All About Genesis Part 1- May 2002

The Genesis Prizes for Opera

John Studzinski, May 2002

Introduction

John Studzinski is the founder of Genesis Foundation, the arts arm of the Studs Trust, and the founder and chairman of The Genesis Prizes for Opera, which was developed by Jonathan Reekie, Chief Executive of Aldeburgh Productions, with London's Almeida Opera as producers. Another major project of the Genesis Foundation is its involvement with the International Playwrights Season and its research and development phase at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

John Studzinski met with Mel Cooper recently to discuss the Genesis Foundation, its work and its purposes.

The Genesis Foundation commissions work at every stage and supports arts projects or an artist through a whole process in order to help create the classics of the future.

The latest International Playwrights Season at the Royal Court is developed and on the boards. The Genesis Prizes for Opera have reached the preparation stage, now, for presentations of work-in-progress for the nine semi-final teams in April 2002. We will keep bringing you the latest news on our Genesis web site.

John Studzinski began by talking about the development of the Foundation and the projects it supports - a process that has taken nearly a year since Genesis was officially launched.

Speaking About Genesis

MEL COOPER
Tell me how you are feeling about where the Genesis Foundation has got to, one year after you officially launched it in late January 2001; and especially about The Genesis Prizes for Opera with which you launched.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
This whole process has been a step by step walk before you run process, as you know, Mel.
And I have my reservations about this because one doesn't know what the ultimate prize is really going to be here. Maybe in 10, 15 or 20 years we'll look back at this and we'll really know what was happening. It certainly is more than the grand prize of £20,000 for one work at the end. I hope it is about the whole process of being supported and that every composer and librettist involved in the workshops and then in the finals will feel they have won a prize.
But it has to be said, so far I'm very pleased because a lot of my original instincts about the value of creating a network among young composers globally has come into fruition just by virtue of the success of the website.

At the same time by bringing so many young composers into the Genesis Opera Prize family, what we're really trying to do is give more young composers a bit of a boost in their self-esteem.

An Open Process

MEL COOPER
It's interesting that it was such an open process - you just threw the application process open to the entire world. I understand that you had about 210 applications for this first prize.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
That anyone can apply, I think, is important. And the fact is that we chose nine composers to workshop as opposed to six we had originally intended. This should be an additional incentive to those composers who want to apply for the next prize. We're looking for interesting work, creative ideas, interesting new treatments of the libretto; we have no pre-conceived ideas where they will emerge from; and at the same time we don't have any set goals and objectives in terms of what we're expecting. We were planning on six semi-finalists, but the search this time gave us nine - so we are supporting nine.

The Culture of Commissioning

JOHN STUDZINSKI
The other thing that's interesting about this is that we're for the first time giving ourselves a new look at the culture of commissioning opera.

Opera has been commissioned -- I think almost manufactured -- by opera houses in the last two or three decades.

What we hope our process of commissioning is doing is that it's taking opera out of a box, it's making it into more of a liberal, open discussion forum; we're allowing a slightly broader group of people to have input.

I think in that respect we're playing a new role in the culture of commissioning.

The Culture of Mentoring

JOHN STUDZINSKI
But I think most importantly we're also mentoring these composers in a way that they wouldn't have been mentored before in competition terms. It's not just about financial support and a partial commission to get them to the workshop phase.

The panellists of The Genesis Opera Prizes are playing very proactive roles with respect to each of the composers and their librettists. That's a role that goes beyond merely checking a box and attending a meeting. That's a role that consists of sharing professional insights with the teams of young artists and taking some real responsibility and accountability for what happens.

When you look at some of the great artists in history, a lot of them have been mentored early on. They've had one or two or three early experiences that have given them a sense of accomplishment, a sense of achievement, and a sense of feeling good about themselves and their talents.

In many ways what the panellists are now going through with the nine composers, with the nine creative teams: I think that's probably a much richer experience for the composers and their collaborators than we realize.

It's not a routine experience at all. I think each one of them has developed very interesting bi-lateral relationships there and we'll see in the April workshops the fruit of that.

The Debate about Opera

MEL COOPER
You're now going to bring all nine teams to London. They will actually be meeting each other and mixing with each other. Is that something you're looking forward to and think is part of the process?

JOHN STUDZINSKI
Well, I'm looking forward to learning a lot by observing that process.

I'm never going to pretend to know very much about opera. I'm a consumer of opera, I'm a lover of opera; but I'm not a musicologist and I've never studied opera professionally.

But I think and hope I'm going to learn about the dynamics of this art form. Having observed the panellists already in two or three different debates, I think this is going to provide another forum for debating again: what is the role of opera today and what is opera itself aspiring to be today?

We've had this debate on an ongoing basis. I think you look back over the last 150 years to understand the context of the debate today. Opera has evolved a lot; and opinions about what was great or second rate have changed with time. We now value Bellini and Donizetti far more than Meyerbeer; but in the 1830s - and for about another 50 years at least - it was the other way round.

We all think we know a lot about contemporary real events but sometimes you need history to put things in perspective. I think that will be the case with the Genesis Opera Prizes and the results - and also with the impact that this kind of process may have on the relationships of composers with each other.

Learning from Early Challenges

MEL COOPER
Do you think that creating what you call a Genesis Family of composers will be beneficial?

JOHN STUDZINSKI
I think the camaraderie of composition has to be reconsidered and I think that you do get a lot to foster it, or can, in situations like this.

I grew up with my business hat on in a firm, Morgan Stanley, which is extremely team oriented. Everything is very transparent; everyone works together; they talk about each other's strengths and weaknesses; and you come away from those experiences strengthened and ready to move on to the next challenge.

And I think a lot of young composers would also benefit by being mentored and enriched; but also by being battered over the head early on, so that they realize what they're good at and what they're not good at. And where they need to work on it.

I think that part of this workshop forum will achieve some of this - because I know that a number of the panellists will provide the creative teams with some good and helpful feedback.

Speaking About Genesis

JOHN STUDZINSKI
The wrong way to look at this exercise is that the actual presentation of the final three operas and the prize is in fact the culmination. I think there are in fact three or four equally important, equally powerful, equally influential points in this process.

I think the work-shopping process that we'll go through with the teams and panellists to go from nine projects and get them down to three will be an extremely interesting process. It'll probably be very educational for all of us - if not deadly for the panellists. I think we have some really promising material. And in the actual presentation of the three operas that go through - and giving them full production next year - and then choosing the winner, it will be wonderful for the winner, but I have a feeling that by that point the winning team won't feel like they've won as such.

At that point the winner is really just a question of the acknowledgement of something; it's a bit of the cherry on top of the frosting; it's not necessarily the frosting or the cake.

MEL COOPER
So you are arguing that winning is actually getting a commission after the workshops to do the whole opera; and then having what you've written produced and shown to the public.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
Three people effectively win. And the more I go through this the more I think we've taken the traditional concept of having a prize winner and added some real value to being in the contest at all. Perhaps, since this is the first time we're all experimenting, I could turn out not to have that quite right. But in the end I firmly believe that the real prize here is three things;

• Firstly, getting a concept of yours commissioned to the workshop stage so that you can see what it is you are achieving and have input from mentors, conductors, performers and the panel
• Secondly, getting through and being one of the final three who have the complete work commissioned and then fully produced and staged
• Thirdly, and perhaps least importantly, being deemed the winner among those three.

For the people who have their operas put on, I doubt that the real focus is the £20,000 final prize. I don't want to be too glib about that, because £20,000 to a composer is a lot of money and that could free them up to produce something in the next year, or the one after that.

Expanding the Networks

JOHN STUDZINSKI
Having said that, it's the three teams who are up to present their operas and get that platform that is probably the big prize.

The nine teams who will present a segment of the work in progress in the workshops will have an extraordinary platform through the website, through the media, through the press; and I think very strongly they will then also have the network through their mentors and through the panellists.

What we're talking about here is changing the networking of young composers.
And what we've also done is we've created a web site that is one aspect of the networking.

We've introduced a group of panellists to a group of composers. Each one of those panellists has a network based on work that they've done. Michael Morris, for example, will have his network of contacts globally. So will David Pountney; so will Vikram Seth, Jenny McIntosh and all of them.

Therefore, the composers will get a network in that way as well; and they'll also get an enormous network from the profile they get with the public and the press. So we're talking here of introducing them to as many as three or four networks. Wherever they come from, this process should provide them with the right networks.

And if you look back to a lot of the great composers in the early 20th century, a lot of what people did had to do with being given a break; being in the right place at the right time, which was the break; and having someone take a chance on them. And this whole process is giving them a lot of different ways for the system to take chances on them.

Making it Intelligible and User-friendly

MEL COOPER
It seems to me that another thing that interests you a lot is the creation of the teams, the importance of the libretto and the librettist in the process. You have always said in the past that the winner is not just the composer but the creative team.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
I was struck by one of the Saturday Interviews that the Financial Times journalist, Andrew Clarke, did with the singer, Bryn Terfel.

Bryn Terfel said that English was the most difficult language to sing. Because it was never meant to be sung and the syllables and the notes are not entirely ever in sync. Therefore it's a great challenge to the opera singer to sing in English. I read that and I chuckled because I think that one of the dilemmas some of the panellists have dealt with, including Vikram Seth, is that 20th century libettists have not been working closely with the composers and they haven't therefore been sensitive enough to the musicality of syllables and words and vowels.

And that's why all of these English operas of the 20th century are almost unintelligible. I don't know how many times I've said at Glyndebourne and at Aldeburgh that we should have the teleprompt or sur-titles for Handel.

And everyone is horrified because, they say, it's an English opera for an English audience. And I said well, it's an English opera but no one can understand what's being sung.

This whole Genesis exercise isn't going to change that; but what it is trying to re-establish is a better balance between the composer and the librettist in terms of what I call a more equal partnership, in terms of what's happening. If operas are going to be more abundant, performed in a broader range of spaces, perhaps more simple spaces, not necessarily on the grand stage. Then the libretto has to be basically intelligible to the audiences.

If we're talking about the accessibility of opera here, which is very important to me, then the libretto is going to have to be thought about as making the words and the music much more user-friendly to the contemporary ear.

Words Before Music?

MEL COOPER
In this question of intelligibility, is there something to be learned from music theatre? Because nobody complains about not hearing the words in My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and Kiss Me Kate. And some of them have complicated and sophisticated lyrics where you're responding to the wit as well as the melodies. Do you think that the words have more primacy in lighter music theatre and operetta; and the scoring is lighter so the words will come through? Sondheim and his words are almost more famous and admired than the music as such, for a lot of people. Or is the more popular stuff taking an approach that is somehow more correct in its sphere than the librettos have been for operas?

JOHN STUDZINSKI
Well, I'm not going to pass judgment. But if you go back to someone like Sondheim working as the lyricist for and with Bernstein on West Side Story, there's no question of the work being similar somehow to Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate or Can Can. Nowadays, West Side Story is considered in many quarters as an opera -- it's even been recorded with opera stars of the magnitude of Carreras and Te Kanawa and Troyanos. And when you look at some of the songs like America, - there's no question that those words were written before the music, preceded the music, I think.

If you look carefully at some of Bernstein's comments, that would seem to be the case.

Normally with opera these days it's almost the other way round, normally the words come second, are secondary to the music. In music theatre, in West Side Story or My Fair Lady, there is a real partnership to create the dramatic or artistic impact.

The words have to be somehow made to work in opera today and sometimes it's a rather tense relationship there. And I'm hoping that there's a little more give and take and that the librettist has a higher profile, potentially, and we can get some really good writers who like to write to come out and start thinking about writing first class librettos for operas.

MEL COOPER
But they do have to be able to think musically, is what you are saying, it seems to me. One of the great librettists of the early 20th century was Hugo von Hoffmansthal, who worked with Richard Strauss. Before that, when he wrote Elektra and his poetry, he definitely said he had to revise a lot of the way he worked and thought about language once he started writing libretti. Boito, we know, deferred to Verdi in the ending of the first act of Otello, for instance. Bernstein was the official composer of West Side Story, but we know that he provided lyrics and worked on the text with Arthur Laurents, just as we know that Sondheim actually helped with the music.

JOHN STUDZINSKI
It has to be a collaboration because there are some great examples. I was struck the other day because I'd gone to see Kiss Me Kate and I hadn't realized that before Ella Fitzgerald a lot of Cole Porter's music is rather music hall-esque and slightly crude. Those Broadway orchestrations are fun but it was given a new dimension with the onset of people like Ella Fitzgerald who took those songs and made them much sexier, much more romantic and much smoother. She sort of transformed how you look at Cole Porter from the racy music hall presentations into something that really is very elegant supper club.