PODCAST: S03E02 Heart of a Dog Revisited
Photo by Anthony Scibilia Photography (Heart of a Dog, 2010)
In June Guerilla Opera will revisit one of our favorite productions, the Heart of a Dog 2010 revival production directed by Copeland Woodruff. In anticipation of our watch party, ensemble pianist Tae Kim interviews composer Rudolf Rojahn and percussionist Mike Williams, both co-founding artists and former co-artistic directors of Guerilla Opera.
Heart of a Dog was the first opera written for Guerilla Opera, premiered in 2007. The creative and innovative 2010 production took Guerilla Opera to the next level and put us on the map as not only a musically exceptional group, but also theatrically adventurous.
Tae Kim: One of the first impressions I got from the opera is that it deviates quite a bit from the Novella by Bulgakov.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, well the...You know...It’s a wonderful novella. I remember the time I really wanted to write an opera, and the biggest questions at stake were “How could we possibly do that?” Right like we’ve never done an opera before..I mean there was no group or anything, I just kind of wanted to write an opera. So picking that piece was very strategic because we knew we wanted the operas to be much shorter than conventional operas, so I was planning on mine being a half an hour long, and so I wanted to pick something, that first of all, would fit in the amount of time we had, and so the book was very attractive that way. The other thing is that there’s not a lot of characters in the book, and as we tried to put the project together, we basically said like “Okay, what voices and instruments can we get?” and we came up with these two quartets, a vocal quartet, and an instrumental quartet. And so, a lot of it was very practical. Basically like “This seems like a story you could tell in half an hour, that has a beginning, middle, and end, and also just kind of totally wacky,” ..The changes in the book..I mean really, the book is pretty different from the opera. One of the big changes is that, there’s too many male characters in the novella, and se we had two singers who were female, and two singers who were male, so that kind of demanded that you know..one of these roles be female, so we made the dog female..I love that idea, because it just opened up all kinds of slightly creepy, you know kind of sexual issues that the opera kind of explores a little bit, and so that I found kind of interesting, I mean I loved the Novella, but I think I read it and then basically just wrote my own opera six months after having last read it, you know I did..I was not like going through the pages of the Novella. I just kind of like “Here’s my version of it” so it’s not particularly faithful, but I do think it captures the spirit of it. You know, like the fast pace, and the kind of hecticness, and the insanity of it.
Tae Kim: This was essentially conceived with the premiere of the group in mind, right?
Rudolf Rojahn: Right. Yeah exactly, like the group didn’t exist, and so the group was kind of created out of necessity to make this opera happen, so I happened to be good friends with a great singer and a great percussionist, and they were of similar minds we had done obviously a lot of projects together before that, and so we just kind of banded together, and said like “Let’s make an opera company here, and this will be the first thing we do,” and it was..I mean.. We were totally naive, and in how prepared we were to do it, I mean none of us..Aliana was a singer and had done operas, but I..you know, we were talking about staging, and pieces, you know doing a fully staged version with lights, and you know, music and you know, we just had no experience with any of that stuff, and it was like three months before the premiere where we were like..thought the idea was really solid, so everything happened in a very short amount of time. And that’s kind of one of my biggest memories of it...And then when it all really felt like it all came together, it was a wonderful feeling.
Tae Kim: So, Mike, how was that like, working with Rudy?
Mike Williams: I mean.. We were friends, and kind of colleagues for years prior to that, so we already kind of had like a solid working relationship, but yeah it’s kind of firmly imprinted on my mind just cause it was the genesis of Guerilla Opera..And it was kind of like us collaborating to bring all the collaborators together for the whole project I think, and the way we approached it was sort of less about what the instruments were and what the voice types necessarily were, it was more about bringing together the right group of people that were interested and kind of likeminded people to do a project like this, just cause it was kind of fundamentally ambitious, just that it was kind of an unconducted piece that had a lot of virtuosic, reformative elements to it as well.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, it wasn’t a huge...there weren’t a lot of possible people we could employ because the piece is enormously difficult, and the schedule was tight, and so we had to pick people who were super passionate about the music, and about new music period, and we really found them and I think that’s the magic of the group, it’s that cohesiveness that you build, and when you have the right personalities, you know, that’s what really makes the thing sing, as opposed to whether you got a clarinet or a violin. Right, it doesn’t matter as long as the guy playing it, or the girl playing it is on board one hundred percent.
Mike Williams: Right, and so the collaboration leading up to the performance was more about that, and so finding a stage director, and finding some kind of production personnel, basically to form the whole production ultimately… And then kind of, you know, the circumstances that we ended up with, kind of ended up defining Guerilla Opera’s, kind of, performative style from that point on. So this quartet of singers and this quartet of instruments, and just a smaller group of people in general, so that everyone’s kind of role is amplified by virtue of that.
Tae Kim: Great. Another lasting impression I had as an audience member was not having to sit, which was unusual to see to say the least.
Mike Williams: That’s interesting because when we initially premiered the piece, this is not the production that Guerilla Opera has up for viewing. This is the second production that we did of the piece, when we worked with the director, Copeland Woodruff, and he really kind of.. Totally reenvisioned what the piece was, and so it’s interesting that, you know “Heart Of A Dog” was Guerilla Opera’s first piece and we kind of formed a model of the group from that experience, but then when we redid it with Copeland, it was the first time we had redone a piece, which kind of gave the director an opportunity to really know the piece, cause there was a recording, and the score was readily available in advance, and so he completely re envisioned and really took us a step further dramatically that I think we had ever been. So, that whole idea and that concept of having the audience stand, adding a carnival barker, and having us move through the space was really a new experience for the group. I think, much more ambitious and experimental type of staging, when previously we had really been focused on the experimental nature of the music. So, he really pushed things further in that regard.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, you know, the first time that we did it, it was just kind of by our bootstraps, and the director did a great job with what we had to give her, but by the time we redid it, I think we were in a more sophisticated place as a group, but also, Copeland kind of brought this vision to the piece that was just… Was singular, kind of immediately felt like home. I remember talking to him about his ideas for some of the Steampunk aesthetic, and the idea of kind of, the dirty side of a carnival was where these things were unfolding. There was a darkness to his vision that just, like, matched perfectly, and it was the moving around, because the piece is so short. I feel like, you could almost never demand that an audience stand, but if it’s a piece that is thirty five minutes long where you move multiple times. You know, it’s possible. During the production, it was challenging. Like, depending on how the crowd moved, you might not always see everything that was happening. So, there was - which was kind of a wonderful thing - but also the experience was different every time you saw the piece because you were kind of peeking around a corner in a different way, or seeing people kind of move in the background in a different way, so it was a wonderful production.
Tae Kim: The set definitely had a surreal, if not unnerving feel to it.
Mike Williams: Like carnival funhouse, or kind of a haunted house kind of a vibe, in that regard, and it also is like pretty brilliant, cause like still we were operating on pretty tight constraints by opera company standards.. And having the audience move in a circle around the space, it was a way to totally transform each scene of the piece without having to have any elaborate set pieces, or any extreme lighting changes, or anything like that. Every scene kind of has its own identity, visually, and its own kind of feel because the perspective of the audience is transformed in each scene in that way. So, it actually is... it’s like a brilliant production in that regard. It’s just so in sync with the piece musically.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, and I think the other thing that it lends itself - that’s so wonderful about it - is that the proximity of your ears to the bass drum, or the singer’s voice, you were so much closer, there was like a viseral-ness to it. It was almost like a rock element to it, you can feel the pulse of the music, ‘cause you’re so close to it, and it’s so loud. Which has its upsides, and downsides, but I certainly am into that, big time.
Mike Williams: It also just fixed some of those balance problems...
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah.
Mike Williams: They were so close to the audience, as well as the instruments, but you just didn’t have to worry about, you know, if the audience is at a distance, the space the acoustic of the space kind of blends everything together in a way, that makes balancing things much more difficult, but because the audience was just right along the performers, it changed it in that regard a lot as well, which was kind of this nice bonus.
Tae Kim: Anything to add about this production?
Rudolf Rojahn: One of the unfortunate things is that you don’t really get to see the Carnival Barker, and so in that production there was this actor, a wonderful actor, who was a carnival barker, so when the audience arrived at the site of the theater, he was already there, kind of interacting with them, making jokes, kind of criticizing them, and he was the person who led them through the production, as it happened, and he would kind of direct people this way and that and kind of be interacting with the audience, as it was happening, and that was another element that unfortunately the video doesn’t really capture, but I think like, in the moment for the people who went to it, that was a pretty… that was stamped on their mind as part of the experience.
Mike Williams: Yeah the production kind of necessitated having a stagehand, or somebody to kind of shepherd the audience through the space for scene, and having the carnival barker kind of do that made it like, a part of the show, and a part of the experience, without having to kind of break…. Sort of break the fourth wall of the show or whatever. You know, stop the show and move everybody around, it’s like he was a part of the show, and he could direct everyone through, and just that he was such a fantastic actor, he was hilarious, and so comfortable kind of riffing, and kind of interacting with the audience.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, a super talented guy.
Mike Williams: Yeah, it’s unfortunate that the video doesn’t capture all that.
Tae Kim: Yeah I mean, there was a moment, I remember I, I think you guys were changing a scene and I remember that he was barking at the audience saying “Nothing to see here, nothing to see here!”
Rudolf Rojahn: *Laughs
Tae Kim: Let’s talk more about the set.
Rudolf Rojahn: Well, some of the other really special elements of the production that I would love to highlight was, just the production design and the lighting. Was that the first production, Mike that Julia was on board with us?
Mike Williams: Uh… Say It Ain’t So, Joe! Curtis’s [Cutis K. Hughes] piece was the first. This was the second I believe.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, and her design was just incredibly minimal, and incredibly practical, but also utterly haunting, and Tláloc López-Watermann, who did the lighting, and there was also, there was an eeriness to it. You know, the lights kind of came from all these different places at different times, and the light was like, really almost a character in the opera. Kind of guiding people and you know, revealing things, or not revealing things, it was a really special collaboration.
Mike Williams: Yeah the lighting is sometimes like a really subtle element of the piece, but it really defined the space, in terms of the haunted house element to it, and particularly some of the scenes as well, I remember the one surgery scene, where the doctor kind of taps the flickering…
Rudolf Rojahn: Yes, yeah.
Mike Williams: There were a lot of elements like that were really, really planned and like carefully orchestrated. He spent a lot of work, like actually working out those details and stuff, that totally just makes some of the scenes in the opera happen as well, and the way the lighting kind of interacts with the curtains. Just the element of design is like, really, really effective.
Tae Kim: How important was “Heart Of A Dog” for Guerilla Opera?
Mike Williams: For Guerilla Opera, I would definitely say that this is one of the most important..I mean obviously just because it’s the first piece we did, but in general it’s the most important pieces we’ve done I think because we did it so much. We did the production in several different places and at several different times, so it’s really our most performed piece, and just because it was the first piece we did, and it was this, kind of landmark production for us with Copeland. It’s just a hugely memorable piece for Guerilla Opera in general.
Rudolf Rojahn: Yeah, it’s definitely… I remember that production just in particular just about like everybody was incredible at their job. You know, like across the board. The design, there was so much creativity, and there was such a tight bond with the group, and it’s just, really, a lot of great memories of that production.
This concludes this episode of the Guerilla Opera podcast. Thank you for tuning in, and I hope to see you at the watch party of Rojahn’s Heart Of A Dog on June 18, 2020 at 6pm. ‘Till then!
Hailed as a "highly skilled improviser" by the New York Times and "prickly and explosive" by the Montreal Gazette, Tae Kim has gained widespread recognition as a classical pianist and improvisational artist. His innovative "Walk on the wild side" by Lou Reed concert at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Salle d'Institut in Orléans, France, featured not only his classical improvisation on the very song by Lou Reed but traditional repertoire ranging from Robert Schumann to rarely heard Olivier Greif. His unique talent for classical improvisation earned him "Prix d'interprétation André Chevillion–Yvonne Bonnaud" for the premiere of his work, "Translate (2016)" at the 12e Concours international de piano d'Orléans, as well as "Prix–Mention Spéciale Edison Denisov". Part of the Piano at South Station, Tae regularly played on Thursdays in the middle of a train station amidst the confused if not pleased onlookers and travelers. He has soloed with many ensembles, including Cambridge Philharmonic, Yurodivy Chamber Orchestra, Hemenway Strings, and Boston Conservatory Orchestra. The Boston Globe praised his "sparkling performance" of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto with the BCO as a "glimpse of radiant talent". Avid collaborator, Tae has partnered with "America's most wired composer" Tod Machover in such productions as Central Square Theatre's 2012 play "Remembering H.M.", part of the 2013 Edinburgh Festival's "Repertoire Remix" and as one of the presenters in "Reconstructing Beethoven's Improvisations" at MIT.
Rudolf Rojahn is a composer of contemporary art music. A founding artist and the formerly Co-Artistic Director of Guerilla Opera, he was the composer-in-residence for Boston’s Ludovico Ensemble from 2005-2010, a collaboration that resulted in several pieces including Antikythera Mechanism for bass clarinet and ensemble. He has also been commissioned and performed by the Quincy Symphony Orchestra, Juventas New Music Ensemble, the Lorelei Ensemble, the Arbelos Trio, Gabriela Diaz, Kent O’Doherty, Rane Moore, and the Green Light Consortium among others. From 2004-2006 he ran the Proletariat Tanning Salon, an event series pairing young composers and visual artists such as Camille Wainer and Nicole Margaretten. He has written three opera for Guerilla Opera: Heart of a Dog (2007), We are Sons (2009), and Bovinus Rex (2012).
Hailed by The Boston Globe as “one of the city's best percussionists,” Mike Williams has performed throughout North America and Europe and is a regular performer in Boston. An advocate for contemporary music, he is a member of Sound Icon, the Callithumpian Consort, and is a founding member of Guerilla Opera, serving as its artistic director for eleven seasons. Mike has worked with many of the leading composers of our time including Pierluigi Billone, Philippe Leroux, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gunther Schuller, Roger Reynolds and Michael Finnissy, and he has been involved in numerous recordings on labels such as Cantaloupe, BMOP/sound, Albany, and Northwest Classics. He was a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and has performed at festivals including the Festival de Mexico, Gaudeamus Music Week, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Monadnock Music, New Hampshire Music Festival, and SICPP at New England Conservatory. Mike studied at Boston Conservatory, winning top prize in the concerto competition, and the Amsterdam Conservatory during which time he regularly performed with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra under Peter Eötvös. Mike is on the music theory faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.