Once in a Lifetime

You may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
"Well... how did I get here?"

David Byrne and Brian Eno
https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8?si=Lv15qT47qZL_R7hu

Note: I originally thought I would post this in my blog. But I decided an essay would be more appropriate.

1. How did I get here?

I’ve attended a couple premiere events. A small one was seeing the first episode of Star Trek to start the fall season on TV. A big one was in 1977 when I attended a special screening of Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope in Tucson, Arizona. I’ve attended several operas including Tosca (twice!), a Spanish language production of Carmen, Aida, and last year La Boheme. And I’ve attended lots of musical theater productions, most recently Fiddler on the Roof and My Fair Lady. But none of those impacted me or will stick with me quite like Friday night’s third performance in the American premiere of the opera Lili Elbe by Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman and starring Lucia Lucas as Lili Elbe.

It almost didn’t happen. The Frijoles Fire has been burning for several days just east of the Santa Fe Opera location. Three opera performances in a row had been cancelled because of air quality concerns. But when Thursday night’s performance of The Magic Flute got the go ahead, I was fairly confident that Lili Elbe would be performed as well. And that was confirmed in the afternoon of Friday.

So, I spent much of the day prepping, put some extra effort into my makeup look, chose a special dress I had purchased last spring, and drove up to Santa Fe to a little Italian restaurant called Piccolino for an early dinner before driving out to the Opera House. There were some interesting specials and the usual range of Italian dishes. But I chose to go with a 10 in pizza and side salad. It was quite good and I’ll be finishing it tonight!

I still arrived quite early, but learned they were offering a special symposium talk by the Artistic Director of KHFM, a local non-profit classical music station that has been broadcasting for 70 years now and is partly supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). She discussed how Tobias Pinker and Aryeh Lev Stollman came to compose and write an opera about the life of Lili Elbe. The original plan was to write an opera about the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. They even picked transgender baritone singer Lucia Lucas to sing one of the transgender participants! But that project fell through. And then they learned about Lili Elbe and her life story as described in the book Man into Woman. Her lifelong love with her wife Gerda and her tragic death after an experimental womb transplant offered perfect themes for an opera. Lucia Lucas also gave extra input as a dramaturg helping to create scenes and providing insight into the problems Lili experienced as she (Einar) discovered her true feminine nature and struggled to become, as Lili preferred to express it, a real woman.

2. The Story

The movie The Danish Girl (2015) was also based on the life of Lili Elbe. However, the movie converted a novelization of her life onto the big screen. And that project had little participation from the transgender community. For their opera, Pinker and Stollman went back to the three versions of Man Into Woman (Danish, German, and English) as well as Lili’s original notes and letters. And they drew on those to develop the scenes and dialogue. Like the movie, the opera covers the period from Gerda Wegener persuading her husband Einar to pose for her portrait of the actress Anna Larssen Bjorner shortly after Anna performs as Orpheus in a stage play based on the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Gerda recognizes Einar’s natural femininity and Einar starts to feel more fully alive as Lili.

Lili makes an appearance at a gallery showing of Gerda’s paintings, where she arouses admiration from the men and a bit of jealousy from Gerda and Anna. But Gerda supports, with some reluctance, Lili exploring herself. They leave the conservative and stifling atmosphere of Copenhagen and move to Paris. They encounter the vibrant art world and liberated social atmosphere there. And Gerda’s painting career blossoms with Lili as her principal model.

Lili is accepted by her physician brother but rejected by her sister Dagmar (and later by her mother). Marius introduces her to the German surgeon Professor Warnekros, who is developing techniques for transforming the genitals and creating a vagina. The procedure also involved transplanting the ovaries of another woman to provide estrogen. Her goal is to be able to marry and have children. And Warnekros talks her into receiving a uterine transplant for that purpose. However, she never recovers from the surgery and dies, likely as her body rejects the alien tissue.

3. The Artists.

Lucia Lucas had apprenticed as a male baritone singer at the Santa Fe Opera several years ago before beginning her transition. She also became the first transgender singer to perform a lead opera role when she sang the title character in Don Giovanni in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Sylvia D’Eramo has had a successful career as a soprano. I very much enjoyed hearing her sing Mimi in La Boheme just last year!
They both sang the lead roles when the opera debuted in Switzerland in October 2023. That performance is available for streaming on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/hIWd23ebPX8?si=w3-rqPQ00p2yLDFB

4. The Staging

Lili Elbe requires a lot of work to stage. There are 30 different scenes in 24 different locations. To facilitate these, the staging uses a back set which can be concealed for box seats at the theater and later for the operating theater during Lili’s operation. Another back set functions as their home in Copenhagen and apartment in Paris. The walls are hung with reproductions of Gerda’s actual paintings.
Two sliding floor sections allow quick set changes for different scenes.
The initial stage is quite stark. But the opera also uses a projection system to display ghostly images of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice which Lili’s life somewhat mirrors.

After hearing the Scenic and Costume Designers talk at a previous symposium, I am confident that everything on the stage had extensive and careful thought put into choosing it!

5. The Costumes

The opera received a good review from our local newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal.
https://www.abqjournal.com/lifestyles/us-premiere-of-trans-o...
The subtitle read, “First major opera about a trans woman wows audiences — but the costume choices left something to be desired”. Unfortunately, I don’t have a subscription to read the full article. However, I quite liked the costumes. My grandparents are from Einar/Lili’s generation and my mother grew up during that period. I’ve seen several of their pictures. I also purchased a vintage 30’s blouse pattern to sew part of a Cosplay costume.

To my eye, the costumes look authentic for the late 20s. An important part of the visual language of the opera is the changes in Einar/Lili’s and Gerda’s clothes. At the initial stage play Einar wears a dark purple jacket. For Lili’s initial appearance she wears a dress and shawl in shades of lavender or lilac. In later scenes, it seemed that she was wearing lighter shades until in the final death scene she is wearing a white gown. While Gerda switches from lighter, more colorful clothes at the beginning to a black dress at the end where they sing of their unending love for each other.
Also, there were 124 costumes for about 25 people, the most costumes for any production this season.

6. The Music

This is the first opera by Tobias Pinker I have seen or heard. (It won’t be the last!) He writes in a modern style which is NOT Mozart or Puccini. And the music reflects the complexity of Lili’s life with conflicting opinions and impressions, as well as the evolving conflict, confusion and love in Lili and Gerda’s lives.

I am not a composer, but I didn’t hear anything I thought might make it into the orchestral performance repertoire. But I did enjoy the music. Like a good movie score, it reflects and amplifies the emotions and actions of the story.

My favorites were the solos and duets by Lili and Gerda.

And it will be a real treat to hear them sing again in a special performance next Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church here in Albuquerque.

7. The Acting

Opera requires physical acting as well as singing to bring the characters to life. Lucia Lucas and Sylvia D’Eramo bring to life both the love and the conflict of Lili and Gerda. There was a real chemistry between them.

But I want to give special credit to some of the other characters.

Lindsay Martin shows the stage presence of a true actress in her role as Anna.
Lindsay Ammann is particularly strong as the inflexible and rejecting Mother Wegener.
Andrew Harris as the ambitious Professor Warnekros and Alexis Seminario as the Matron Nurse have a creepy dynamic as they manipulate Lili and the Young Woman (Audrey Welsh) who provides her uterus for the final operation.

8. The Impression

This opera was deeply affecting in a way completely different from others I have seen, even if the characters all die in the end. Some of that was due to the parallels with my own life, which included a late self-discovery and extended road to self acceptance and emergence. The thoughtful story telling and the fact that this was real and happened to real people amplified that. I can still feel the emotional impact now, two days later, as I sit to write this.

But that makes this even more the experience of a lifetime.

You can hear an interview with the composer here.
https://khfm.org/tobias-pickers-opera-lili-elbe-at-the-santa...

An this year's performance will be broadcast on KHFM on Monday night, August 31 at 6 pm MDT!!!
https://www.santafeopera.org/radio-broadcasts/