{"id":1160,"date":"2017-09-25T20:38:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T00:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2017-10-09T16:40:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T20:40:04","slug":"higdon-on-cold-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/09\/higdon-on-cold-mountain.html","title":{"rendered":"Higdon on Cold Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Skype Session with Jennifer Higdon<\/p><\/div>\n

Opera lovers can be forgiven for imagining the works they love were born in a flash of inspiration.\u00a0 Sometimes the journey is a bit more arduous.<\/p>\n

The UNCSA Composition Department<\/strong><\/a> met with Jennifer Higdon via Skype on September 20th<\/sup>\u00a0to talk about her opera\u00a0Cold Mountain<\/em>.\u00a0 We got the two things we had hoped for: a rich and detailed rundown of the eleven-year process from conception to premiere, and a host of things to listen for when we attend the performance on October 1.<\/p>\n

When the idea of composing an opera was first proposed to her, Higdon was very candid with us about the fact that she had never been particularly interested in opera \u2013 she was approaching it as a novice.\u00a0 Ultimately, she decided to do it in part because, as she said, the idea terrified her, which meant it would be a worthwhile challenge. Once she committed to the idea, she made up for lost time, traveling around the world to attend major opera premieres, studying some of the great opera composers, getting a sense of what worked and what didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 Two of the things she committed to: keeping the action moving and putting a 2.5-hour limit on the whole composition.<\/p>\n

Early on she connected with librettist Gene Scheer, who had collaborated with Jake Heggie and Tobias Picker.\u00a0 They spent years considering possible opera topics.\u00a0 At one point, they dedicated about six months\u2019 work to an original story that was unfortunately rejected by a lead commissioning party \u2013 a heartbreaking detour on the long journey.\u00a0 Finally they settled on Charles Frazier\u2019s 1997 novel\u00a0Cold Mountain<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Getting the rights to use the novel was another long journey.\u00a0 The publishers were unresponsive.\u00a0 Higdon described using six degrees of separation to reach out to Frazier himself.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks to early 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century technology, she was able to track him down, and he gave his permission.\u00a0 After that, it was a matter of getting Miramax to agree, since they held the rights to theatrical productions when they made the 2003 film of the same name.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Composition students study the score of Cold Mountain<\/p><\/div>\n

Once the rights were secured, the all-consuming process of composing the music followed.\u00a0 Higdon created charts and graphs showing everything from character arcs to opportunities for double-casting roles in order to limit production costs.\u00a0 Creating a 2.5 hour musical composition was intimidating; to make it seem a bit more palatable she settled on working scene by scene, chronologically, which allowed her to monitor character development and break the work down into reasonable chunks.<\/p>\n

At some point in the process, she suddenly realized that the high school she attended in Tennessee was not all that far off from the western North Carolina location of much of the action, which gave her confidence in her ability to give voice to the characters.\u00a0 \u201cI realized I\u00a0know<\/u>\u00a0these people,\u201d she said, \u201cI went to school with them!\u201d<\/p>\n

Benjamin Britten was a model for her conception of vocal writing and orchestral support.\u00a0 As she completed the first act, she was able to get Curtis students to learn the roles and workshop various scenes, which she found enormously helpful.\u00a0 As time went on, she found herself overtaken by the characters and the music, feeling as though they were following her as she walked the streets of Philadelphia, half living in that very dark, despairing world.<\/p>\n

Once the music was completed, she learned a zillion things about stage production that she never would have guessed, probably more than she needed to know.\u00a0 There was a two-hour production meeting about blood; there were the quick costume changes made possible by the miracles of Velcro.<\/p>\n

All of these details were fascinating for us, especially the amount of research and preparation that went into her work.\u00a0 Jennifer answered students\u2019 questions directly and candidly; as anyone who knows her can tell you she has a wonderfully unaffected manner, a genuineness that is both appealing and disarming.\u00a0 I know the students came away from our session with a deeper appreciation for the craft and dedication this profession requires.\u00a0 And they certainly came away with a lot to listen for when they attend the October 1 performance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

photos by Roxanna Peykamian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opera lovers can be forgiven for imagining the works they love were born in a flash of inspiration.\u00a0 Sometimes the journey is a bit more arduous. The UNCSA Composition Department met with Jennifer Higdon via Skype on September 20th\u00a0to talk about her opera\u00a0Cold Mountain.\u00a0 We got the two things we had hoped for: a rich […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1168,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}