Allow the creators of opera some grace.
Composers, librettists and their colleagues put years of work into something that, if they are lucky, gets a workshop performance or two before arriving onstage. If there is a revival — never a given in opera — they have an opportunity to make revisions.
This process can be brutal for artists. And it’s not the usual one for the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright George Brant, the creators of “Grounded,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Sept. 23.
Tesori was written operas before, but she and Brant are more often animals of the traditional theater and the Broadway musical, environments where constant revisions responding to workshops, rehearsals and preview performances are the norm. Operas are also revised until the last possible moment, but they are never given the luxurious feedback that creators get in theater.
“In the theatrical space, the audience is part of the process,” said Tesori, the Tony Award-winning composer of the shows “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change.” She learned from George C. Wolfe, the decorated playwright and director, “that the audience is your final scene partner.”
“I wish I were one of those artists who really knows what they have, but I just don’t,” she said. “So, I feel like I’m still getting to know what ‘Grounded’ is.”
“Grounded” is an adaptation of Brant’s taut 2013 play of the same name, about a fighter pilot who is forced by pregnancy to become a drone weapon operator, and whose sanity collapses as a result; a solo show less than 90 minutes long, it ran in 2015 at the Public Theater, starring Anne Hathaway. Tesori and Brant’s adaptation, commissioned by the Met and Washington National Opera, premiered last fall at the Kennedy Center in Washington, with an expanded cast and a running time of more than two hours to match.
The reviews were mixed to negative. Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that the “bagginess is palpable” in the story’s transition from play to opera. In The Washington Post, Michael Andor Brodeur described the added characters as “optional,” arguing that “in so many ways, ‘Grounded’ remains a one-woman show.”
During the Kennedy Center run, Tesori and Brant already knew what changes they wanted to make, and they have spent the past year making substantial revisions that, among other things, bring the running time down by about 45 minutes. In a joint interview early in August, before rehearsals at the Met began, they discussed what that process has been like, and how different working in opera has been from doing theater. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What would you consider the biggest differences between theater and opera?
GEORGE BRANT This is my first opera. The idea that there was only one invited dress rehearsal before opening [at the Kennedy Center] was very panic inducing, and definitely something to get used to.
JEANINE TESORI If we did “Grounded” in theater, George and I would be going up to some room with questionable carpeting and just working and working over four weeks until we ran out of time. With the opera, we had done a workshop, but that’s not the real thing.
George, I imagine there’s a lot that you had to learn about how to write a libretto versus a script.
BRANT I very much enjoy editing myself and getting things down to their essential nature. That said, when Paul Cremo, our liaison at the Met, started showing me the word count of some of the famous operas out there, I was pretty shocked. Finding a way to convey the same story without using as much language as I thought I would use was a real challenge.
I think we found, too, that some elements of the play that I thought were load-bearing themes or moments, when we tried removing them, particularly in this last draft we’ve been working on, it was like: You know what, the opera actually doesn’t need it.
I also think that in opera, when you’re in this huge room, sometimes more subtle things are just less conveyable. So, I’m learning to work in bolder hues. It’s just fascinating, after living with this story for 13 years, what’s important in this form and that form, and what will resonate musically.
Opera is also just bigger. Jeanine, how do you communicate with the orchestra in opera versus in musical theater?
TESORI With “Grounded,” I feel that this is how I hear its world. I’m transcribing what I hear, and there’s no decision of, should it be more of this or that; this is just how I hear it. When you’re working with the Met chorus of 50 people, it means that I can use every palette that’s in my questionable noggin. You just don’t have that firepower right now in theater.
When you were watching “Grounded” at the Kennedy Center, what was going through your heads knowing that the audiences were hearing just the first version of the opera?
TESORI I don’t know if this is true for you, George, but at every first preview, I want to take every single person aside and say: “You know that thing you’re going to see 10 minutes in? We’re cutting that.”
BRANT Right.
TESORI It’s like you’re getting dressed for prom and all you have is the corsage. It’s just not done. I even feel vulnerable talking about it now because we’re still wondering about the show, before we start rehearsals at the Met. Even at the first performances, we had already decided to cut a character, the trainer. I just went to the score and went “rip.”
BRANT By the seventh performance there were some times when I just kind of wanted to stand up and say, “This scene will be going.”
TESORI We get it, you’re kicking the chair. We know that’s boring. It’s going, relax.
How do you maintain a sense of Zen during that?
TESORI Like Erykah Badu said, we’re sensitive about our stuff. [She used a more severe expletive.] I’ve overheard incredibly cruel things about my work and incredibly wonderful things about my work, and they sort of cancel each other out. And I can read something from a critic and learn from it even if it’s direct because I’m pretty direct. Nobody is harder on my work than me.
On the day of the last performance we gathered in D.C., knowing we were making substantial changes. A group of us sat around the table, and I said: “I want everybody to say exactly what you think of this section. Don’t hold back.” We started on Page 1, and we stayed there for six hours. We never even made it to the show.
There was a part where I took a whole section and just ripped it out. For me, the greatest part of an edit is when you know you’re doing the right thing. I want to make it worth the time of audiences who pay money to see this, and to Emily D’Angelo [who plays the fighter pilot]. And, frankly, to these vets who are suffering.
How quickly after the run did you get to work on the Met version?
TESORI George and I realized, Wow, we have a lot of work to do. I rented a house out in the boonies and shut myself away to rethink, and we got back to work. The Met was also incredibly supportive and gave us another workshop.
You’ve mentioned cutting about 45 minutes from the show. That really is a lot of work to say goodbye to.
TESORI There was one section where, when George suggested we cut it, I was like, “George, that was all of February.”
BRANT There’s this moment in the play where her husband, Eric, gives her this mix tape, and she plays it while driving home when she’s really in a manic moment, and it calms her down. It’s kind of one of the last moments of hope we have for her. It’s very effective in the play. In the opera, we kept trying to incorporate this idea, this mix tape, and we were really trying.
TESORI Oh my God. We were like, cube it, melt it, shred it, put it on focaccia.
BRANT Exactly. Anything.
TESORI And then finally George was like, I’m calling it.
BRANT It just had to go.
There are so many moving parts in opera. The orchestra and singers like Emily are used to working with fixed scores, and making changes is a lot more difficult than in theater. How much leeway do you have at the Met, as you go into rehearsals?
TESORI Well, we have pencils with erasers. And it doesn’t even matter if we’re finished when it goes up because ——
BRANT They take our pencils away!
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