Stonewall (opera)
Stonewall is an American opera about the 1969 Stonewall riots, the spark of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, which received its world premiere June 2019 in conjunction with Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019, projected to be the world's largest LGBTQ event. Stonewall was commissioned by New York City Opera, and features music by Iain Bell, libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning Mark Campbell, and direction by Leonard Foglia. The production is a 2019 Pride Initiative of the NYCO, an annual production of an LGBT-focused work each June in commemoration of Gay Pride Month. The opera premiered in June 2019 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The opera was produced to honor both the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and the 75th anniversary of the NYCO. Stonewall is the first opera to feature a transgender character written for an openly transgender singer, mezzo-soprano Liz Bouk.
NYCO Pride Initiatives
Previous NYCO Pride Initiative productions have been 2018's American composer Charles Wuorinen's Brokeback Mountain based on Annie Proulx's 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain", and 2017's Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös's Angels in America, an adaptation of Tony Kushner's play. Although NYCO has been active since 1943, it was revived in 2016 after a 2013 bankruptcy after which the Pride Initiative started. Stonewall is the first commissioned work of the revived NYCO. NYCO has faced fundraising challenges because of the bankruptcy but is hoping Stonewall will help revive finances.Origins
The Stonewall Riots a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by the LGBT community against yet another police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, is widely considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.Gay Americans in the 1950s and 1960s faced an anti-gay legal system. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social/political movements were active, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the anti–Vietnam War movement. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots.
The NYCO relaunched from bankruptcy in January 2016 and had to cut the schedule from sixteen performances of four operas in 2017–18 to just Stonewall this season, plus several works in smaller venues. Stonewall was commissioned by the NYCO and its General Director Michael Capasso who matched up composer Iain Bell, and librettist Mark Campbell. They only had nine months to complete the project as although it had been shortlisted, the coincidence of the two event anniversaries coinciding had not been realized. When asked what they hoped audiences would remember from the experience they agreed, when diverse people band together they can end oppression.
Campbell was honored to do the work, even if at a very fast pace – a few weeks for the first draft, being gay and having been to the Stonewall Inn regularly. Bell worked on the score after finishing Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, he describes Stonewall as being a joy with such a diverse cast of characters to score.
Characters
Campbell based the characters on “the diverse people I’ve had the privilege to know and love as a gay man who has lived in downtown New York for several decades”, from his imagination rather than composites. He attempted to demonstrate how they were harassed in their daily lives and ultimately united “with humor, rage, and finally hope to rise up against the police”.The characters and singers who portrayed them include:
- Maggie, a butch lesbian dealing with police brutality,
- Carlos, a gay Dominican-American English teacher who loses his job,
- Renata, aka Maynard, an African-American drag queen,
- Valerie, Renata's sister, another transvestite,
- Larry, an NYPD deputy inspector,
- Sarah, a trans woman hippie celebrating the first anniversary of her transitioning,
- Edward, a closeted financial adviser,
- Andy, a white teen kicked out of his home, who lives on the streets,
- Leah, a Jewish lesbian,
- Sal, a Mafia – controlled club manager – Michael Corvino
- Troy, a straight gogo boy who is a gay-for-pay hustler and uses drugs – Joseph Beutel
- Police officers:
- *Cahn: Peter Kendall Clark
- *Giordano: John Allen Nelson
- *Andrews: Andrew Wannigman
- *Romano: Michael Kuhn
- *Economides: Julia Snowden
- *Williams: Kristin Renee Young
- *Hennessey: Michael Boley