Director Keturah Stickann, left, librettist Sandra Flores-Strand and composer Scott Gendel.
Director Keturah Stickann, left, librettist Sandra Flores-Strand and composer Scott Gendel.
“Women die at the hands of men,” says Keturah Stickann, director of Madison Opera’s forthcoming premiere of Everlasting Faint. “That's actually a line in the opera. It's an important theme and something that we should be continually examining in our culture. Why does this keep happening?”
Just two years after Everlasting Faint, a new opera based on a centuries-old Appalachian murder, was first presented in a sung “reading” by University Opera, it’s premiering as a full-fledged production. That’s a rapid progression, as these things go.
With music by Madison’s Scott Gendel and libretto by Sandra Flores-Strand, Everlasting Faint is based on the true story of a 19th century murder in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.
When Elva Zona Heaster Shue was found dead in 1897, the cause of death was recorded as childbirth. Later, Shue’s ghost appeared to her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, declaring she’d been murdered by her husband. (An “everlasting faint” is a 19th-century term for a sudden, unexplained death.) Ultimately her body was exhumed and an autopsy performed, which revealed her neck had been broken and her windpipe crushed. Her husband was eventually convicted of her murder.
“I like the absolute American sound of it,” says Stickann, a New York-based opera director and choreographer who has worked with Madison Opera before. “This is true American mythology.”
It’s not just the story that feels American, Stickann says. “The musical ideas that Scott put into it have such an Americana feel to them. Those of us working in new opera often talk about finding the American voice in opera, because it’s notoriously French and Italian and German. This feels like an opera that truly has an American voice.”
Being the first to stage an opera is “exhilarating,” says Stickann. “You get to make of it whatever you want, without anybody saying ‘It's usually done this way.’ It's the same thing for the singers who are creating the role. That's an incredible opportunity to allow your voice to be the one that is thought of when people think about how the show should be put together.”
Librettist Sandra Flores-Strand, who’s written several operas focused on the lives of women and immigrants, discovered the story of the Greenbrier Ghost while researching another opera. She saw it referred to as the “first court case in history to be won based on the testimony of a ghost,” and delved into the legend, quickly sketching out the idea for the whole opera. “I got a lot of positive feedback [after the University Opera reading] and I felt like the story resonated because it parallels so closely to what we see in the news,” says Flores-Strand.
Other feedback led Gendel and Flores-Strand to clarify some plot points and simplify the music for the prologues, sung by a young boy, before each act.
The two say this is a good opera for a first-timer or a regular opera-goer. “A lot of what Sandra and I were aiming for in this piece was to tackle serious issues, but also make it very entertaining and exciting,” says Gendel. “We have easy ways for people to get into it — for instance ghosts and a drinking song.” But at the same time, darker subjects run through the whole work.
In “That Devil Killed Her,” Mary Jane Heaster — really the heart of the opera — sings about her daughter’s death over dissonant, disturbing music: “That devil killed her and knew he’d get away with it…. When men fall, they raise statues. For women, they lay flowers. Which do we remember most? Immortal figures…or wilted ones?”
Gendel reminds those who may be hesitant about opera that this one is sung in English and that it “moves at the pace that 21st century media moves. It’s so direct and emotionally engaged there's no need to be afraid. Except of the ghosts. You have to be afraid of the ghosts.”
Madison Opera presents the world premiere of Everlasting Faint Feb. 13 and 15 in the Overture Center-Capitol Theater.
