This week, VOX composer Sorrel Hays talks about her new opera, Our Giraffe, a historical fable about the first giraffe in Paris.    

 

 

At first, Zarafa did not sing.  I composed her story with other characters, mainly Ahmed (her keeper), telling us about her.  However, a second-person point of view is a terrible way to write a whole opera.  I am a transactional kind of person, and I wanted the opera's characters to interact -- and the audience to experience that interaction.  (Even though that interaction is, by design of our human state, always seen through human eyes, and heard through human ears.)

 

Charles Flowers [the work's librettist] wrote in Ahmed's first major aria about Prism Portals that we see the whole world through the prism of our perspectives: the scientist sees Zarafa through facts of weight, height, water consumption, and sleep habits; Minette sees Zarafa through her being also of the female sex and therefore bound by society's structures regarding women; the King sees Zarafa as perhaps the key or the answer to it all -- why we exist -- which, for a king such as Charles in post-revolutionary France, must have been a quixotic position with a need for primary answers.

 

"The Runaway Duo" came into being after Charles and I discussed the need for Minette to have more life in the opera, and for a bond to be established between the two prominent females -- human and giraffe.  And composer's impulse took over -- the giraffe began singing.  Who is to know that the giraffe does not sing in her head?  Maybe I am just making some of that singing audible?

 

How are you planning to stage a piece in which the main character is a giraffe?

 

 

The story could be told in many ways.  However, its whimsy, its passion, its sweet-though-sometimes-tragic search for the meaning of the universe through reason and science, could be told much more effectively through lyricism than through some of the acerbic and distancing qualities of electronic sound.  I have created a number of other dramatic pieces using electroacoustics -- collage, heavy mixes -- and many of them have incorporated the lyrical with the arcane and hi-tech.  This time around, I felt the libretto demanded tradition as the musical base, plus some extended vocal technique; use of the traditional allows for the possibility of parody and irony for certain scenes and characters, such as Dr. Monteur and the Mountebank.

 

Friends showered me and the librettist with books, photos, and sculptures of giraffes.  Charles Flowers found a memorial medallion from 1841 when King Charles died.  He found it in a little shop indowntown Troy, NY, and Charles knew who it was.  (My friends didn't, as King Charles was one of the lesser known and shorter-reigning kings of France.)  My favorite is a comical, ceramic giraffe painted with fruits.  That sculpture has helped me sustain the feeling of whimsy (when I inclined to the melancholy of Zarafa's predicament.)  One look at fruity giraffe and laughter came back.

 

My librettist is fond of saying, "First the words, then the music!"  In this case, he is right -- except for one scene, "Runaway Duo"-- because the story is what grabbed me -- the historical facts, plus Charles' undoubtedly romantic take on them.  Charles is a fabulous word spinner and was able to take the already engaging facts of Zarafa's journey to France in the 1820s, her bond with her keeper, her long life in Paris, and spin then a fable of love affairs, relationships, poignant consequences of political change in France, and its resonance in the lives of Zarafa and those around her.  First, I loved the giraffe, and then I loved the human characters he gave words to.  His rhyme schemes very often inspired me, so his words played a large role in how the music evolved in Our Giraffe.

 

With my last opera, The Bee Opera, I began with the music, the hums and buzzes and imaginary language of honey bees that I conjured out of my experiences as a beekeeper.  I also experimented with electronically enhanced, recorded hive sounds.  The Bee Opera is a comic opera, so I was able to incorporate imaginary language easily without upsetting the dramatic balance.  With Our Giraffe, I had to be careful not to step on the delicate toes of a romantic drama, which has tragic aspects.  In "Runaway Duo," when I finally decided to let 'er rip with Zarafa singing, I drew upon the experiences with my invented bee language (which soprano Beth Griffith -- Countersue Bee -- helped me refine) and I thought of music first, language second.  As a consequence, "Runaway Duo" is a standout piece of extended vocal technique, in juxtaposition to and with the ariatic Minette.  Zarafa has to sing/hum with mouth closed into the upper register, not an easy thing to do.  It gives a flavor and difference to the vocal music at a crucial point in the opera.  Minette and Zarafa, each in her own musical language, achieve a rapport which flavors the remainder of the opera.  Symbolic perhaps of the rapport we come to have with animals of all kinds when we pay close attention to them and listen.

 

Yes, although not primarily.  As with any clash of societal norms and different cultures, (Catholicism vs. Islam, aristocracy and middle class vs. tribal peoples, science vs. the "natural," patriarchy vs. equality of sexes,) a political message will be present and is present in Our Giraffe.   For me, the more interesting take on politics here are the "politics" of the human race and the natural world.  Do we have the right to consider that we know best, or assume power over all the natural world of animals and plants?  The fact is, we do have the power to a certain extent -- but the consequences are so often other than what we can foresee, and so often we do not even try to foresee them.  BAD mistake.

 

Presently (this March) I am in a mountain house in the deep Georgia woods.  Across the lake from me is a high hill covered with trees.  This morning, I watched the trees fall like match sticks, as monster machines plowed them over or sliced through their lower trunks, thinning them for harvest, for chips to send to China.  It is a "managed" forest, harvested about every twelve to fifteen years.  Monoculture in forests has made the pine beetles very happy, and other pests that thrive when only one kind of tree is planted.

 

This February, filming in the Giraffe House at the Bronx Zoo, I watched the 5 giraffes munch hay and ogle us, and occasionally wander twenty feet -- ambling -- as running in the enclosure was not possible.  Too cold to go outside.  What would they have been doing on the African plain?  Munching acacia leaves, ambling, ogling whatever, escaping from lions -- but also racing like mad occasionally across the vast distances...  What do they think, these Bronx giraffes?  I do not know. Like Dr. Monteur, someday we may know; we have many facts at our disposal already but there will be more!

 

 

Hearing a new singer interpret my music is always a revelation, particularly when it is a brand new opera.  Each performing artist brings her and his own special take and imprint and style to a character and the vocal lines.  I always learn something from a good interpreter.  The VOX experience will give me new insights -- show where I might tweak the timings, or where I should allow more breathing for the dramatic or vocal developments, or how I should alter the orchestrations, perhaps...  Plus, I get the very real pleasure of hearing a fine orchestra and a fine group of singers present my music to a discerning opera audience -- New Yorkers.  I like to see how listeners and viewers react to my music.  Undoubtedly, Zarafa will cast her gentle dark eyes of curiosity our way and enjoy us enjoying her story.