STAGING POSSIBILITIES:

EDITH WHARTON, the opera, augurs well for a critical success and offers fruitful possibilities for developing audiences and support.

THE MUSIC

• EDITH WHARTON offers a major vehicle for a soprano and a tenor, plus primary roles for mezzo, tenor, baritone and bass.

• Myron Fink writes compellingly for the voice, and his operas have earned the respect of many singers, e.g., CHINCHILLA, premiered by Richard Leech; THE CONQUISTADOR, premiered by Jerry Hadley, Elizabeth Hynes, Vivica Genaux, Adria Firestone, Kenneth Cox, et al.

• Myron Fink is a seasoned composer whose work is praised consistently by instrumentalists and conductors alike.

• The style – somewhere between mildly-dissonant tonal and neo-romantic tonal -- may encourage opera patrons who are otherwise hesitant to approach contemporary opera.

THE SUBJECT

• Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is America’s pre-eminent woman of letters, 1921 winner of the first Pulitzer Prize given to a woman for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. She created more than 40 volumes ranging from novels and novellas to landmark works on landscape design, interior decoration and architecture: she herself influenced a shift in American architecture against Victorian excess in design.

• Edith Wharton is also a feminist icon, an inspiring role model. Born to a life of privilege in the Victorian era, she transcended enormous personal obstacles to find her authentic self, and expressed it in prodigious writings that illuminate the Gilded Era in American history and literature.

• Edith Wharton moved in the highest social circles. She was acquainted with the major literary figures of the time: Henry James was a personal friend, and is also a character in the opera. The political world was also hers: Teddy Roosevelt was a friend.

• New York City was Edith Wharton’s birthplace and primary sphere of influence.

• Edith Wharton lived and wrote in the era in which the Metropolitan Opera was created: it was founded by her friends. (She, herself, was instrumental in establishing the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Though her family was more aligned with the old Academy of Music than the “new” Metropolitan Opera populated with the nouveaux riches (on whom Wharton often looked down), clearly she found them fascinating and there is no doubt she herself loved opera.

• Many of her novels incorporate allusions to opera, primarily as a major social event—a place to see and be seen; there is a particularly extended reference in AGE OF INNOCENCE.

• Other centers of Edith Wharton’s influence include Boston, Washington, D.C., London (site of the International Edith Wharton Society conference in 2003) and Paris. Edith Wharton was recognized in France as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for her work in France with refugees in World War I.

• Edith Wharton’s estate near Boston –- “The Mount” in Lenox, MA – was renovated for its 100th anniversary in 2002. It continues to draw visitors to educational programs, a tribute to the power of her continuing impact: http://www.edithwharton.org/

• The Edith Wharton Society continues to track the impact of her life and her work by convening international meetings and offering a comprehensive website to encourage continuing scholarship: http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/wharton/

THE STORY

• EDITH WHARTON is a memory play in which Edith Wharton, the great American writer, looks back on her life. She relives her struggle to realize herself as a woman and a writer in a time that tried to throttle both aspirations.

• The characters from three of her novels -- AGE OF INNOCENCE, ETHAN FROME, HOUSE OF MIRTH -- help explore the relationship between the creator and the creation.

• The opera ends on a note of triumph as she rises above her fear and despair, and begins her final novel, THE BUCCANEERS.

• The libretto also offers insight into her childhood (taunting brothers and exasperated mother), her unconsummated marriage, her social milieu, her friendship with those who encouraged her to discover her own voice and write, her expatriate life in France, her reaction to World War I and the coming of the Jazz Age and World War II.

THE PRODUCTION

• The opera is set in the garden of Edith Wharton’s residence at Pavillon Colombe near Paris.

• As the story of Edith’s life emerges and unfolds from within her own memory and subconscious, as in a dream, the setting or background is an extension of the scrapbook she is reading in the opening: a suspended or projected collage of hundreds of photographs of faces and places she has known, covers of her books, press clippings, etc. They can appear or vanish, be enlarged or reduced, blurred or sharply focused as the scenes require.

• Staging EDITH WHARTON offers possibilities from simple to opulent, from photo montage to scenes of the Gilded Age.

• Although panoramic in its scope, singing resources can be condensed by casting most singers in multiple roles.

THE IMPACT

• EDITH WHARTON is an inspiring story that encourages individuals to summon the courage to discover their authentic voice and to express it.

• Edith Wharton’s life – her experiences, her interests and the world she illuminates in her writings -- will resonate among the people who attend and support opera.

• The box office success of recent films of Wharton novels may draw new audiences from popular culture and attract Hollywood support: THE AGE OF INNOCENCE with Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder; ETHAN FROME with Liam Neeson; HOUSE OF MIRTH with Jillian Anderson from the X-FILES.

• Because EDITH WHARTON is historically-based, the opera offers fruitful possibilities for broad scale educational marketing and outreach programs (e.g., the Gilded Age in American history, American literature, women’s studies). Edith Wharton also represents American expatriate literature: more than half of her life was lived in France, divided between one home near Paris and another on the Riviera.

• Historical and literary veracity in the libretto will make EDITH WHARTON an appropriate entry opera for high school students whose curriculum usually includes her works.

• EDITH WHARTON is the 5th opera Myron Fink has written in collaboration with librettist Don Moreland. Their last collaboration was THE CONQUISTADOR, premiered by San Diego Opera in 1997: it received sold-out performances in a city where Fink’s operas had not been heard; people still talk about the power of that production.