A good press release

Since I've been ragging publicists here, it's only fair to quote a really good press release that arrived via e-mail a week ago:

New York City Opera presents the world premiere of CHARLES WUORINEN's long-awaited opera

"HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES"

Based on the fantasy novel by SALMAN RUSHDIE

Libretto adapted by British poet JAMES FENTON

Directed by MARK LAMOS

World Premiere, New York City Opera

Performances October 31, November 3, 6, 9, and 11, 2004

On Halloween, New York City Opera mounts perhaps its most important commission to date: composer CHARLES WUORINEN’s "HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES," based on the 1990 novel by the elegant and controversial SALMAN RUSHDIE.

"Haroun and the Sea of Stories" was the first book Rushdie wrote during the tumult and violence of the fatwa, or death warrant (decreed in 1989 after his fourth novel "The Satanic Verses"). The book began as a bedtime story Rushdie told to his son, and has an effervescent style full of rhymes, humor, and wordplay. But despite its delightful and charming exterior, Haroun is a serious parable about free speech and a warning of the dangers of political repression.

In a feat of spare brilliance, British poet JAMES FENTON created the libretto for "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." Fenton's libretto stays very close to the spirit of Rushdie’s original novel, conjuring up a fantasy world in which one never entirely loses sight of harsh political reality and the great issues of freedom of expression and imagination. The libretto was published last year by Faber and Faber in a book entitled "The Love Bomb."

This unusual cross-section of artists (Wuorinen, Fenton, Rushdie) is serendipitous: unflagging in the face of criticism, they share uncompromising integrity in their work and personal lives; they are all towering intellects in their respective fields, and not only of sharp mind and aesthetic, but with similar (and rather wicked) senses of humor. "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" is sure to be around for some time.

City Opera’s new production is to be directed by the renowned theater and opera director Mark Lamos. Haroun will be conducted by City Opera’s music director George Manahan, with sets by Riccardo Hernandez, video projections by designer Peter Nigrini, costumes by Candice Donnelly, and choreography by Sean Curran.

[Here I've snipped a listing of the cast, which makes sense to include in the press release, but wouldn't make exciting reading here.]

THE PLOT:

The child Haroun lives in a city so sad its citizens have forgotten its name.

Their only source of joy is the cheerful storytelling of Haroun’s father, Rashid, "The Shah of Blah." The greatest of all storytellers, Rashid conjures up magical worlds and brings laughter to this sad city. Then, one terrible day, everything goes wrong. Haroun’s mother leaves home and his father runs out of stories to tell, haunted by his son’s question: "What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?" Haroun is determined to return the storyteller’s gift to his father, so he begins a fabulous quest across strange lands, flying on the back of the Hoopoe bird to The Ocean of Stories to find out what could possibly be wrong. In a series of brilliantly imagined adventures, and with the help of water genies, mechanical birds, and other curious creatures, Haroun defeats an evil despot and restores happiness to his family and the city, returning the free flow of speech for eternity.

In the words of Wuorinen:

"Part of Salman’s impetus for writing 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' was a promise to tell a story his 11-year-old son Zafar could understand. So the surface is very delightful, full of fantastical adventures and very entertaining and colorful. Then a little bit below that surface is the general idea of the little boy who feels it’s his fault when bad things happen to his parents—an all-too-common phenomenon. Salman took this problem and said, 'Why not arrange this so that the little boy actually saves his father?' Which of course is what happens in the book and the opera. And then behind all that is something I’ve said many times about the book and about Rushdie: he wrote this immediately after the infamous 'fatwa' was pronounced, and in that context, the novel is a cry against the suppression of the imagination and free speech. So it has a kind of underlying social or political message as well, which also attracted me. But what I found particularly admirable was that the tone of the book is uniformly light-hearted, even thought Rushdie was under mortal threat at the time he wrote it. There is no bitterness, there’s no self pity, there’s no hint of any of that. It’s not a polemic; it’s not preachy. And that spoke a kind of character, both in the book and in Rushdie himself, that I admired."

About Charles Wuorinen:

Native New Yorker Charles Wuorinen is one of the most distinguished, active, and prolific composers on the scene, one who has never caved from his own personal vision. A self-proclaimed "Maximalist," his music has drawn interest from all quarters, not uptown, not downtown, but a healthy mix of everything.

His more than 200 compositions span all types of music, from chamber to orchestral to songs to operas to concertos to ballets.

His awards and accomplishments—among them the Pulitzer Prize (he holds the distinction of being the youngest ever to win the prize, for his 1970 electronic composition "Time’s Encomium") and the MacArthur "Genius grant"—are too numerous to list. His works have been recorded on a number of labels, and of serious variety, from Nonesuch to Koch to downtown composer John Zorn’s Tzadik label, and his pieces have been performed by a number of illustrious musicians.

He is not only a refined composer, but a formidable pianist and conductor as well, performing as soloist or conductor with many fine orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Wuorinen has taught at Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, SUNY Buffalo, and currently presides as professor of composition at Rutgers University. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.