Love in the Age of Wings and other operas
Operas are known by their composers, famous arias they contain, and well loved singers who’ve starred in them. Librettists are for the most part ignored, because audiences, concentrating on voices and, if moderately sophisticated, the action, hardly wonder whose ideas underlie what they see and hear. But they are there, the Da Pontes and Boitos who gave The Marriage of Figaro to Mozart and Falstaff to Verdi. The famous situations of Europe’s operatic tradition had to be created before music could be found for them. This collection of eighteen librettos sets out to create a new and different tradition, suitable for a populist, indeed revisionist age, able to see the great tradition in an altered way, and then to turn it into something else. Love in the Age of Wings, which gives the collection its title, was written first, and after that came all the others …
Written by Chester Eagle
Various other acknowledgements given in the Introduction
Designed by Vane Lindesay
Layout by Chris Giacomi
First published 2003 by Trojan Press
Printed 187 copies
Circa 77,000 words
Electronic publication by Trojan Press (2006)
Introduction:
Credit where it’s due! The project made public by this book began in November 200, when I was invited by mezzo-soprano Dimity Shepherd to a private performance of scenes from a work in which she was singing: Love in the Age of Therapy, a new Australian opera with libretto by Joanna Murray Smith and music by Paul Grabowski. I was delighted by what I saw and heard. I had been bowled over at the age of eighteen by Mozart’s Don Giovanni and had loved opera ever since. Love in the Age of Therapy moved me forward a stage in my thinking. Over many years I had looked to operas to give me artistic joy and historical insight: opera spoke with the voice of a Europe which had given my country much of its cultural character. It had not occurred to me that opera might be as contemporary, cutting and pertinent as a cartoon in the morning paper. Love in the Age of Therapy was up to the minute, funny, and highly enjoyable. I came home from the performance, sat down with a glass of red, and started drawing boxes to indicate the relationship of scenes. I would write an opera myself.
The project was put aside while I finished another book, but I returned to it some weeks later, picking up where my box-diagram had left off. There had been ten boxes; there would be ten scenes. Love in the Age of Wings was underway. Drama depends on opposition and the opera I had begun revealed itself as being about two modes of speech and the people who use them – or can’t avoid them: polly-speak, or the rhetoric of public persuasion, and poetry. The writer’s preference is made clear when poetry triumphs, even if power in the world is lost. ‘Twas ever thus!
I wrote two more librettos (they can be found with Love in the Age of Wings in the section called ‘Free flying operas’) before I felt a change of direction, or perhaps it was a development of thinking. Opera as I had known it was staged in theatres, some of them, as I had seen in Europe, lavishly appointed. Opera was social, and this had meanings which transferred only imperfectly to my country where, for one reason or another, much that is popular is done outdoors. Why not develop an opera which was as natural in presentation as a sporting event, as simply staged as a cycling race or a scratch match between hastily gathered teams? Why not, indeed? I set about writing short pieces for musical presentation which related to the types of events at which, I felt, people might feel a call for music to articulate what underlay the reasons why they had gathered. Birthdays, reunions, funerals, weddings, back-to celebrations, corporate or public announcements … the list was almost endless. (Some pieces written for events of this sort can be found in the section called ‘Operas on occasion’.)
Then another change of direction announced itself. I felt I should clarify, and articulate, why I was doing what I was doing. Why was I not content to attend, and listen to recordings of, the operas I’d loved for years? I decided that the historical aspect of my enjoyment – that is, the rediscovery of periods and composers past – had become too important in my listening. I also felt that around the world, but particularly in Australia, where opera, like religion, has always been an ‘introduced’ mode of thinking (as opposed to an absolutely home-grown, and thoroughly popular, activity) opera, as a species, was dying. Old and once-loved operas were being forgotten, or, if staged, were proving too creaky for the modern mind. New operas were having difficulty getting to the stage. Opera as it had come down to us had become too costly to take from conception to production. It was in a financial as well as an artistic trap. It had to become, I felt, cheaper, more spontaneous, more popular, quicker to hatch and quicker to mature. None of this was new in my thinking, but what was new was the wish to show how the modern mind could no longer imbibe many of the great and famous repertoire pieces in the ways intended by those who’d written them. This, I told myself, is something that has to be shown. People must be made aware of the difficulties of aligning modern thought with the emotional reactions called forth by the works we know so well. And so the pieces in ‘Operas on operas’ came into being.
Last written in this collection was The maze. It is included here as an ‘Opera on occasion’, though it could as easily, I think, be presented as a ‘Free-flying opera’. I think it would stage well if given apart from a personal occasion, but it was conceived as a wedding opera, and that leads me to make one more statement about the intention of the works presented here.
I made a comparison, above, between opera and religion as ‘introduced’ modes of thinking. I think the comparison harms neither music nor religion, since they both cover a zone reaching from the secular and social to the sacred. Just as religion ranges from dealing with charity, justice and good works to the spiritual aspirations of a people, so too does opera range from entertainment, display and the disbursement of tunes and situations to a penetration of the innermost feelings, intuitions and awarenesses of people at their most percipient.
The librettos presented in this book attempt to span this whole range from secular to spiritual, but they certainly don’t avoid areas of ritualised public behaviour such as births (or baptisms, in Christian usage), funerals and marriages. Music can celebrate the marking points of a life better than anything else, and it is my hope that people will turn again to music for the great occasions of their lives if and when they become aware that ritualised performances agreeable to the ways we think these days are available to them. It is in this spirit that these librettos are offered.
The writing of this book:
Credit where it’s due! The project made public by this book began in November 200, when I was invited by mezzo-soprano Dimity Shepherd to a private performance of scenes from a work in which she was singing: Love in the Age of Therapy, a new Australian opera with libretto by Joanna Murray Smith and music by Paul Grabowski. I was delighted by what I saw and heard. I had been bowled over at the age of eighteen by Mozart’s Don Giovanni and had loved opera ever since. Love in the Age of Therapy moved me forward a stage in my thinking. Over many years I had looked to operas to give me artistic joy and historical insight: opera spoke with the voice of a Europe which had given my country much of its cultural character. It had not occurred to me that opera might be as contemporary, cutting and pertinent as a cartoon in the morning paper. Love in the Age of Therapy was up to the minute, funny, and highly enjoyable. I came home from the performance, sat down with a glass of red, and started drawing boxes to indicate the relationship of scenes. I would write an opera myself.
The project was put aside while I finished another book, but I returned to it some weeks later, picking up where my box-diagram had left off. There had been ten boxes; there would be ten scenes. Love in the Age of Wings was underway. Drama depends on opposition and the opera I had begun revealed itself as being about two modes of speech and the people who use them – or can’t avoid them: polly-speak, or the rhetoric of public persuasion, and poetry. The writer’s preference is made clear when poetry triumphs, even if power in the world is lost. ‘Twas ever thus!
I wrote two more librettos (they can be found with Love in the Age of Wings in the section called ‘Free flying operas’) before I felt a change of direction, or perhaps it was a development of thinking. Opera as I had known it was staged in theatres, some of them, as I had seen in Europe, lavishly appointed. Opera was social, and this had meanings which transferred only imperfectly to my country where, for one reason or another, much that is popular is done outdoors. Why not develop an opera which was as natural in presentation as a sporting event, as simply staged as a cycling race or a scratch match between hastily gathered teams? Why not, indeed? I set about writing short pieces for musical presentation which related to the types of events at which, I felt, people might feel a call for music to articulate what underlay the reasons why they had gathered. Birthdays, reunions, funerals, weddings, back-to celebrations, corporate or public announcements … the list was almost endless. (Some pieces written for events of this sort can be found in the section called ‘Operas on occasion’.)
Then another change of direction announced itself. I felt I should clarify, and articulate, why I was doing what I was doing. Why was I not content to attend, and listen to recordings of, the operas I’d loved for years? I decided that the historical aspect of my enjoyment – that is, the rediscovery of periods and composers past – had become too important in my listening. I also felt that around the world, but particularly in Australia, where opera, like religion, has always been an ‘introduced’ mode of thinking (as opposed to an absolutely home-grown, and thoroughly popular, activity) opera, as a species, was dying. Old and once-loved operas were being forgotten, or, if staged, were proving too creaky for the modern mind. New operas were having difficulty getting to the stage. Opera as it had come down to us had become too costly to take from conception to production. It was in a financial as well as an artistic trap. It had to become, I felt, cheaper, more spontaneous, more popular, quicker to hatch and quicker to mature. None of this was new in my thinking, but what was new was the wish to show how the modern mind could no longer imbibe many of the great and famous repertoire pieces in the ways intended by those who’d written them. This, I told myself, is something that has to be shown. People must be made aware of the difficulties of aligning modern thought with the emotional reactions called forth by the works we know so well. And so the pieces in ‘Operas on operas’ came into being.
Last written in this collection was The maze. It is included here as an ‘Opera on occasion’, though it could as easily, I think, be presented as a ‘Free-flying opera’. I think it would stage well if given apart from a personal occasion, but it was conceived as a wedding opera, and that leads me to make one more statement about the intention of the works presented here.
I made a comparison, above, between opera and religion as ‘introduced’ modes of thinking. I think the comparison harms neither music nor religion, since they both cover a zone reaching from the secular and social to the sacred. Just as religion ranges from dealing with charity, justice and good works to the spiritual aspirations of a people, so too does opera range from entertainment, display and the disbursement of tunes and situations to a penetration of the innermost feelings, intuitions and awarenesses of people at their most percipient.
The librettos presented in this book attempt to span this whole range from secular to spiritual, but they certainly don’t avoid areas of ritualised public behaviour such as births (or baptisms, in Christian usage), funerals and marriages. Music can celebrate the marking points of a life better than anything else, and it is my hope that people will turn again to music for the great occasions of their lives if and when they become aware that ritualised performances agreeable to the ways we think these days are available to them. It is in this spirit that these librettos are offered.
