National Sawdust and The Met Opera presented \u201cOpera Evolved: Genre Fluidity\u201d on Thursday, February 22nd, 2024. This was the second installment of this three-part series that, according to the program, celebrates artistic convergence by investigating the intersection of innovation and tradition at National Sawdust. The evening included composer and co-founder of National Sawdust, Paola Prestini, and theater and opera director Lilena Blain-Cruz. The moderator for this evening was Managing Director of National Sawdust, Ana De Archuleta.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou will hear about AI tonight, but I wanted to start with the idea of opera being bigger than all of us,\u201d said De Archuleta. The series highlighted how important it is that we keep the discussion going about opera to better understand how it\u2019s evolving; transforming the composition and development process as a whole, and informing us more about the needs of humanity within its new forms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lileana Blain-Cruz<\/span><\/a>, Director of \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera, joined De Archuleta to talk more about these ideas and introduced bass-baritone <\/span>Dav\u00f3ne Tines<\/span><\/a>, who will be performing the roles of Joseph and Herod in \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o<\/a>\u201d at the Met which opens Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024. The two excerpts sung by Tines on this night were from \u201cSe habla de Gabriel\u201d and \u201cShake the Heavens.\u201d Tines\u2019s voice was thrilling to hear in National Sawdust\u2019s well-known acoustic space. His rich timbre enveloped listeners in an atmosphere full of nuance and revelation. The excerpts brought to the surface what makes John Adams\u2019s composition feel fresh and alive, reckoning percussive moments that generate interest well-beyond opera as a single art form. \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d encapsulates humanity as a whole, and the complexities that lay at the belly of humanity. This will be a real treat to experience live at the Met, especially with Lileana Blain-Cruz as director.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Paola Prestini also presented her new opera, \u201cSensorium Ex<\/a>,\u201d and discussed how her team of collaborators are creating a new language using AI while also staying true to the human voice and the human process when working as a disabled person. Prestini\u2019s co-director and choreographer of \u201cSensorium Ex<\/a>,\u201d Jerron Herman, was also present in this conversation and the audience had the pleasure of hearing mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy sing the excerpt \u201cBirdsong\u201d from this new work. Thomas Ellenson was also scheduled to perform, but unfortunately could not make it due to illness. McAvoy<\/a> is “<\/span>a performer with the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, McAvoy is committed to amplifying the discussion around disability in the arts in order to make the performing arts more inclusive for all.” Her voice speaks directly to the heart when she sings and speaks about how her activism within the arts and her own lived experience. McAvoy is paving the way for more singers to come forward and sing, encouraging everyone to engage with her in the process of discovering one’s own voice in their own way.<\/span><\/p>\n For this article, OperaWire has transcribed the panel of this series<\/a> for readers to follow along with the developments of both operas, \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d and \u201cSensorium Ex.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ana De Archuleta: We are talking about genre fluidity and how the walls of opera expand as we continue to grow and evolve into the world of opera. How has your background in jazz and gospel influenced the way you sing the repertoire you choose?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Dav\u00f3ne Tines: My earliest music making was in the church. I grew up in rural northern Virginia about an hour southwest of Washington, D.C. and everyone in my family had to sing in choir whether you wanted to or not. But, what that showed me is that all music making was for a reason. Music making in the liturgical setting always has a purpose. You are singing for very outlined parts of a ritual and I think I was indoctrinated in this area and carried it forward when I went into classical music. I played when I was little, and violin. When I played violin, I was really obsessed with staring at the audience and seeing how certain things affected people, trying to tie together \u201cwhat is the purpose of music\u201d and \u201chow does music affect people?\u201d I wanted to find a musical truth, meaning bringing all my parts together: growing up in the black baptist church, but also singing Renaissance polyphony in undergrad and having different experimentations. I\u2019m also working on a project with Gerry Eastman at the Williamsburg Music Center, and that\u2019s a whole other exploration of Free Jazz. But, I can\u2019t sing anything without bringing all these parts together.<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: When you sing different genres, do you sing them differently? Technically what is the difference?<\/b><\/p>\n DT: First, I want to talk about John Adams and rhythm. He loves rhythm and \u201cShake the Heavens\u201d is a bop. It\u2019s driving big rhythm. I\u2019ve sung a number of pieces by John and one of them was premiering a work, \u201c<\/span>Girls of the Golden West<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Julia Bullock and I visited John when he was making that music and he played the miner\u2019s chorus while he was dancing in his studio. And I was like, oh ok I can get with this! Because if he is that excited about the music he\u2019s making then we can join that too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In terms of going between different genres, my musical journey in technique for the past ten to fifteen years has been about finding my core vocal production. What is the healthiest way I can support what I\u2019m doing? And the blessing of this is once you\u2019ve found your core and how to maintain it, you can tilt it in different directions by changing resonators, changing how you deal with text a little bit. But, it all comes from the same mechanisms so these things are not far apart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I also want to talk with the director of the Met\u2019s \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o,\u201d Lileana Blain-Cruz. She is currently the resident director of Lincoln Center Theatre, a Tony Award nominee for \u201cThe Skin of Our Teeth,\u201d a recipient of the Drama League\u2019s 2022 Founders Award for Excellence and Directing, and named a Doris Duke Artist in 2021. We are really excited to have her here and one of the things I wanted to ask you about is your artistic journey. You have worked a lot in theater, what was your entry point into opera?<\/b><\/p>\n Lileana Blain-Cruz: I think with opera, you know my parents are here tonight, they took me a lot to see opera as a child growing up in New York. I remember us running through the rain and my dad got us really good seats, and we were running down the aisle and I watched the Met Opera\u2019s chandeliers rise up and I was like \u201cwhat is this place?!\u201d The curtain came up and I saw the most massive enormous universe happening on stage and I was always amazed by this core memory about opera for me. It always amazes me how opera can transport us. Since this childhood memory was about a magical place that I visited, I never knew that I would end up working in the Met. But, I think the game changer for me was as an English major when I fell in love with writers like Ntozake Shange who wrote \u201cFor Colored Girls\u201d and others who were already interested in shifting the form of opera. I gravitate towards artists and writers who are pushing the boundaries of why we are alive right here in this particular moment and how we wrestle with this particular moment in many different ways. Ultimately, opera feels the most alive. The amount of live collaboration that happens simultaneously, the scale of like 65 people singing in a chorus, we take that for granted sometimes. But, that is crazy! And rhythm, to have a hundred people actively living and present with each other, giving a thousand other people life, that for me is my entry into theater and has been my happy new entry into opera.<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I love how when we talked last week you said that \u201copera is epic\u201d and how it also has a different tempi than theater and I think that is an important factor. How do you balance this?<\/b><\/p>\n LBC: I think every piece has its own unique rhythm but when I\u2019m working on plays, the rhythm is dictated in some ways by the language in the play. As a director I think you have a little bit more liberty to figure out that time scale over the course of the event itself. With opera it\u2019s like, it starts at eight o\u2019clock and it\u2019s going to end exactly by the time the amount of music ends. That container is an interesting paradigm or boundary for a director to work with and how to follow what is inherently in the piece and how to find the infinities inside of that. I think the way that I work as a director with this is through image, landscape and how people move throughout space, how the characters are in relationship to each other and build the relationships between the people that are coming through. So, in some ways, the work that you do in theater, which for me is very much related to character and story and humanity, you find new relationships within the boundaries of music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: Let\u2019s talk about \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o.\u201d How did this come about?<\/b><\/p>\n LBC: Yessss. I feel very lucky, I was doing \u201c<\/span>The Skin of Our Teeth<\/span><\/a>\u201d on Broadway and I had been working with Missy Mazzoli on her new opera, \u201c<\/span>The Listeners<\/span><\/a>\u201d and she had another new opera coming up and she got Peter Gelb to come see the show. I asked him to let me work in the Met a little sooner, and he asked me what I had in mind and I told him \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o.\u201d I told him this opera needs to happen now. The world is crazy, the world is insane, and we need something that speaks to the enormity of that and yet also gives us some hope. And he thought this idea was interesting, and somehow I managed to get into the 2023-2024 season. I have been looking for pieces that speak to the massive seismic shifts we\u2019ve been experiencing as a culture, as a world. I think \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d has that scope to it. John Adams wrote it for the millennium, for the year 2000 and I think in sight of that he was interested in embracing both the violence and the beauty of birth itself. I think finding specifically the entry point through Mary, both him and Peter Sellars honor the Mary part of it as the mothering life giving force, and has put her against the most insane obstacles and I think about where we are right now and where we are with our future. I like how these questions are met with complexity. The nativity story is one of infinite future and also apocryphal text. I think it\u2019s a wonderful combination of hope and awareness. Let\u2019s take care of each other, let\u2019s also see each, let\u2019s be alive and present with each other in this miraculous moment that is life.<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I can\u2019t wait to see it. What will it look like once the curtain opens?<\/b><\/p>\n LBC: We are going to see a lot of color on stage. I essentially was interested in the Mary\u2019s migrating by land and by sea, seeking refuge. They go through storms, they go through emotional storms and spiritual storms. \u201cEl Ni\u00f1o\u201d is a weather system as well as the name of a little boy. It embodies both a human story and a world story. The chorus, the earth, is part of that landscape as a witness and this felt like a major character for me to represent on stage. In terms of the \u201cepic,\u201d this opera manages to elongate Mary\u2019s experience of saying yes to this enormous ask. We continue to follow Mary\u2019s story even after she\u2019s given birth because there\u2019s more to do to keep this child alive. Then we enter into the next phase of migration which is maybe to the other or the other world, but you\u2019re not safe yet. And then you enter into a universe contaminated by Herod who later decides to kill all the children because they threaten his power. And this is the second act that contains that complicated energy inside of it. So, in the way that we had this beautiful natural world full of color in the second act, we have the dangers of that world, the storms of that world. Remember here in New York when those orange clouds came into the sky? We were all like, what is happening? We were taking photos and living inside of those photos because it didn\u2019t feel real, and yet it was. This opera is honoring that surreal landscape that is epic and also right now. The palm tree is the final image, and John Adams brilliantly ends the opera with children\u2019s voices. This is not only the story of one child, it is a whole chorus of children presenting themselves like \u201chere we are, what do we do next?\u201d And I think that\u2019s a brilliant way of ending an opera softly that\u2019s so radical!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: The next portion of this evening will feature composer Paola Prestini\u2019s new opera \u201cSensorium Ex<\/a>.\u201d I want to welcome Paola who is the co-founder and artistic director of National Sawdust, and the co-founder of <\/b>VisionIntoArt<\/b><\/a>, a non-profit music and interdisciplinary arts production company in NYC. I also want to welcome Jerron Herman who is the choreographer for \u201cSensorium Ex,\u201d and has premiered works at Danspace Project, Performance Space NY and The Whitney Museum.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cSensorium Ex\u201d is a very important work being developed that will open in 2025 in Omaha. I want to know more about this opera and begin by asking you both, what is \u201cSensorium Ex?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Paola Prestini: \u201cSensorium Ex\u201d is an opera. It\u2019s also a platform for discovery and inclusivity in opera, a codex for how to involve disability in opera in a fluid way. It\u2019s also a work of AI as a community impact project that\u2019s been developing for over seven years. It has found its home and will be premiering at the Common Senses Festival<\/a> in Omaha, May 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I think what fascinates me most about \u201cSensorium Ex\u201d is the immense amount of collaboration that is involved and has made this journey of seven years. What can you tell me about the birth of this idea?<\/b><\/p>\n PP: I was commissioned by an opera company who asked me to do a piece about disability that at that point didn\u2019t involve anyone with lived experience. I let them know that I could find collaborators that would be able to best tell the story. Brenda and I had been wanting to do a piece together. If you don\u2019t know Brenda Shaughnessy<\/a> yet, you can read about her work in The New Yorker<\/a>. She wrote this extraordinary piece called \u201cOur Andromeda\u201d which chronicles a baby\u2019s injury at birth, mixing the love and grief with cosmic forces that envelop that experience. \u201cSensorium Ex\u201d is a brilliant tale about a mother\u2019s love and a tale about science, technology and the world\u2019s that we live in. This is ultimately a story about voice and what it means to have voice and to listen. What happens when we listen to each other and understand what empathy can do to really connect us? This opera is also receiving generous support from the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Beth Morrison Projects, VisionIntoArt, Alphadyne Foundation, Nordisk Kulturfond, and here at National Sawdust in collaboration with the Met Opera. <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I want to ask the co-director and choreographer of \u201cSensorium Ex,\u201d Jerron Herman, about his entry point into opera. Is this your first work in opera? Tell us about your journey.<\/b><\/p>\n Jerron Herman: I am so grateful to be here. To think that we\u2019ve been asking for authentic representation for a while, and for others to impact and architect these types of spaces without prompt is incredible. I was on my way to Marfa, TX when I received an email from Paola and Brenda. They asked me if I would be interested in thinking about this piece, \u201cSensorium Ex.\u201d They actually didn\u2019t know this but I had a dream about working with opera. I thought I would be a supernumerary, and just cross the floor with the other 500. But, even before that I had seen \u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d with my aunt at San Francisco Opera. I wore a tuxedo and it was the first time I experienced opera. Since moving here to NYC, it\u2019s almost like an osmosis with opera, where you feel everything has been an epic or can be an epic. It\u2019s like everything was an opera, but when I first started working on this piece and read a libretto for the first time, it scared me. It was striking to think about this real story and it doesn\u2019t pull any punches about the lived in world of a multiply felt family. The felt environment where the characters were so lived in and especially Brenda\u2019s poetry. Her poetry allows life to be 700 years in the future and 500 years in the past. There is this resonance in \u201cSensorium Ex” that circulates and I knew I wanted to be part of it. I am primarily a soloist dancer in the contemporary world where we don\u2019t show face and we a lot of times are very stern. Opera invites me to be emotive and expressive and I love what Dav\u00f3ne Tines said earlier about the church because pentecostalism and the ecstatic has always resonated with me too. I feel I get to do that here and I am really excited.<\/span><\/p>\n ADA: I want us to talk more about how \u201cSensorium Ex\u201d is so different from any other opera\u2019s process. This opera is built throughout its process from a story and the needs from everyone on the team.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n