WROTE 'CARRY NATION'
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Composer desires 'fun' theatre
—Photo by Ric Dickerson
COMPOSER DOUGLAS MOORE "I want the audience to say, 'This is fun.'"
By Cheryl Hentsch
By Cheryl Hentson
Six hundred pages of music . . .
two years of intensive work . . . a
total of two hours of continuous
sound . . . the equivalent of four
symphonies.
This is "Carry Nation."
Fultizer Prize-winner Douglas Moore composed the opera, which has its world premiere April 28 in Murphy Hall. He was commissioned to create an opera with a Kansas setting to commemorate the KU centennial. Moore is the 1965-66 Rose Morgan visiting professor and KU composer-in-residence.
THE WHITE-HAired, grandfatherly man quietly discussed American opera and the KU production one day recently.
"I try to make opera an experience people will enjoy. Good opera is musical theater, not the stuffy drama most people think.
"I want the audience to come i. and enjoy the performance, to say, 'This is fun.'"
Prof. Moore thinks Midwestern audiences will accept "Carry." Lighting a cigarette, he explained that American opera audiences are extremely critical. The composer and librettist must choose lines which, when sung, will sound natural to the audience. The characters must be believable. Audiences would never believe George Washington or Peter Pan singing opera.
HOWEVER, CARRY Nation, the Kansas saloon smasher and central figure in "Carry," has what Prof. Moore believes to be the desired operatic qualities. She appeals to the imagination. She is colorful and definitely alive. She is real.
Old act set sexes apart
In the beginning state officials separated KU men and women students into two University branches. Women were taught exclusively by women and buildings teaching each branch were separate until 1889.
An opera in two acts, "Carry" depicts the formidable apostle of temperance before she received national attention. A rising prologue shows Carry and her squad of hatchet-swinging followers destroying a "joint" in Topeka. A flashback portrays the romantic story of young Carry at the close of the Civil War, her marriage to an army captain and physician, and his death two years later from alcoholism, which gave impetus to her crushing career.
The opera humanizes Carry,
Prof. Moore noted.
"SHE IS THE fanatic everyone knows her to be, but then, a fanatic could be anyone's neighbor. Her personality plus circumstances direct her life. You see, the 'tornado-on-wheels' is only one side of her character."
Artists from the Metropolitan and New York City opera companies sing the leading roles in the KU production. Dancers and other singers are KU students.
During the rehearsals when began last week, four students stand-in for the leads. April performances will feature the professional stars, but an all-student cast gives the second night performance.
This system of rehearsing the cast with stand-ins for the principals is a new experiment for KU theater.
"The idea is new, but workable," explained Prof. Moore. "It gives the school 'big-name' artists plus student participation."
LIGHTING ANOTHER cigarette and smiling broadly, he added, "You know, KU students are more enthusiastic than many professional choruses. At the New York City Opera, for example, supporting players are usually the 'rejects' who didn't make the Met. Consequently, sometimes they don't try as hard as students."
Young professional talent provides additional incentive for students to perform well. Beverly Wolff and John Reardon, Metropolitan and New York City opera stars, are singers with new careers. As new stars, they have not developed the temperamental qualities of a Tibaldi or a Jan Pierce, Prof. Moore slyly noted.
"Carry Nation" is Prof. Moore's seventh opera. His first was "White Wings." In 1938, Americans listened to Stephen Vincent Benet's "Devil and Daniel Webster" which Hollywood later made into a film.
THE 1951 opera "Giants in the Earth" received the Pulitzer Prize. Two years ago, the New York City Opera premiered Moores' "Wings of the Dove" based on Henry James' novel.
Prof. Moore's best-known work is "The Ballad of Baby Doe" which premiered in Colorado's Central City, Baby Doe's home. After winning the 1958 New York Critics Circle Award, the show became one of the few American works to be presented behind the Iron Curtain on a State Department-sponsored tour.
Many of Prof. Moore's ideas for
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operas came accidentally. The idea for "Baby Doe" occurred to Prof. Moore after reading about her death in the newspapers.
Thomas Gorton, dean of the School of Fine Arts, provided the idea for "Carry." When a meeting of history professors and KU officials failed to produce a suitable centennial story, Gorton asked if Prof. Moore had thought of Carry Nation.
THE IDEA PROVED generally acceptable to the group. Moore jokingly recalls, however, one "stuff KU professor" indignantly announced that he thought Kansas deserved something better than Carry Nation.
A composer's life is varied and full, ever-changing. Moore reflected. He presently works every morning perfecting a quartet for the 50th anniversary of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In June, the San Francisco Opera Company performs "Carry Nation."
Daily Kansan
Tuesday, March 1, 1966
7
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