Kicking off our Eastman Opera Theatre (EOT) season on November 3-6, is Lear on the 2nd Floor (2013) – an opera inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, with music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis and libretto by Allan Havis.
Directed by Steven Daigle and conducted by Timothy Long, the opera will take place in Kilbourn Hall on a minimalist set that is monochromatic and neutral in color, featuring set pieces that serve multiple purposes; a sunken bath in one scene becomes a grave in another. Ominous projections and a shredded scrim add to the haunting nature of the piece.
Aging, family dynamics, manipulation, suffering, madness, foolishness, order, vision, and loyalty: dominant themes in Shakespeare’s epic tragedy King Lear are just as prevalent in Davis’ and Havis’ opera. Dr. Nora Lear, a respected, successful neuroscientist, as well as a mother with high expectations and feuding children, is plagued by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, leading to betrayal by her family and, in a sense, by her own mind. Steven Daigle, Artistic Director of Eastman Opera Theatre, says “Alzheimer’s disease now finds itself generationally in almost every family throughout the world. Many involved in this production, and the audiences who will attend, have loved ones suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.”
The opera is comprised of vignettes – fragmented to mimic the experience of having Alzheimer’s – tracking the period from Nora’s diagnosis to a breakdown over the loss of control in her own life to an eventual surrender to what she has become. Davis’ musical language allows the listener to inhabit Nora’s mind with her feelings of confusion, fear, panic, and loneliness. “Anthony Davis incorporates a wide array of sounds to depict this human tragedy that far too many of us know,” observes Timothy Long, Music Director of Eastman Opera Theatre. He continues, “The virtuoso chamber ensemble mixes with the words and sounds of the characters, but most notably in improvisations with Nora’s textless mind, to bring us a deeper understanding of Nora’s new world.”
While the subject matter of Lear on the 2nd Floor may sound forbidding, Davis says that “It does translate into song, and into real lyricism. Allan’s lyrics have a tragicomic, absurdist humor. It is opera as theatre, which is what I like to do best. It requires an intimate space, and I am so happy Eastman is presenting it.”
Eastman Opera Theatre’s performances of Lear on the 2nd Floor are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Thursday 11/3, Friday 11/4, and Saturday 11/5, with a matinee at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday 11/6. Lear on the 2nd Floor runs for 90 minutes with no intermission. It is double-cast and includes improvisational elements that make each performance different from the last.
Tickets are $20 for general admission. Internally, students, faculty, and staff may present their URID to receive one free ticket. Tickets can be purchased at the Eastman Theatre Box Office, 433 East Main St., or online at eastmantheatre.org.
The impact of this show goes beyond what takes place on the stage, as Daigle points out, “Lear on the 2nd Floor is a poignant, relevant, and personal story. We should all feel grateful to Anthony Davis and Allan Havis for bringing further awareness of this devastating disease through this compelling opera.”
Looking ahead to 2023, EOT will present Alcina (1735) by Georg Friedrich Händel on January 28-29 and February 2-5; and a Spanish-language opera Florencia en el Amazonas (1996) by Daniel Catán, inspired by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera, on March 30-31 and April 1-2. To read more about these performances, please see the EOT 2022-2023 Season press release.
Additionally, as part of a residency at Eastman School of Music, on December 5 Eastman will present the premiere of Anthony Davis’ How Bright the Sunlight, a work for symphony orchestra and narrator, with a libretto curated by first Native American US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, and based on her poem, Thanksgiving in a Time of War and Confusion, at 7:30 p.m. in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. Visit esm.rochester.edu/events for more information about this performance, and all other Eastman events.
Media only: Lauren Sageer, Assistant Director of Public Relations and Digital Content,
(585) 451-8492, lsageer@esm.rochester.edu
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About Anthony Davis:
Anthony Davis is an internationally recognized composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chamber works, and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his opera The Central Park Five.
Davis is best known for his operas. X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which played to sold-out houses at its premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986, was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. Davis’s science fiction opera Under the Double Moon premiered in St. Louis in June 1989. Tania, based on the abduction of Patricia Hearst, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in June 1992. Amistad, about a shipboard uprising by slaves and their subsequent trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November 1997.
Anthony Davis’ orchestral works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Beethoven Halle Orchestra of Bonn, American Composers Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Kansas City, and La Jolla Symphonies.
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Davis studied at Wesleyan and Yale universities. He was Yale’s first Lustman Fellow, teaching composition and Afro-American studies. In 1987 Davis was appointed Senior Fellow with the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and in 1990 he returned to Yale as Visiting Professor of Music. He became Professor of Music in Afro-American Studies at Harvard University in the fall of 1992 and assumed a professorship at the University of California at San Diego in January 1998. He is also known as a solo pianist and as the leader of the ensemble Episteme.
About Allan Havis:
Allan Havis is the award-winning author of twenty-one published plays including Morocco, Hospitality, Nuevo California, The Tutor, and The Haunting of Jim Crow, and has had works commissioned by England’s Chichester Festival, Sundance, San Diego Rep, Ted Danson’s Anasazi Productions, South Coast Rep, Mixed Blood, CSC Rep, Malashock Dance, Carolina Chamber Chorale, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and University of California, San Diego. Over three decades, Havis has had his plays produced at theatres across the country and in Europe. He is the editor of American Political Plays (2001); American Political Plays After 9/11 (2010), and American Political Plays in the Age of Terrorism (2019), and author of the children’s novels Albert the Astronomer and Albert Down a Wormhole, and a book on ninety years of cinema, Cult Films: Taboo & Transgression.
With composer Anthony Davis, his play Lilith was re-imagined as a chamber opera, premiering at UC San Diego. Havis and Davis’ Lear on the Second Floor premiered as a work-in-process in 2012 at Princeton University, and a full-length piece at UC San Diego in 2013. Both operas can be viewed online at UCSD TV. He has also written the operas St. Francis de los Barrios (with composer Joseph Waters, 2017) and The Golem of La Jolla with composer Michael Roth.
Allan Havis has headed the MFA playwriting program at University of California San Diego and was Provost of Marshall College/UC San Diego 2006-2016. He was also Chair of Theatre & Dance Department, UC San Diego 2018-2020. He holds an MFA from Yale Drama School.
About Eastman School of Music:
The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman’s dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training.
More than 900 students are enrolled in the Collegiate Division of the Eastman School of Music—about 500 undergraduates and 400 graduate students. They come from almost every state, and approximately 23 percent are from other countries. They are taught by a faculty comprised of more than 130 highly regarded performers, composers, conductors, scholars, and educators. They are Pulitzer Prize winners, Grammy winners, Emmy winners, Guggenheim fellows, ASCAP Award recipients, published authors, recording artists, and acclaimed musicians who have performed in the world’s greatest concert halls. Each year, Eastman’s students, faculty members, and guest artists present more than 900 concerts to the Rochester community. Additionally, more than 1,700 members of the Rochester community, from young children through senior citizens, are enrolled in the Eastman Community Music School.
The three-semester-long Eastman Centennial celebration began in Fall 2021 and continues throughout 2022. Highlights include acclaimed guest artists performing alongside Eastman’s ensembles; national academic and music conferences; alumni events throughout the country; a documentary being produced in partnership with WXXI, and more. For up-to-date information on the Eastman Centennial, including feature stories, future events, videos, testimonials, ways to engage, and more, please visit our Centennial website at esm.rochester.edu/100.
About the University of Rochester:
The University of Rochester is one of the nation’s leading private research universities, one of only 62-member institutions in the Association of American Universities. Located in Rochester, NY, the University gives undergraduates exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.