Prince Music Theater, Philadelphia
- Thursday, May 17, 2012 - 8pm
- Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 8pm
- Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 2pm
Music and Libretto by Daniel Catán
Based on the novel by Antonio Skármeta, and the film by Michael Radford
Sung in Spanish with English translated projections.
SYNOPSIS
Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has been exiled from his homeland for his communist beliefs. He now lives with his wife on the island of Cala di Sotto, off the southern coast of Italy. Mario Ruoppolo starts a job as a postman on the island and, after arriving at Neruda’s home for a delivery, tells Neruda he would like to be a poet as well so women can fall in love with him. Neruda tells Mario to look for metaphors in the world around him.
Mario enters a cafe bar and has an encounter with a beautiful young women who works there named Beatrice. Mario tells Neruda he has fallen in love and asks him to write a poem for Beatrice, but Neruda declines saying he can’t write about someone he doesn’t know. Mario attempts to write, but the only thing that comes to him is one of Neruda’s poems, which he writes down.
In the second act, Beatrice’s aunt Donna Rosa continuously thwarts Mario’s attempts to express his love to Beatrice. Outraged by Mario’s use of endearing metaphors, Donna Rosa shows up at Neruda’s home and threatens to shoot Mario if she sees him again. That night, Mario and Beatrice run away together.
Mario and Beatrice get married. During the reception at the cafe, a telegram for Neruda states that he can return to his homeland of Chile.
In act three, Neruda leaves for Chile, promising Mario that he will write to him. Saddened, Mario is unable to write any more poetry. He begins to follow news reports of Neruda’s travels around the world. Neruda is quoted, stating he misses the island, but makes no reference to his friends.
Di Cosimo, a politician who promised to bring running water to the island, has won office. When Mario states his doubts about the fulfillment of this promise, Di Cosimo declares Mario a communist. Mario discovers that Beatrice is pregnant and decides they should move to Chile.
Mario is thrilled to receive his first letter from Chile, only to find it is an impersonal letter from Neruda’s secretary with instructions on where to send items Neruda left behind. Mario and his friend Giorgio find Neruda’s tape recorder and use it to roam and collect sounds of the island.
Neruda finally visits the island again. He enters the cafe and encounters Beatrice and Mario’s young son. Beatrice explains that Neruda had inspired Mario to write poetry for the poor and weak residents of the island. However, when reading a poem at a communist demonstration, Mario was killed in a violent outburst.
Beatrice gives Neruda the recording Mario had made for him. He listens to the tape, in which Mario thanks him for bringing poetry into his life.
Reference: http://www.laopera.com/production/1011/postino/synopsis.aspx
DANIEL CATÁN
The music of Daniel Catán (April 3, 1949 – April 8, 2011) is among the most significant and best-loved of any composer in the 20th century. Known principally as a composer of operas, Catán’s ouevre spans works for orchestra, chamber music, and art song, as well as music for film and television, music theater, and even traditional Latin pop. His opera, Rappaccini’s Daughter, was among the first Spanish language operas ever produced by a notable opera company in the United States (by San Diego Opera in 1994), and he is primarily responsible for the adoption and popularization of the Spanish language in contemporary opera and art song. A keenly interesting departure from this lifelong mission, his last opera—the unfinished Meet John Doe—would be his first major opera with a libretto written entirely in English.
Catán experienced an extraordinarily cosmopolitan upbringing and superior education on multiple continents. Born in Mexico City of Russian Sephardic Jewish heritage, his mother felt it was important for him to receive proper instruction in reading and playing music, and, so, piano lessons began. His father, who loved to sing boleros and Cuban son, instilled in the boy a love of the human voice.
In 1963 and while still a young teenager, Catán moved to England, where he was admitted to boarding school. He continued his piano studies in England, showed promise on the instrument, and won local performance competitions. It was while in England as a teen that Catán was first introduced to opera during long hours of listening to LPs with friends. Remaining in England as a young adult, Catán took degrees in philosophy at the University of Sussex, and also in music at the University of Southampton. In 1973, during his early 20's, He moved to the United States to complete his studies in composition, where he received a Ph.D. from Princeton University under the care of noted American pedagogue and serialist composer, Milton Babbitt, as well as with James K. Randall and Benjamin Boretz. In addition to philosophy and music, Catán was an avid scholar of literature, and the critical review of works by Spanish writers and poets served to augment his activity as a composer throughout his life.
Upon completing his university studies in 1977, Catán returned to Mexico, taking a post as an administrator at the Palacio de Belles Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City. Apart from his duties at the Palace of Fine Arts, he founded and conducted a small chamber orchestra, allowing him to hone his skill as an orchestrator. His first opera, Encuentro en el ocaso, had him bringing his own living room furniture to the stage.
Fascinated by oriental music, Catán pursued and received a scholarship to live and study in Japan during the late 80's. His experience in Japan informed his compositional style, and influenced later musical works, including, for example, his duet for harp and flute, Encantamiento.
As a result of his essays about and correspondence with Mexican literary titan Octavio Paz, Catán developed a friendship with the great writer. Paz's La hija de Rappaccini (Rappaccini’s Daughter)—written in 1956 and based on the short story of the same name by Hawthorne—served as the subject matter for Catán’s most notable early opera. The 1991 world premiere of Rappaccini’s Daughter, brought to the stage by his friend and conductor Eduardo Diazmuñoz, failed to achieve the critical success the composer needed, even though Catán’s time in Japan had convinced him it was necessary to discard his initial score and rewrite it entirely anew prior to its premiere in Mexico City. Subsequently, he found himself despairing over his future prospects. To support himself, the composer took a job as a loan officer at a local bank.
When Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, this turn of events—along with the promotional efforts of John Dwyer, an American poet and diplomat working for the U.S. Information Agency—recast much needed international attention on Catán’s operatic setting of Paz's play. The media descended on the composer at the bank much to the composer’s joy and the suprise of his co-workers, especially as cameramen co-opted the use of the bank manager’s office to photograph and interview him. In addition to facilitating recordings of Rapaccinni to U.S. opera houses, Dwyer helped arranged for Catán to visit them in person. This led to a March 1994 booking of Rappaccini’s Daughter in San Diego, where the opera commitment to opera and his role as a major proponent for the use of the Spanish language in opera. It also convinced Catán that the United States, home of the largest Spanish-speaking populaton outside of Mexico, was soon to be the epicenter of Latin American culture.
Further exploration in long forms and motivic development in support of a narrative pointed Catán toward the allure of film and television music. Catán’s ability to crossover into multiple stylistic practices while crafting entirely accessible tunes was made evident with his music for the 1994 telenovela, El vuelo del águila (The Flight of the Eagle)—an immensely popular historical romance focused on the life and times of late Mexican president, Porfiro Diaz. The soundtrack was recorded in the fall of 1993 also under the baton of Diazmuñoz, who later led the orchestra for the U.S. premiere of Rappaccini in San Diego. In his first contractual negotiations with a major producer of any kind, Catán made no royalties from the success of the hit television series, the net result causing the composer to refocus his attention on music for the stage.
Lean times followed his initial acclaim in San Diego. Under tremendous financial duress, Catán continued to solicit multiple opera companies via correspondence and his recordings. David Gockley, the enterprising director of Houston Grand Opera, took interest in the ompocser’s work, and shepherded a co-commission with Los Angeles Opera and Seattle Opera. The result was Florencia en el Amazonas—a work which was inspired, like its predecessor, by another revered Latin-American author—the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The opera was immediately embraced wholeheartedly by singers and the public alike, albeit its premiere met with some degree of circumspect by Los Angeles critics until its restaging in 2004 by Opera Nova Santa Monica under the baton of Sean Bradley. Importantly, however, Florencia’s winning debut among singers in Seattle, Houston, and Los Angeles in the mid-90's, would garner an important champion of his works—legendary tenor, Placido Domingo. Catán and Domingo would forge a lasting partnership that would leave an indelible mark on the operatic landscape and on Spanish-speaking culture generally.
After the premiere of Florencia, nearly eight years passed before the completion of his next major work, Salsipuedes, a Tale of Love, War, and Anchovies—interesting not only for its Carribean flavor, but for its orchestration, which dispenses entirely with violins and violas. The libretto for Salsipuedes was drafted by Catán’s close friend, the cuban writer Eliseo Alberto, son of Eliseo Diego, whom Marquez regarded as “...one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language”. After receiving the commission for Salsipuedes, the composer traveled to Cuba and then to Miami, where his interest in music from his father's homeland started to grow.
Cuba had always played a significant influence in the composer’s life. Catán’s grandfather had immigrated from Turkey, but had made a five year stopover in Cuba while in en route to Mexico, presumably falling in love with the culture there, thereby influencing Catán’s father, and in turn Catán himself.
Upon landing in Miami, Catán looked for steadier employment to sustain his composing. At first, he considered New York, and did indeed move to there, but felt it less than furtive ground for his true calling. Ultimately, Catán was introduced to a post at the College of the Canyons in Los Angeles county by former student and head of the college’s composition department, Bernardo Feldman. It was during this time, too, that Catán connected with a romantic interest first sparked while he was an administrator in Mexico City: Andrea Puente—former principal harpist of the Orquesta del Teatro de Bellas Artes—would become a major influence on the composer, and, upon re-uniting with her in Los Angeles, the two would be married a few years later. Catán’s increasing use of the harp in his operas and chamber music is plainly evident—and his composition of Encantimiento for flute and harp was written expressly for her and her long time collaborator, flutist Salpy Kirkonian. Catan references his wife subtlely but directly in the libretto for his next major work—an opera that would become a watershed moment for him, and the crowning jewel of his career during his lifetime.
Il Postino was an opera that almost never came to be. Catán—having explored well the rich literary traditions of Latin America—was challenged to some degree by the collaborative process of working with librettists. Having since developed a compelling and wholly unique story model demanding a more seamless integration of words and music, the composer labored to find inspiration for a new work capable of following and surpassing his previous operatic successes. Finally, Catán found that inspiration in a screenplay which straddled both comedy and tragedy alike. The film Il Postino is the fictitious account of a relationship between real life Chilean poetry star Pablo Neruda, and a provincial mailman, Mario Ruoppolo. The setting is a small italian island where Mario aspires to learn poetry from the revered master of words in order to win the love of his life. Prior to having a commission in hand, Catán risked significant personal expense to acquire the rights to use the screenplay as the basis of his new opera. The composer and his wife traveled to Italy to secure the rights of the story by appealing directly to the heirs of Massimo Troisi—the writer and star of Il Postino. The task was a delicate and daunting one, insomuch as their were five heirs to the Troisi estate, brothers and sisters.
The role of Neruda was written especially by Catán for Placido Domingo, and with Domingo’s input. Moreover, the composer drew upon a circle of close musician friends to help vet the orchestration. But, by this point in his career, Catán had already obtained complete and total mastery of his craft, both as a storyteller and composer. Il Postino served to galvanize Catán’s fan base internationally, and reinvigorated Los Angeles Opera has an institution which commissioned and presented new music. Immediately following the premiere, free public video screenings of the Los Angeles Opera performance were presented in the city’s center under the auspices of Catán’s close friend, presenter Michael Alexander. Near riotous applause confirmed Catán’s music had found its way into the consciousness of contemporary culture—bridging great art with popular appeal.
Even so, the composer, after decades of artistic toil and financial struggle, and with retirement looming, Catán considered devoting himself more intensely to teaching the next generation of opera composers. Having won a commission from the University of Texas in Austin, and and an opportunity to cultivate a potential post at the University, he took up a visiting professorship there. In Austin, he poured himself into the venerable task of mentoring young musicians and singers, while painstakingly committing to paper what would be his last contribution to the operatic repertoire.
Like Il Postino before it, Meet John Doe is based on a screenplay. Il Postino explores the nature of art itself, the role of the artist and his or her admirers, as well as romance, and the tragic insertion of politics between these fragile human relationships. Meet John Doe, however, is intended to be a radical departure, highlighting instead the story of everyman’s struggle against and reconciliation with the will of society at large. Whereas, one could argue in Catán’s previous operas—if it is possible to tease from them hints of an autobiography—the composer most frequently framed his own point of view in the role of a captain, as a patriarchal leader. Moreover, whereas Florencia tells the story of a character in search of her messiah, Meet John Doe tells an even more deeply raw and personal story—the story of one man’s confrontation with forces bigger than himself, a story of personal sacrifice and salvation. While Catán regularly stamped the presentation of his themes with a uniquely Latin perspective, Meet John Doe incorporates decidedly North American colors into its music, and even playfully incorporates the rhythms and harmonies of vintage, mid-century pop music—transporting us easily back into the era of big bands and dancehalls.
While the characteristics of Catán’s music considered as an original and signature style includes a penchant toward symmetrical formal structures, shimmering polytonal harmonies, lush and inventive orchestrations, perfect elision between background accompaniments and gratuitously linear and diatonic vocal melodies, all of which are propelled by world rhythms and the inventive inclusion of musical devices ranging from folkloric to pop...it is these musical constructs coupled with a deep understanding of story which drives the success of his works. Impeccable pacing, and the stirring juxtaposition of linear but diametrically opposed plot and character elements are characteristic of the composer’s use of language. The overarching impression is invariably romantic and charming, while yet remaining sophisticated, worldly, and highly accessible among the broadest sampling of listeners. Like Puccini, a composer to whom Catán was frequently compared, the maestro left us before his last opera could be finished, but not before his music would echo on forever. Upon listening to both, the man and his music makes devoted friends of us all.
Bio from catanfoundation.org
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