Harmonizing Queer Voices
Harmonizing Queer Voices
Exploring the intersection of identity and opera with University of Florida musicologist Leo Walker
Opera, with its grandeur, emotion, and powerful storytelling, has been a stage for human experiences throughout history. Amidst the vast repertoire of operatic works, there are narratives that explore the diverse spectrum of queer identities. These stories, often overlooked or overshadowed, have found their place within the canon, enriching the operatic landscape.
Unveiling the queer threads in the operatic fabric allows us to appreciate the richness and diversity of human experiences. Composers like Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, and many others, have contributed to this exploration, often drawing inspiration from their own lives and relationships. By examining their music, letters, and historical context, scholars like Leo Walker have shed light on the queerness within the works of these composers, deepening our understanding and appreciation of their contributions to the art form.
These narratives illuminate the beauty and struggles of love, desire, and self-discovery. They transcend boundaries and foster belonging for audiences of all backgrounds and identities.
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Visit VancouverOpera.ca to discover our 2023-2024 season: The Magic Flute, Don Pasquale, and Carmen.
TRANSCRIPT
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Welcome to Inside Vancouver Opera, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of one of Canada's most vibrant and innovative opera companies. I'm Ashley Daniel Foot the Senior Manager of Partnerships, Engagement, and EDI. And today we are talking about Pride in opera. We are joined by Leo Walker who studies historical musicology, focusing on the production histories of Benjamin Britten's vocal works.
How I met you is actually when we were doing Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I discovered that you were a Britten scholar, and how on Earth did that come to be something that you do?
Leo Walker:
I got my undergraduate degree in voice performance and music history. In that, I would often study 20th century composers, namely Benjamin Britten of course, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, some people who I'll be talking about today. I kind of became enraptured by Britten's music. And when I started my graduate studies, I had gone into studying new music, but I found my home in Britten just because there's such a wealth of content, of art and of brilliance within a lot of his vocal works.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Talking of Benjamin Britten, I thought we'd play some excerpts from operas with queer stories, and one of those is Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann's novel of the same name. Can you set up a little bit about what we're going to listen to in just a moment?
Leo Walker:
So what we're about to listen to is an excerpt from Britten's last opera. We'll see aging writer Aschenbach slowly become infatuated with this young boy, Tadzio. We'll hear a lot of elements about Britten's late period, namely the things that associate him with this transparency of queerness.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Music from Death in Venice by composer Benjamin Britten, one of the most famous queer composers.
“Adziu! Adziu!” from Act I of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice. Performed by the English National Opera with John Graham Hall as Aschenbach. Conducted by Edward Gardner.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I want to think about the ways that we understand and interpret composer's sexuality, indeed, the thought of queering the canon. And when we think of Britten, how is that an important aspect of our understanding… or not, maybe?
Leo Walker:
There's a multitude of literature about how we understand and how we queer the cannon, so to speak. A lot of the time it will be a close reading of the canonic composers or just looking at archival material. Britten is a special case in that we have his letters. We have a lot of what he wrote, a lot of how he spoke to his partner, Peter Pears, both romantic and collaborative and understanding the composer's sexuality.
We look at what they've produced and we align that with what is going on within their respective histories. Thinking about people like Britten, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Ethel Smyth, and even Handel. We look at how they were operating within their respective communities, within their respective societies and how they interacted with those around them.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Let's talk about Handel. And some listeners may indeed be surprised to hear him on this list. I'd love you to contextualize that for us and explore what we know and how we know it.
Leo Walker:
There are a lot of ways that we can understand him as a homosexual composer. People like Ellen Harris have written articles, books, essays about how we understand what source material can offer us if we were to read them through a queer lens. We look towards how he was operating within his social circles, specifically within London. A lot of his close friends and patrons were actually operating within circles that were associated with queer activities.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Absolutely. You mentioned Ethel Smyth. Why don't you give us a little nutshell on who Ethel Smyth was.
Leo Walker:
Another English composer, early 20th century, one of her queer relationships was with the author, Virginia Woolf. She writes about her relationship with Virginia Woolf and how she felt about it and how their relationships spawned a lot of her works and how it was kind of like a symbiotic, but also a very loving and inspiring relationship between the two.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I'd like to talk about another opera by Laura Kaminsky. It's called As One. It's a chamber opera in which two voices, Hannah the younger, and Hannah older. Hannah-younger is a mezzo-soprano and Hannah-older is a baritone, and they share the part of a sole transgender protagonist. Can you talk a little bit about As One and set up the song “To Know” which we'll listen to a little bit of?
Leo Walker:
So it started as a commission for the American Opera Project. Something that is really prevalent within this opera is this journey for self-realization. It's not really about the transition itself, but more of understanding who one is at their core. To Know lends itself to both performers and audience members, taking a moment to understand or think about who they are at their centre.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
“To Know” performed by Sasha Cooke and Kelly Markgraf, from Laura Kaminsky's As One.
“To Know” from Laura Kaminsky’s As One. Performed by Sasha Cooke, Kelly Markgraf, and The Fry Street Quartet. Produced by American Opera Projects in association with BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, you are listening to our Pride edition of Inside Vancouver Opera. And really we celebrate Pride all year, and all the time with queer voices and queer stories and queer artists. Let’s chat about Rufus Wainwright's 2017 opera Hadrian, which was premiered at the COC with Thomas Hampson and Isaiah Bell. Tell us about this opera.
Leo Walker:
This is a story about the last days of the Roman Emperor who is best known for building the wall of Britannia. People may remember him as being openly homosexual, but specifically within his relationship with a younger man, Antinous. Readjusting our lens on what history, specifically Roman history may be because homosexuality was accepted well within nobility, but because so many years have gone by and because there's a narrowing of the lens, we don't always get to hear these stories. So with this opera specifically, it highlights a story that has existed for a long time, but is often overlooked.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So let's listen to “Without You, What Am I?” Performed by Thomas Hampson and Canadian tenor, Isaiah Bell from Rufus Wainwright's opera Hadrian.
“Without You What Am I” from Act III of Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian. Performed by the Canadian Opera Company with Thomas Hampson as Hadrian and Isaiah Bell as Antinous.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So this is fascinating, this is also so important and it's wonderful as we study and learn about the ways that the composers that some of us may not have known were part of the queer community. When I think about Bernstein, and Barber, and Menotti and Corigliano, there's so much more that we can delve into, and so this is just a little bit of a scratching the surface of queer opera and queer joy and stories that are in our cannon. So I urge you to take a look at the written transcript of this interview. We're going to put in some videos, some more links, and certainly a link to some of Leo's work as well.
As always, I'd like to thank our editor Mack McGillivray and invite you to check out VancouverOpera.ca to discover our 2023-24 season: The Magic Flute, Don Pasquale, and Carmen. Tickets are available now and I'll see you at the opera.
More Queer Stories in Opera:
The Hours, Kevin Puts (2022)
Brokeback Mountain, Charles Wuorinen (2014)
Patience and Sarah, Paula Kimper (1998)
Les Feluettes, Kevin March (2016)
About Leo Walker
Leo Walker is a Ph.D. student in Historical Musicology at the University of Florida (USA), specializing in twentieth-century opera, Benjamin Britten, as well as memory and trauma studies.
As an emerging Britten scholar, he seeks to define the intersections between living, active performance, and their curated reception histories. Leo’s current research investigates how theatre creators, audiences, and performers have both conceptualized and experienced the various forms of violence evident within Britten’s late works. He has presented his work nationally and internationally, including chapter meetings of the American Musicological Society (AMS) as well as the Society for Musicology of Ireland (SMI).
In addition to working as a dramaturg and performing artist, Leo currently serves as the Student Representative to the Southern Chapter of the AMS, Vice President of UF’s Student Society for Musicology, and teaching assistant for undergraduate surveys on music and/or dance histories.
Episode Credits:
Host - Ashley Daniel Foot
Guest - Leo Walker
Editor - Mack McGillivray
Music Credits:
“Adziu! Adziu!” from Act I of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice. Performed by the English National Opera with John Graham Hall as Aschenbach. Conducted by Edward Gardner.
“To Know” from Laura Kaminsky’s As One. Performed by Sasha Cooke, Kelly Markgraf, and The Fry Street Quartet. Produced by American Opera Projects in association with BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
“Without You What Am I” from Act III of Rufus Wainright’s Hadrian. Performed by the Canadian Opera Company with Thomas Hampson as Hadrian and Isaiah Bell as Antinous.