By
THIRSTY
Mark Campbell wrote the libretto
for Silent Night, a modern American
opera about World War I, and it won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music. During
his career, he has written more than 15 librettos and has worked with the
pre-eminent composers of our day, including three Pulitzer Prize winners. He
has been nominated for a Grammy, won two Richard Rogers Awards from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been nominated three times for the
Drama Desk Award.
It was Stay Thirsty Magazine’s great pleasure to visit with Mark Campbell,
the librettist at the forefront of contemporary opera, for this Conversation.
STAY THIRSTY: Your range of work is quite extraordinary, from World
War I to The Shining to The Manchurian Candidate to Volpone and now to Steve Jobs. What
motivates you to accept a commission to write the libretto for a contemporary
opera?
MARK CAMPBELL: My work is pretty much split down the middle between
creating original stories for new opera or adapting existing works into
librettos from other works. Commissions for my operas have come about in many
different ways: I’ve been able to suggest or come up with story ideas (As One, Elizabeth Cree, The Manchurian Candidate,
Volpone, Today It Rains, Later The Same Evening, etc.); or companies
commissioning the works have suggested them (Silent
Night, The Shining); or composers I work with have suggested them (The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Dinner at
Eight).
STAY THIRSTY: Once you accept a commission for an opera, what is the
process you follow from first impression to actually completing of the
libretto?
MARK CAMPBELL: Many people don’t realize that the libretto comes
before the music in the writing of most contemporary opera. I start with an
outline and identify moments that take advantage of the operatic form – arias,
ensembles, parlando, choruses, etc. – and refine that outline many times until
there is no choice but to start “filling in” the words. If the structure is
sound and all of the events are laid in securely, then the words will write
themselves. When it comes to the actual writing, I sort of become a method
librettist and write through a
character instead of for a character.
After the first draft of the libretto is finished, I like the stage director of
the opera to review it before submitting it to the composer so that any
dramaturgical issues are corrected. Then it goes to the composer – which begins
a whole new level of collaboration. I am essentially “on call” when a composer
starts setting the text – revising to meet the musical demands he or she may
need. Fortunately, many composers I work with are also excellent dramatists:
Kevin Puts, Paul Moravec, Bill Bolcom, Rene Orth, John Musto, Mason Bates,
Julian Grant, just to name a few.
STAY THIRSTY: Five of the operas you have worked on recently will
all be performed in 2017. How do you keep so many projects up in the air at the
same time?
MARK CAMPBELL: It’s actually six, if you include The Summer King, for which I wrote additional lyrics and served as
dramaturge. It’s sometimes tricky to be working on so many projects, but I
really love what I do and love the composers I get to work with. What is daunting is the administrative work
and promotion that goes along with every opera.
STAY THIRSTY: How did winning the Pulitzer Prize for Silent Night change your career?
MARK CAMPBELL: Technically, the Pulitzer Prize in Music goes only to
the
composer – in this case the brilliant and wonderfully collaborative Kevin
Puts. But most people in the industry know that an opera is written by both a
composer and a librettist. It certainly put me “on the map” and helped double
the number of commissions I received.
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| Mark Campbell |
STAY THIRSTY: The distance traveled from two of your new operas, Dinner at Eight, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, seems
pretty extreme, from a comedy of manners to a biography of a tech titan who
transformed 21st century communication. Do you prefer to work in one
particular time period or genre vs. others? Are you more comfortable with the
music and language in one era vs. another?
MARK CAMPBELL: A story is a story. If the audience is not given a
character to care about, to spend a couple of hours with, to want to hear sing,
they won’t care about any story, no matter when it is set. I do spend many
hours researching a subject and learning about the world I’m about to help
create. For example, I’m writing an opera about Georgia O’Keeffe that I’ve set
on the train ride she took from New York to Santa Fe in 1929 and have recently
taken that same train twice just to see what it feels like.
STAY THIRSTY: What role does contemporary American opera play in
society today? Is it likely to expand the traditional opera audience because
people can relate to current storylines?
MARK CAMPBELL: I would like to think we have entered a golden age of
American opera in the past ten or so years. The creation of new operas has
escalated dramatically and the audience for them has grown along with that.
Paul Moravec’s and my opera, The Shining,
for example, was the biggest hit in Minnesota Opera’s long history. The story
about a transgender person I created with co-librettist Kimberly Reed for the
chamber opera As One has helped it
become one of the most performed operas in the country right now. I think
audiences just want stories that they can relate to and are a bit tired of the
old repertory.
STAY THIRSTY: What do you tell aspiring lyricists about their future
in the musical theatre?
MARK CAMPBELL: Well, I started as a lyricist and I believe that if
you can learn that craft expertly, you can write anything. It was relatively easy becoming an opera librettist
because my training as a lyricist taught me, for one thing, how to use the
fewest words possible to make the most impact. I have created libretto-writing
programs at four organizations in this country – American Opera Projects,
American Lyric Theatre, the American Opera Initiative and the University of
Colorado’s New Opera Workshop – and I often talk about how important it is to
learn the lyricist’s craft.
STAY THIRSTY: What do you have in store for 2018?
MARK CAMPBELL: Rest. Many productions of Silent Night and As One…an
oratorio with Paul Moravec for the Oratorio Society of New York…and, I hope,
rest.
(Dinner at Eight video courtesy of the Minnesota Opera)
(Mark Campbell photo credit: Laura Marie Duncan)
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