ML Hart - Opera: Production Photographs / Of Mice and Men

"It was something I could stroke, something I could pet
and it belonged to me...
It was small and soft and grey, its eyes were sharp and bright.

"It was what I want most in the world,
something small, not growed up yet,
something warm and soft with fur...

"It's what I dream about all night, and what I think about all day.
Something small, not growed up yet, something soft with fur
that I could tend and love,
that I could call my own."

- Lennie's "Mouse Aria"

"Evr'y ranch hand I ever knew has had your dream.
We've all had dreams of buyin' a home, but none of us has ever made it come true.
I don't know why it don't come true,
I just know it never does.
Maybe we're just born to wander.
Maybe we're just born to live alone.
Maybe we'd be unhappy any other way.
Who knows? Who can say?
. . .

"Ranch hands die in a bare cold bunkhouse.
Ranch hands die with empty hands.
Ranch hands die alone,
strangers to the world."

- Slim's aria

top Lennie and his friend George are on the run from the police. Lennie is concerned that the "bad thing" he's done will cause them to lose their jobs on the ranch. [tenor* Anthony Dean Griffey and baritone Erich Parce]*
second row Lennie and George are guardedly welcomed by the other ranch hands in the bunkhouse. There are four other men who play significant parts in the story, plus a small male chorus - there is only the one role for a woman in this opera.
montage - left to right Carlson [Beau Palmer] in the bunkhouse A ranch hand listens to a ballad Curley's wife [soprano* Diane Alexander]* teases one of the ranch hands [Joe Sundstrom] Curley [Joel Sorensen]
fourth row Lennie's first act aria, informally called "The Mouse Aria" by singers. Lennie likes to stroke soft little creatures - first a mouse, then a rabbit, a dog - but has a history of petting them too hard and killing them - which will lead to tragic consequences later in the story. [tenor* Anthony Dean Griffey]*
fifth row George shows Lennie a newspaper ad for a farm they might buy with the money they've been saving. Candy, the sympathetic foreman, asks to be included in their plans, and the three celebrate a future when they'll be working only for themselves. [baritone* Erich Parce with tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, and with bass Kenneth Cox]*
sixth row The barn scene begins as an innocent dialogue between two misfit souls who find much in common. Lennie, the outsized, lumbering, mentally slow man, and Curley's wife, searching for beauty and fantasy in the harshly masculine world in which she lives. Lennie asks to stroke her soft hair, but he has no idea of his strength, and after a short struggle, snaps the wife's neck. He is aware that he's done something wrong, but more from a practical point of view - he and George will have to leave the ranch - than from a moral understanding of murder. [tenor* Anthony Dean Griffey and soprano Diane Alexander]*
bottom Slim, the ranch foreman, speaks to the longing for a real home that all the migrant workers share. [baritone* Stephen Powell]*

AMERICAN COMPOSER CARLISLE FLOYD
	Carlisle Floyd grew up in the bible-belt American South, and uses that experience - positive and negative - for the settings of his operas. He always writes both the libretto and the music, drawing on folk song, religious music traditions, and modern operatic composition to tell the story. Of Mice and Men is based on the novel by John Steinbeck. Floyd says: "The drama itself, to my mind, is a study of human attachment in an environment of harsh personal isolation and despair, and I feel that what Steinbeck is saying throughout is that even George's unsatisfactory, but nevertheless tender, relationship with a slow-witted man-child is preferable to the loneliness and rootlessness of his fellow ranchhands."

	OPERA IN ENGLISH
"Some dreams is so far away and those dreams can break your heart. But our dream is so close, so close... ...just across the street."	Some people accustomed to hearing the open-vowel sound of the Italian language in classical singing claim that English doesn't "flow," and when sung, it doesn't sound beautiful. This is due to the dominance of open vowels in italian (ahh, ohh), which are easier to sing - especially at the upper end of a singer's range - than are closed vowels (ee, oo) or even worse, a short vowel (ih, uh). But these comments apply mostly to translations of Italian opera into English, where the rhythm of the language is all wrong. Composers write their music to a libretto - the words come first - so the cadence of the original language is already set. So if you think English is an awkward language, try exploring Shakespeare or Dylan Thomas, where words become music. And there is a far wider vocabulary in English - the words are more nuanced and can convey character and emotion in the choice of the words, rather than just telling a story. Speaking, or singing, English does require a greater precision in forming the words, a better command of diction. Stephen Sondheim, Lerner & Loewe, Cole Porter, Gilbert & Sullivan are all masters at making a line of text "sit" on the music - the classic is Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Oh what a beautiful mornin'..." - but the best of the bunch is Benjamin Britten, a composer of opera.


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original content � copyright 1999-2005 ML Hart and images/graphics � copyright 1999-2005 ML Hart except where noted
excerpts from the libretto of Of Mice and Men �1970 by Carlisle Floyd; Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., sole agent

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Conductor		Karen Keltner
Director		Rhoda Levine
Set Design		John Conklin
Costume Design		Jess Goldstein
xx
Lennie		Anthony Dean Griffey
George		Erich Parce
Curley		Joel Sorensen
Curley's Wife		Diane Alexander
Candy		Kenneth Cox
Carlson		Stephen Powell
Slim		Beau Palmer
Ballad Singer		John Bellemer


	San Diego Opera presents
	OF MICE AND MEN by Carlisle Floyd
	February 1999