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Historic black and white photo of Zona Heaster Shue.
Zona Heaster Shue
What makes a good opera? A ghost story.
A new opera based on a centuries-old Appalachian murder is about to premiere at UW-Madison. The “reading” on Dec. 9 at 3 p.m. in Collins Recital Hall, Hamel Music Center, showcases Everlasting Faint, with music by Madison’s Scott Gendel and libretto by Sandra Flores-Strand.
It’s based on the legend of “The Greenbrier Ghost,” a melancholy story borne out of an 1897 murder in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. A woman, Zona Heaster Shue, was found dead; cause of death was recorded as childbirth — until Shue’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, reported that her daughter’s ghost had visited her to declare that she’d been murdered by her husband.
“Sandra and I were excited about doing something that felt like traditional opera, but had a modern spin on it — it’s about ghosts and moms taking down the patriarchy,” says Gendel. “The way people didn’t believe women in the 19th century still resonates today.”
Flores-Strand says she stumbled on the tale while working on another opera. She found a timeline that listed “the ‘First court case in history to be won based on the testimony of a ghost.’” That led Flores-Strand down “a rabbit hole of research completely unrelated to what I was actually working on.” In a few hours she’d read every personal account and court record she could find on the case and “sketched out an idea for an entire opera.” About a year later she started working with Gendel, who was looking for a potential story.
“Everlasting Faint” is a 19th century term for a woman’s unexplained death. Yet the action — in the libretto a number of women’s ghosts visit the courtroom to present evidence against the husband — echoes today’s #metoo power-in-numbers.
“It’s an intense story and the style is not particularly subtle,” says Gendel, noting that the ghosts are tangible, and at times sing directly to the audience about how they want justice. “Big, intense — that’s what I love about opera.”
Scott Gendel, left, and Sandra Flores-Strand
Gendel listened to several folk songs based on the legend and found some inspiration there. “There’s no direct line but I tried to incorporate that style into the singing and the harmonies,” he says. A young boy opens each act by singing a song “in a style based on old-time folk but in a quirkier way that reflects the rest of the opera.”
Work began on Everlasting Faint about three years ago, starting with the text and moving on to the singing parts. This fall Gendel has been teaching the parts to students at the Mead Witter School of Music. “They’re learning roles that have never been sung before, so there’s no recording they can listen to. It's cool for them and fun for me.”
The first performance, though called a reading, is sung (in English, Gendel hastens to add), while the singers — a cast of 10 and chorus of 20 — are on book. ”It’s very intense, dramatic music,” says Gendel. “It’s not going to be an inert concert experience.” Gendel and Flores-Strand will give a pre-concert talk and there will be an introduction to each scene.
After the performance, Gendel and Flores-Strand will revise, incorporating feedback. The next step is to look for an opera company willing to produce it and commission a full orchestration (currently it’s just piano). It’s also possible that Everlasting Faint will prove attractive to other colleges for teaching: “None of the roles are so wild to sing that they are out of the reach for graduate students,” Gendel says. Right now Gendel, also vocal coach and pianist for Madison Opera, among other musical jobs, is gratified by “having a version out in the world.”
While newer operas often delve into realism, combining spoken word with singing, Gendel still likes to have “a big aria, a big duet, big finales of the acts. Those things are really exciting and bring an audience along. I want to say new things, but in a way that relates to older forms.”
