Introducing the 5th Annual Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Opera showcase winners Marc Hoffeditz (composer) and Ilana Fogelson (librettist), creators of the micro-opera Non Motus, in its World Premiere. You may remember Marc’s short opera Ne’er Part I from the 2nd Annual Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Art Song concert (2017).
Performing and producing new works by living composers and librettists offers artists the opportunity for real-time communication. After spending time with the scores and their characters, cast members Carmen Johnson, Allyssa Kemp, Cristina Flores, and Elise Leung Kotara had these questions for the creators (answered by both!):
Hannah is a nice comic relief to Non Motus. What was the inspiration behind the character?
We started the process of developing this piece by simply considering the kinds of individuals you might find stuck in traffic like this and what sort of specific (but ultimately universal) crises they might be experiencing. We’ve all been in the situation where basic human needs have become so intense that they overwhelm all the existential drowning we tend to do when we have nothing else to distract us. Hannah is all of us boiled down to our most fundamental level. We had no choice but to include her. In this way, despite her being the comic relief, we view Hannah as perhaps the most honest portrayal of the human condition in the opera. She is base human need, she doesn’t need a backstory, she doesn’t need a past trauma, all she needs to be is hyper-present in order to provide a sense of urgency and forward motion to the story.
In the car, Child seems frustrated with her mother because her mother isn’t present around her. Is this coming from a place where Child doesn’t feel validated or understood in their relationship and her mother is really like her grandmother? Or is Child just a pain in the butt because she can’t see anything that’s not black and white?
Child and her mother are a reflection of her mother and grandmother. Sure, she views the world through an adolescent lens, and perhaps that lens is more black and white and less inclined to acknowledge gray areas, but the real crux of the conflict between Child and her mother is ultimately this similarity between the two generational relationships. Child asks legitimate questions, but because she is a child and often repeats herself until she is understood or given what she views as a satisfactory answer, she is dismissed out of hand as nothing more than a nuisance. What we don’t know is whether this dismissal is common on the part of her mother, or if she is behaving this way because she is under an inordinate amount of stress. Is their relationship always this fraught or is there something about being on the highway heading toward the funeral that have turned it into something unusual?
Based on the dialogue, it seems that the Hannah/Gerry crash at the end actually occurs chronologically at the beginning of the opera. Can you share some insight into whether it’s a “Tarantino-style” setup where you start from the end and then work backwards”, or is it a Groundhog Day scenario where they really are all “stuck in a loop”?
You know, it could be viewed as either. What matters is that the characters feel as though they are stuck in a loop or in an inescapable stretch of life that is miserable, but also the best they’ve got. Whether time operates linearly or cyclically, the sentiment remains the same — the characters themselves feel as though they are going in circles.
The only speaking part for Deborah is when she is quoting/speaking for her mom. Is there a particular reason why you chose to have that spoken as opposed to sung and do you imagine a certain tone or timbre for the spoken sections?
Whenever I’m working on an opera, it’s always a challenge to balance the musical languages of multiple characters and simultaneous situations: Gerry sings the same cyclic motives ad nauseam, Child and Deborah switch between bouts of recitative and lyricism, and Hannah is full of ornaments and melismas. While the relationship between Deborah and her mother is reflected in the conversations with Child, I didn’t necessarily think that the grandmother needed to be intertwined into the harmonic language. She’s the only non-present character in the story and I think depending on how it is it interpreted, it could be rather jarring to have these brief bits of spoken text. In terms of a specific tone or timbre, I’d leave that up to the performers and creative team to decide how to they would like to portray those moments. Each performance of the opera so far has resulted in very different characterizations and it’s always fun to hear something new!
Watch this preview with the cast of Non Motus!