment with many of the musical elements all in response to our team’s needs and strengths.
Scurria and Corriher were not given an opportunity to share their experiences of taking A.L.I.C.E. to schools, but, thanks to the efforts of Chair Kimberly Councill our plan to provide a matinee performance primarily for children came to fruition. The intermission “meeting with the cast” was, to me, one of the highlights of their visit. The sensory-friendly show was designed and planned with Scurria’s assistance and informed decisions were made based upon her experience as an artist who celebrates her autism. Finally, with hope of honoring the University’s commitment to access and diversity, Scurria shared her authentic lens perspective as a feminist, autistic, artist. Inspired by Catherine Clément's book: Opera, Or the Undoing of Women, she set about creating an opera that breaks the paradigm of the “tragic female” with strong female leads. There is a growing importance within the art to expand representation. By creating an opera based on the well-known book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she strives to offer an opera where young girls, women, and neurodiverse audience members might find themselves within the story and the music, utilizing a story that is appealing to all. By drawing upon a rich musical tapestry with influences from around the world, A.L.I.C.E. has the ability to speak musically to many cultures and to reach a wide range of audience members with the important messages that not only is being different all right but that whoever you are, you are enough. Scurria’s voice sings clearly in her work and it brought joy and satisfaction to create with her the kind of art that is timely, empowering, and needed more than ever. Our students and faculty were able to access the “urtext” of this creation, learning directly from the creative team about interpretation, style, musical gesture, and a host of other opportunities. Students (some who also live on the autistic spectrum) found Scurria’s research and inspiring attitude to be very illuminating and helpful.
The most important (and intangible) aspect of this project was the positive and inspiring energy that Scurria and Corriher and son Finch brought to our table. The creation of major productions such as A.L.I.C.E. takes an incredible amount of inspired, hard work. This inspired work, commitment to sharing and playing together, along with their generous spirits will have a lasting, unifying, and positive impact on both students and faculty. I strongly believe that this grant has strongly “enhance(d) effectiveness in teaching and positively impact(ed) students and departmental or college curricula.” This verbiage is taken from the Dee Grant website and I am certain that my teaching was greatly enhanced indeed. From my perspective, Scurria and Corriher went beyond what I could only have imagined. They were featured in Professor Elizabeth Craft’s opera seminar class on April 10, 2024, and helped lead a fascinating conversation about A.L.I.C.E. In addition, Scurria met with students in Professor Jessica Rudman’s composition class the next day where she offered insights and inspiration for aspiring composers. She directly talked with players in the pit and made artistic suggestions that dramatically changed the aural experience. For example, she discussed comic affects with the trombone players by suggesting muting options. She also worked directly over the year with our harp instructor, Cathy Clayton. She generously took time to discuss the affects she was looking for from the harp and the student who played the part seemed genuinely moved that Amy would take the time to show interest. In real-time, she was also open to discussing tempi and a host of other musical issues directly with the Conductor, Robert Baldwin.
I was especially moved by Scurria and Corriher’s offer to spend another two hours with our team after we closed. We were able to converse with them via Zoom on a big screen and even invited suggestions as to how they could make A.L.I.C.E. a better show. In all my years, I have never experienced the kind of love that was generated between our students and these two fine creators. They also generously expressed how beneficial it was to the “life of the opera moving forward” and continually reminded all of us how much they gained from the process.
In essence, it was an extremely positive process in every way. I could go on and on about our experience with Amy Scurria and Zane Corriher, and feel deeply indebted to the Dee Foundation for making this wonderful event happen.