PROCESS AND CONTEXT by Marcus Shields
We began thinking of creating a commission in April after we canceled our upcoming season. At that point, it was unclear how long the performing arts closure would last. Across the internet, artists were posting videos of home concerts and Zoom collaborations. Early pandemic content was hyper personal. It was also very homemade. We didn’t immediately know what to do, but we observed tremendous creative energy and felt inspired to contribute.
When Neal and I began discussing composers, Neal immediately thought of Nico (Muhly). Nico immediately thought of Greg (Pierce). And Greg had already been thinking about creating a project based on a news event from 2015.
THE OPERA
The Glitch is a one act opera that lasts about 19 minutes. It depicts a conversation between Joyce Mitchell and her husband Lyle following a traumatic moment in their lives. It is a construction of a conversation that might have taken place. It is raw and personal and about the capacity to endure through pain.
Casting
Here is Neal Goren on the casting of The Glitch:
When Nico suggested Krysty Swann as a possible Tilly, I jumped at the chance. I have known and loved her voice since hearing her perform when she was a grad student at MSM. Lester Lynch I have known since the early days of Gotham Chamber Opera, when I offered him a leading role which he was unable to accept because of a prior high-status commitment. I have wanted to collaborate with him since, and I thought that The Glitch would be the perfect opportunity to make music with these brilliant artists. I am delighted to present Ms. Swann and Mr. Lynch as the first singers in Catapult Opera’s commissioning series.
As soon as they were cast, Lester and Krysty helped shape the writing process. Their voices influenced the vocal lines and their questions clarified the drama.
At a similar time, the excellent pianist Adam Tendler joined the team.
Recording
Here is a list of our locations throughout this process:
Neal: NYC
Adam: Brooklyn
Krysty: NYC
Lester: Ohio
Marcus: California/New Hampshire
Nico: NYC/elsewhere
Greg: NY state
RECORDING THE PIANO
In large part, we had a distanced process. After Nico completed the score, each artist had three weeks to absorb the music. Our first step was to break the score up into three minute chunks and record Neal conducting each section. Those videos were then sent to Adam to reference as he recorded the piano part. Once recorded, I synced the piano part with Neal’s conducting to use as the foundation of the recording.
However, after multiple attempts, we determined that this order of operations was inorganic. It felt counterintuitive to record the piano without rehearsing with the singers. Vocalism is difficult to quantize and breath creates shape. In a live rehearsal, musicians can quickly connect to one another but without the ability to meet in person, we had to find an imperfect substitute.
Neal, who teaches at Mannes, was learning the software Jam Kazam. Like other low latency software, Jam Kazam promises a solution to distanced collaboration. It requires a stable internet connection and is best when users are geographically close. For us, it facilitated two things: the ability to rehearse in real time, and a way to record the piano part without pre-recorded conducting. Though it wasn't perfect, the live collaboration moved us forward and produced a piano track that supported the singers. Neal conducted in Washington Heights and Adam played and recorded in Brooklyn.
RECORDING THE SINGERS
The initial idea was to have Lester and Krysty record themselves from home. After an attempt or two, we decided that wasn’t feasible. Mostly because the music is difficult, engineering is difficult, and it is an exercise in madness to record an intimate conversation without a scene partner to converse with.
By a stroke of good luck, Lester happened to be traveling to NYC so we decided to try recording in person. We found a time over a long weekend and rented a blackbox theater at the HERE arts center in downtown NYC. We used three cameras, one ipad, one computer, a few lights, and one PA system for capture. Neal conducted on the computer and iPad and Adam played over the PA system. We had 6 hours to record the entire piece.
EXPERIMENT
The impulse behind OPERA INNOVATE is to explore the creation in the present moment. The approach is inquisitive and experimental. It isn't yet clear what will be successful but no matter what, there must be exploration. The Glitch is a contribution to that experiment.
As part of this note, I asked Krysty and Lester to share their experience in this process:
KRYSTY SWANN
I feel so fortunate to have had this experience. The challenge of trying to endure a devastating pandemic while learning and internalizing the complexities of Joyce were both delicious and heartbreaking. The music is wonderful, incredibly difficult and emotionally complex. What Nico and Greg imbued this short, powerful piece with is the stuff that Singing Actors dream about sinking their whole selves into and I’m grateful for the opportunity to taste what that extraordinary experience actually feels like! The music, the text and the characters are tangible, painful and relatable. Having someone like Lester as my performance partner also pushed me to up my game as a performer.
I also take pride in collaborating with Catapult. Adaptation is essential for our artform to endure this pandemic. While I long for the face to face, intimacy of personal collaboration from start to finish, this process has forced me to push myself and find new possibilities as a performer in this new iteration of multimedia Opera performance. It is as frightening as it is exhilarating. I am grateful for this opportunity where I've had to put aside my own insecurities and doubts, performing on camera had demands that I never had to consider when on a stage. I know I have grown as an Artist and performer.
LESTER LYNCH
Creative Process and Preparation approach for Lyle in Nico Muhly’s, The Glitch.
The story of Lyle and Joyce Mitchell gripped America in 2015. Being a baritone who sings Macbeth, Scarpia, Rigoletto is very fulfilling. I love the roles I perform. But I found the idea of portraying a living, walking, breathing man who is still alive absolutely thrilling. I watched every YouTube clip and read every article that I could find about this story which begged to be made into an opera. I see the character of Lyle as a seemingly simple man on the surface. The point that interested me most was his reaction to finding out that his wife plotted his murder with a convicted murderer who chopped up his victims, Richard Matt. Joyce really knew how to pick them…she was having an extra-marital affair with one, possibly two, murders. The other man, David Sweat, shot and killed a police officer. Yet Lyle seems to be very willing to forgive her even before she asks. As I began peeling away the layers of Lyle, it seemed he could not imagine life without his wife. The idea of leaving her never took center stage. During my preparation, I could not resist watching some of the news interviews with Lyle Mitchell speaking about his wife. I drew some conclusions from studying him and hearing his voice, but in the end wanted to create my own Lyle Mitchell. I see him as a prison worker who has been injured on the job, which is why he walks with a limp. He also drinks a six pack of cheap beer nightly, smokes Marlboros constantly, speaks with a lisp (which is true of the real Lyle), and is a rather depressed individual.
Then I began to look for clues about the character from the music. Here, Nico Muhly gave the character a wonderful landscape of sound and spectacular rhythms that immensely fed the character and draws in the listener. At the time of the story, Lyle has been working as an Industrial Training Supervisor, basically a mechanic, and has been married to Joyce for 14 years. Lyle seems dependent on Joyce almost to the point of being pathetic. He stays with his wife through the trial, conviction, and her stint in prison. I also studied a few reality prison TV shows to get a feel for prison life and to help me imagine the sounds and smells of a prison environment. I asked myself, “does he truly forgive her, or did he think on some level he deserved to die? Does he love her deeply, or is he pathetic and so codependent that they simply fall back into living their small existence together?”
The most complicated part of creating this opera was the logistics of working and creating an opera in the middle of this new normal, COVID-19, coordinating with the music from a pre-recorded piano accompaniment conducted masterfully by our brilliant maestro, Neal Goren. That being said, I can confidently say we managed to conquer every challenge! We read through the opera together online two or three times using the newest apps and sound tech available. All throughout the process I kept asking myself, “how do we wholly and honestly tell this story whilst being spread around the country, connected only through fiber optics and ethernet cords? How do you make an opera, exclusively, online?” Luckily, our director had the incredible idea of meeting in NY; we tested, and we distanced and of course wore the all-important masks so that we could meet in person. Our director, the magnificently talented Marcus Shields, filmed and directed us. He was a one-man FULL production team. For a short moment we forgot about the pandemic. Krysty and I were in a dark, black box, COVID-free safe space—but we had created a prison meeting area with a plexiglass divider, the smell of mold and feel of cold, a dank, lifeless atmosphere—out of thin air. This is art from artists who, because of COVID, have been in the desert for months; starved, thirsty, and weary. The Glitch was our oasis of hope and a place where the love of creating lived again.
CREATIVE TEAM
Composer: Nico Muhly
Librettist: Greg Pierce
Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell: Krysty Swann
Lyle Mitchell: Lester Lynch
Piano: Adam Tendler
Conductor: Neal Goren
Director: Marcus Shields
Special thanks
The Glitch is made possible through the generous support of Dr. Frayda Lindemann.