One Ounce Opera is thrilled to announce the American premiere of Door, and the unique opportunity to be directed by its librettist, dramaturg Daniel Solon. Door was first produced by Guildhall School of Music and Drama in association with the Royal Opera House in London. This powerful short opera takes us on a gripping journey through claustrophobia, relationship breakdown, depression and escapism. The cast – Robert LeBas, Julie Silva, Julie Fiore, and Dalton Flake – had these questions for Rhiannon Randle, composer:
1. What inspired the rhythmic and the percussive focus of the piece?
The rhythm that drives the opera right from its opening bars is the incessant ‘knocking on the door’ that Andy hears inside his head. The rhythm is a visceral, musical expression of Andy’s paranoia about his front door: the door through which Laura came into his life, the one through which she left him, and pivotally, Andy’s only remaining portal to the outside world; the source of his greatest fear, but also, ultimately, his greatest motivation. The rhythm came about as a wonderful accident, where Daniel and I had been discussing our mutual interest in the use of bells for religious ritual, and that we wanted to find a way to tie this into our opera on depression and claustrophobia. A YouTube video surfaced of a Romanian priest playing a toace, a kind of wooden bell made of a suspended wooden plank. The hammering, driving rhythms of the toace were so mesmerizing, I developed a toace-style rhythm which became one of my key musical materials from which the Prologue, and many other moments of dramatic intensity, were developed. Whenever Andy focuses on the door – or any action occurs surrounding the door, Laura, or his fears, that same driving rhythm returns. It also underpins the development of Mary’s aria in the first scene, her frenetic attempts to sort out Andy’s life, and the accompaniment for Laura’s intensely sad aria in Scene 3.
2. One could say the accompaniment feels like it is its own character. How did you discover Door’s recurring figures, patterns, and themes (or how did you choose which compositional tools to use when writing the piece)?
Underneath the layers of torment, excitement, sorrow and intensity, everything that happens in Door can be divided into two basic emotional states: frantic, and its opposite: calm. This is precisely the concept I had in my mind while writing the music. While it may seem to be simplifying matters, to me, it was a kind of creative spring-board. Instead of being caught up in the twisting complexities of the drama, I divided it all into clear ’types’ of musical material, that then became layered on top of one another. Each musical material is a kind of leitmotif, in a sense – and it recalls various important emotional moments, such as Andy’s attempts to break free of the physical and mental prison he finds himself in; Mary and Chas’s attempts to help him out; Laura’s deeply pained return. Using layering techniques provided a straightforward emotional communication, giving the music a directness that cuts right through and ultimately leaves the audience as tormented and emotionally drained as Andy.
To this end, there are two main materials or ’themes’ in Door, out of which everything else developed. The first, as I’ve already described, is the hammering rhythm, which is the main, frenetic driving force of the opera, derived from the incessant ‘knocking on the door’ idea. The second, is what I call the ‘breathing chords’: Andy is forever being told to take a seat, calm down, relax, ‘take a breath’ to get away from the franticness of his mind – and so, I created a set of two chords: one for the inhale, one for the exhale. The chords are built from the harmonic series, steeped in natural resonances which exude calm – but they could equally be interpreted as jazz chords with added notes which, in turn, provided the basis for the opera’s smoothest character, Chas, whose main approach to Andy’s torment is to encourage him to relax. All of the opera’s frenetic passages and moments of calm are developments, layerings and juxtapositions of these initial two materials.
Writing Door became a puzzle – a really intriguing and exciting puzzle, where I kept finding more and more ways to layer, juxtapose, develop and intertwine these two opposites. Musically, it became a question of: which side will win? – which is of course Andy’s own mental dichotomy put into music, and it’s the exact question I wanted the audience to be asking from Door’s very first notes.
Watch an One Ounce Opera live performance of DOOR on YouTube
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Rhiannon Randle (b. 1993) is an award-winning composer, violinist, soprano and emerging conductor based in London and Cambridge. A ‘distinctive theatrical talent’ (Stainer & Bell) who ‘turns anguish into art’ (Matthew Parris, The Times), drama is central to Rhiannon’s music – she has written three chamber operas, one in association with the Royal Opera House. Her music has been performed nationally and internationally, with commissions including for BBC Radio 3 International Women’s Day; BBC Singers; Dame Sarah Connolly; Britten Sinfonia; members of Allegri Quartet; the Choirs of King’s College; Trinity College; St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge and Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford; Choir of Royal Holloway and The Ebor Singers (York); Borough New Music Series; EQUATOR Women of the World (King’s Place); King’s Lynn; Orpheus & Bacchus (Bordeaux); and in the USA by Boston Opera Collaborative, and One Ounce Opera, Austin. Rhiannon is currently Associate Composer with Cambridge Graduate Orchestra – her latest orchestral tone poem, Chiron: The Teacher of Heroes was premiered in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge as part of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival; Rhiannon’s orchestral nocturne Salt Deep will receive its premiere later this year. Selected for Psappha’s Composing for…scheme (2017-18), Rhiannon is writing for guzheng (Chinese zither) with forthcoming recording. She was a finalist in the Britten Sinfonia Composer Competition 2015 adjudicated by Judith Weir. Chamber music is a particular interest: Rhiannon’s first string quartet, Walking on Purple, has been recorded by her own award-winning Fourier Quartet.
After Door, Rhiannon produced and directed her second opera in Cambridge: Dido is Dead tells the myth of Dido and Aeneas through the eyes of the maddened heroine. Rhiannon’s first opera, Temptations, was a collaboration with best-selling poet Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite, in Cambridge, reimagining Satan’s temptations of Jesus in a modern setting, and was praised by Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Other theatrical works include Lie There Dead, a drama for tenor, baritone and ensemble, and recent Duruflé Trio commission The Bitterness of Salt for soprano, flute, viola and piano.
Rhiannon’s choral works have been described as adventurously expressive but singable (Richard Causton). She was commissioned by BBC R3 for International Women’s Day 2015: Like A Singing Bird premiered live on The Choir by Sarah Connolly and the Girl’s Choir of St. Catharine’s, Cambridge. She was a finalist in National Centre of Early Music Composer Award 2017, and a second performance of her Ave Regina by the Ebor Singers was featured in ‘Women of Note’, part of York Late Music series. Her On Life’s Dividing Sea was a finalist in the ORTUS International New Music Competition, New York and has recently been recorded by the BBC Singers. O Magnum Mysterium, commissioned by Choir & Organ, was premiered by Royal Holloway Choir, published online in Choir & Organ New Music Series, and a feature on Rhiannon appeared in the January/February 2017 edition of the magazine. Rhiannon is the inaugural Composer-in-Residence at St. Michael’s, Cornhill (2017-18); commissions include memoria for choir and erhu (Chinese fiddle); a communion motet; a Canticles setting and an anthem for The Drapers’ Company. Other recent commissioners include Girton College for their 150th Anniversary; Ronald Corp and the New London Children’s Choir; and the Zürich Chamber Singers. Her choral music is published by Stainer & Bell.
Rhiannon is an alumna of Girton College, Cambridge (BA Music and MPhil Composition), where she studied with Richard Causton; Jeremy Thurlow and Giles Swayne, and was a Leverhulme Arts Scholar at Guildhall School of Music & Drama on the innovative Opera Making & Writing MA, graduating with Distinction. Rhiannon currently supervises harmony, counterpoint and related compositional subjects at Cambridge University. She studies with Julian Anderson in London.
Robert LeBas appreciates the exceptional musicianship and innovation of One Ounce Opera. The adventurous group continues to explore new ways of experiencing and performing opera. Robert first began singing in choir and musical theater in his hometown of Amarillo, TX. He received his Bachelor’s of Vocal Performance degree from the University of North Texas. Since moving to Austin, he has also performed with Good Shepherd Choir, Austin Opera, Austin Cantorum, and the Austin Gilbert & Sullivan Society. When not singing, he can also be found going on adventures with his dogs, biking around Austin, or climbing rocks. Robert would like to thank his family and his wife Danika, for their love and support.
Mezzo-soprano Julie Silva has a passion for bringing music and characters to life on stage, particularly when reaching new audiences with innovative performances. Julie is thrilled to be performing the role of Mary in the American premiere of Door on this year’s Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Opera. Julie has had a lively 2017-2018 season with live soloist and televised performances with the iSING! International Young Artists Festival and Suzhou Symphony Orchestra in China, sharing arias with opera’s youngest fans through Austin Opera’s “Opera Treasure Chest” school outreach series, and recent performances as Annio in LOLA’s La clemenza di Tito: A Retelling. In May, Julie is excited to travel to Mississippi to perform as Countess Malcolm in A Little Night Music with the Natchez Festival of Music.
Founder and CEO of One Ounce Opera, Julie Fiore has enjoyed a lifetime of performance and stage work. Possessing an “energetic and richly beautiful soprano voice”, favorite roles include Abigail in Robert Ward’s The Crucible and Sister Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites. Prior to founding OOO, she served as an Artist-In-Residence and Assistant Director of Taos Opera Institute (NM), and Co-Director of Amarillo Opera’s Summer Opera Camp. In Austin, Julie has created and performed new works and classical re-imaginations as part of the Fusebox Festival, Soundspace at the Blanton Museum, the City of Austin’s People’s Gallery, East Austin Studio Tour, South By Southwest Music Festival, Thinkery21, Beerthoven Recital Series, and OOO’s Fresh Squeezed Ounce series, among others. Julie has a private voice and piano studio and is a Senior Music Mentor for Kids In a New Groove. She has a Bachelor of Music from University of North Texas and a Master of Music from University of Denver Lamont School of Music.
While studying for pre-med in his undergraduate work at Midwestern State University, Dalton Flake discovered the world of opera. His roles include: Borsa in Rigoletto; Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi; Alfred in Die Fledermaus; and Detlef in The Student Prince. He then attended Texas State University for his Masters of Voice Performance. Where he added: Kaspar in Amahl and the Night Visitors; Candide in Candide; Sam Kaplan in Street Scene; Rodolfo in La Boheme; Charlot in Angelique, which went to win awards with the National Opera Association; E.T.A. Hoffmann in Le Contes d’Hoffmann; Abbe in Felice, and 1st boy in Trouble in Tahiti. He has been a soloist for Texas State in there performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Dalton has earned first place at NATS and won the Didzun Honors Award for excellence. Recently, Dalton performed Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohemewith Red River Lyric Opera. He thanks God and his wife and kids for allowing him the luxury of being a performer.