March 29, 2024
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The Bridges of Hancock County Original Down East opera ‘The Singing Bridge’ tacles weighty subjects of family traumas

Think opera settings and you’re likely to imagine Thebes, Corinth or Nagasaki. But for a new chamber opera created and having its world premiere in Maine next weekend, Hancock, Sullivan and Stonington are the locales. “The Singing Bridge,” which will run July 8-10 at the Stonington Opera House and July 16 at the University of Maine at Machias, takes place Down East in the 1940s and 1960s. It was written by poet Beatrix Gates and scored by composer Anna Dembska, both of whom have long ties to the area. The title comes from the old steel bridge that, until recently, joined Hancock and Sullivan. The structure is best known by locals for the “singing” tones that rose from its metal base as cars sped over it.

Although the old Hancock-Sullivan Bridge was replaced with a modern span in 1999, its image lodged in the thoughts of poet Gates, a New York-based writer whose association with Hancock began in childhood and continues with the purchase of a home this year in Brooksville. Gates uses the bridge as a metaphor for connection among families, community members, history and modernity, trauma and healing. Its song is the unifying voice of the opera.

As with many traditional opera settings, “The Singing Bridge” has an allegorical plot, drawn from oral histories Gates and Dembska, who lives half the year in Hancock and half the year in New York City, collected from bridge builders, cannery workers and historical society members. The story is about two families, the Bloods and the Trues. The family worlds crash together when Alice True, a Mainer, becomes pregnant by Edward Blood, a summer resident. Fourteen years later, the child, who was given up for adoption at birth, returns to the area to work. Without knowing the identity of Edward as her father, she is seduced and impregnated by him. Her recovery from the abuse and the family secrets surrounding her mark the culmination of the show.

But to say the opera is only about sexual abuse is to miss its finer points, said the creative team. It is also about family interactions, the Maine landscapes and seascapes and about tapping into emotional realms where human experience and the natural world intersect. Gates said she wanted to set the story to music because she felt Dembska’s driving, ethereal and penetrating score for eight singers and a small orchestra would pull the audience more deeply into the story. The voices and instruments combine solo lines with textured ensemble work for provocative variations on traditional sea shanties, folk tunes, big band jazz, environmental sounds and the lilting quality of the Downeast accent.

It is, after all, a Maine opera. And local music historians could not recall another opera, particularly a contemporary one, set on the coast of Maine. That setting is as much a part of the work as the Trues, the Bloods and the old 19th-century sea captain who haunts the story.

“I wanted the story transformed by the music,” said Gates. “And it has been. The music has made the communication bigger. Music is physical. It goes through your body. For me, it’s seeing the blood pumped into the veins of the story. It comes alive in the moment. That’s very exciting.”

And challenging – because of both the subject matter and the unusual quality of the music. For many, the high-caste term “opera” can be intimidating and alienating. “It’s not a traditional opera at all,” said Dembska, recipient with Opera House Arts of Meet the Composer’s 2003 Commissioning Music-USA grant to create the new work. “We talked about calling it ‘new musical theater.’ But like opera, it has big singing, full voices, larger-than-life sound. It pushes voices to express something a pure tone won’t do. There are big operatic, aria moments, but a lot of the material is drawn from folk songs, the Andrews Sisters and country music. And I hope people will also recognize the sound of Maine.”

Director Richard Edelman places “The Singing Bridge” in both music and theater.

“It’s operatic,” he said. “It’s serious music in the great tradition of classical music – except the voices are very downtown. The audience will recognize it as opera, but it has a level of abstraction that makes it quite modern. In an ideal situation, opera is the quintessential fulfillment of the theatrical idea: enormous emotions, extreme situations. Only when you get to Shakespeare can you get to the same levels.”

Others involved with the production insist that contemporary chamber opera such as “The Singing Bridge” has something to say to today’s audience members, whether listeners have a trained ear for music or simply enjoy storytelling experiences. Part of the mission of Opera House Arts is to engage audiences in new ways of interpreting traditions and contemporary life.

“How do you make a new, original, modern piece based on Down East culture?” posed Linda Nelson, executive director of the opera house and part of the Opera House Arts producing collective for the work. “When we hear about Down East voices and stories, we expect sea shanties, folk music, traditional English folk ballads. All of that’s incorporated in this score, but we build on it and create something new. This is an opera for a changing Down East.”

Peter Szep, music director for the show, compared the sound of the score to the music of Kurt Weill, who combined art songs with the vernacular of the 1920s. One of the singers, Judith Barnes, who runs a small opera company in Brooklyn, N.Y., said the opera was about “real people in real-life situations.” She added that seeing the work in the seaside opera house, where about 200 people sit up close to the performance, contributed to the intimacy and accessibility of the piece. “Small venues are a way to draw people in and give them an experience they might not have with opera,” Barnes said. “It really comes down to the theater. It’s exciting for people to be that near opera singers. There’s a sense of discovery that happens in a small space.”

Rehearsals continue for the next week as an abstract, architectural replica of the old “singing” bridge is loaded onto a raked, multitiered stage at the Stonington Opera House. The artists are still making tweaks to the score and libretto. No one can say for sure exactly how the final 80-minute piece will sound, except that its voice will be distinctly Maine. Other operas, such “Oedipus Rex,” “Medea” and “Madame Butterfly,” set in far-off lands and cultures, transform difficult family traumas into great art. That transformation and the hope that the opera will find stages beyond state lines are goals to which the makers and producers of “The Singing Bridge” aspire.

Opera House Arts will present “The Singing Bridge” 7 p.m. July 8-10 at the Stonington Opera House and 7 p.m. July 16 at the University of Maine at Machias. For information and tickets, call 367-2788 or visit www.operahousearts.org.


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