Whether or not Mark Adamo was born to write opera he has been extraordinarily successful at it. Little Women, his debut has been given dozens of productions all over America. Lysistrata, his second, is as extroverted as Little Women is private, and recently triumphed again at Fort Worth Opera. San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley has so much confidence in this composer, because he commissioned both those works. Adamo takes time with lyrical moments, and he is a superb librettist. The reasons for this became clear as he talked to SFCV about his most recent operatic creation.
Personal History: How I Became a Composer
Adamo set out to be a playwright and a Broadway lyricist, but then music happened. Here’s that story from his boyhood through to the commissioning of Little Women (1998, Houston Grand Opera), his hugely successful first opera.
How I Became a Composer on YouTube
Why Mary Magdalene?
As Adamo says, he was expecting David Gockley to file the subject of this opera under “Hell – Snowball In”, but Gockley was intrigued and ended backing the project to the hilt. (The score is dedicated to him for that reason.) Here Adamo explains why he wanted to write this opera.
Why Mary Magdalene? on YouTube
Confronting Tradition
From the “Gnostic” gospels, Adamo has drawn out a character arc (in dramatists’ speak,) for Jesus, a psychological motivation that plays a role in the development of his philosophy, which is strongly influenced by his relationship with Mary Magdalene. That the drama is backed by texts contemporary with the canonical gospels, and not just his imagination, gives Adamo the freedom to confront tradition and “continue the conversation.” Conventional wisdom says that this opera will be controversial but Adamo begs to differ.
Confronting Tradition on YouTube
The Song of Songs and Making Mary Magdalene Sing
In finding the right words and musical gestures to tell this story, Adamo was drawn to a translation of the Old Testament Song of Songs by Ariel and Chana Bloch. This is not surprising in that Song of Songs is one of the most often set texts in classical music. But in the translation’s directness and avoidance of cliché, Adamo found the contemporaneity of his story but also the exaltation of language that is poetry’s reason to exist.
The Song of Songs and Making Mary Magdalene Sing on YouTube
On Writing a Grand Opera
Opera in America is very healthy, but there aren’t a great number of new large-scale works for the big opera houses, partly because they’re expensive and it’s hard to achieve second productions of those works. Here are Adamo’s thoughts on what we want (or should want) from grand opera.
On Writing a Grand Opera on YouTube