It’s not often that college opera singers are given the opportunity to interpret a new opera that’s barely dry on the staff paper, but the Eastman Opera Theatre (EOT) gets such a chance with Paola Prestini’s Silent Light, to be performed in Kilbourn Hall, Thursday, October 31 through Sunday, November 3. The opera was just given a world premiere at National Sawdust in Brooklyn a month ago; now Eastman students get to make it their own.
The work was still in development when Eastman decided to take it on. “Everyone went away over the summer learning one score and came back to a new score,” says Pat Diamond, the director of production for the EOT, who stage directs Eastman’s performances of Silent Light. Timothy Long conducts.
Prestini says she is excited and honored that Eastman chose to perform this opera. “When the next generation learns your music, it feels like a real moment of arrival,” she shared. Prestini is the co-founder and artistic director of National Sawdust and happens to be married to an Eastman alumnus, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler ’95E, a former member of the Kronos Quartet who also serves as the music director of the National Sawdust Ensemble. Prestini has met with students over Zoom to talk about the opera and will be present for the collegiate premiere at Eastman.
Silent Light—an adaption from the film of the same name by Carlos Reygadas—is about the resonances of infidelity in a rural Mennonite community. Johan is married to Esther, with whom he has seven children, but has fallen in love with Marianne, a member of their community. This out-in-the-open affair has a spiraling effect, reaching beyond just the three in the love triangle, affecting their families, their support systems, and even outward to the tightly knit, structured society that they live within.
“It’s this kind of conflict between what your responsibilities are, what your duties are, and then these natural urges,” says Diamond.
These inner conflicts are represented by landscape, both in the film and in the opera. The EOT will represent this landscape as projections that will reach throughout the hall and create an immersive experience for audiences in Kilbourn Hall.
“It pulls you out of what you might think is a normal duty verses desire scenario,” says Diamond. “Because we’re dealing with inner landscapes and thinking about a visual manifestation of the conflict, and we’re not just thinking about kitchen sink realism about who these people are, it takes you out of this polarization and into this other place.”
Prestini calls this a foley opera, meaning that the score includes sound effects that bring the action on stage to aural life. For instance, the milking of cows will be produced by amplifying the sound of squirt guns on a metal bowl, something written directly into the score. Audiences will be able to see the pit musicians creating some of the sound effects, and there will be a special foley artist directing the opera’s acoustic landscape. As for the score, Diamond says that it goes in and out of soundscape textures and melodic areas.
Professor of voice Anthony Dean Griffey
The world premiere production of Silent Light featured another Eastman connection: Anthony Dean Griffey ’01E (MM), the four-time Grammy Award-winning tenor who is a professor of voice at Eastman, performed the supporting role of Zacarias. Zacarias is a friend of Johan, offering an outside perspective and advice.
In a review, The Observer wrote that Griffey “had a strong, brassy sound as metallic as the welding gear we meet him in.”
Griffey has students performing both the roles of Johan and Zacarias in Eastman’s production. He said he was learning the work alongside his students. No stranger to new music, Griffey said performing the opera’s premiere in Brooklyn was an unusual opportunity to be able to work directly with the composer.
“It was wonderful to meet with her [Paula], to be in rehearsals every day, and then to bring that back, even when I was in New York, to talk to my students, to email them, to text them, to speak with them and talk about how we were developing it,” he recalls.
He says the Eastman students are exceptionally well-prepared in comparison to the pros, who were tasked with putting together the opera in the span of only a couple weeks.
Griffey says he felt particularly drawn to the opera, as someone who grew up in a religious community and originally intended to become a music minister. Of the opera’s themes, he says, “it’s quite jarring and moving. And you realize in society how we’re often quick to judge instead of love and care about one another.”
Prestini says she’s very excited to see how her opera comes together at Eastman. “There are aspects that I am curious about, from the foley, to the electronics, to the looping elements that are exciting innovations. But I am confident, as this is a brilliant group of artists.”
Silent Light
A foley opera based on the film “Stellet Licht” by Carlos Reygadas
(Sung in English with supertitles)
Thursday, October 31–Sunday, November 3
Kilbourn Hall
Thursday–Saturday 7:30 p.m. | Sunday 2:30 p.m.
Tickets are $20 and available at the Eastman Theatre Box Office
Due to explicit content, the opera is recommended for ages 18+.
Music by Paola Prestini
Libretto by Royce Vavrek
Conducted by Timothy Long
Directed by Pat Diamond
Featured Image: Anthony Dean Griffey as Zacarias, captured by Jill Steinberg.