This week, composer Justine F. Chen talks about her previous work, The Maiden Tower, which premiered with VOX in 2006, and her latest piece, Jeanne.

 

 

Justine F. Chen:  I'm a New Yorker, born and bred.  I grew up steeped in the classical culture of the city -- starting from a young age, my mother brought me on many trips to the opera, ballet, and symphony concerts as well as smaller recitals.  My older sister started piano when I was born, and she began composition when I was about 3, so when I started composing, it wasn't any sort of romantic epiphany, I took it to be one of those skills you acquire because you imagine everyone does it -- like walking or talking.

 

"Fractured retelling" -- I've always been fascinated with structure in music and in story-telling.  Many of my favorite movies are told in a more musical or abstract fashion.  The structure of Jeanne revolves around scenes of Joan in prison, doing what I imagine was most natural to her, confessing, or communing with God.  In these scenes, we discover why she is imprisoned, and learn of the people with whom she came into contact and their relationship to her on a personal and historical level.  [For you movie buffs, you may notice a striking similarity to Amenabar's Abre los ojos.]  In addition, each of those prison scenes introduces the next scene by revealing a new character and their context in relation to Joan.

 

In my research for the opera, I was most intrigued with the transcripts from her trials, especially testimonies from people who came into direct contact with her.  Much of the information of the opera's testimony scenes was taken from actual transcripts.  We hear an anecdote from her adolescence, we learn about her relationship with her fellow soldiers, and we get testimony from an eyewitness to her final confession and death.  I wanted to relieve the audience of the heaviness from these prison scenes, so my solution was to achieve a balance with more objective, lighter interludes.

 

I got many questions about how I was going to present her story.  For awhile, I wanted to abstract the story and leave her and religion out of it.  I was encouraged to keep the story intact.  My solution was to write the story, and decide later if I wanted to keep Joan in it or not.  I've become quite wary of artistic works based on historical figures or events... I didn’t want to ride on the popularity of her name or her story... I wanted it to function in its own self-contained universe.

 

In this opera, we see the rise and fall of someone who had one incredible and coveted talent -- an innate fluency with her religion.  We meet the people who adored her, the people who hated her, and the people who used her for their own purposes, for career-building or gaining power, etc.  The story is also kind of a murder mystery... we all know she winds up at the stake, but don't all necessarily know how she got there.

 

 

Justine F. Chen:  Wow, I feel like I've learned so much from opera to opera.  This is just my second -- and I thought I had a pretty good handle on my first one -- but I definitely took a lot more chances in this one that I'd never considered for my first.  For instance, I wonder if I would have even explored this fractured storyline had I not seen the experimentation explored in other VOX operas.

 

When I went to my first VOX in 2006, I was so impressed with the variety of styles and thoughts about opera, drama, and the music/text relationship.  I saw interesting creations with different strengths, and a lot of new ideas, techniques and choices that inspired me.

 

As far as my own progress, the main criticism I had for myself for my first opera (when I saw it performed at VOX 2006) was that I thought it could use more singing -- that is, more complex vocal lines. Maiden Tower did not show off the vocal abilities of singers, it was almost more like a play.  Of course, one of my biggest pet peeves is bad prosody and unintelligible text, and a confusing story line, so those were my greatest concerns for Maiden Tower.  All that aside, I guess when I wrote the libretto for Jeanne, I sought to create a format in which I could easily explore the vocal capabilities of my singers in their roles -- hence the fractured structure.

 

I discovered that I have very strong ideas about what opera should do, how it functions, and what it is.  Seeing all these other highly successful experiments and observing my own trials has helped me solidify my own concept of opera.

 

 

Justine F. Chen:  That’s a long story.  I had never thought to write my own libretto before I wrote one for my first opera -- something I had only done out of sheer necessity (because of the time crunch, and the wish not to alienate more friends by firing them as librettists).

 

I actually love collaboration.  I've worked a lot with directors and choreographers before -- I love the stimulation and cross-pollenation of ideas, when there is more than one creative mind at work, so the two of us become parents of brand new ideas.

 

But the more I discussed opera, and in collaborating with writers, the more I realized that I already had a strong concept of how the libretto should be, how it should function -- the language, the density of the plot, how events would unfold, etc. -- I also knew about another important element in the entirety of the opera: what was possible or could be conveyed with the music.

 

I don't know.  I'm still open to working with a librettist. I don't think I'm a particularly good writer, and because I don't have any training, it takes a mighty long time for me to write! I'm still looking for the right person, I guess.