INTERVIEW: ‘Rose Elf’ opera dives deep into theme of isolation, which seems so 2020
Photo: David Hertzberg is the composer of The Rose Elf, a new one-act opera. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Aleba & Co. with permission.
When David Hertzberg’s one-act opera The Rose Elf first premiered in 2018 in the catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, he probably had no idea how prescient his work would become when the horrors of 2020 hit the world. Pulling from Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, Hertzberg created a dark, foreboding, mysterious chamber piece about isolation, exhumation and transformative grief, according to press notes. Now audience members who didn’t catch the premiere can enjoy a new recording of the opera.
The Swan Studios production was recently released in the Halloween season, and it follows on the heels of another Hertzberg recording: 2017’s The Wake World. Both studio efforts are evidence that the composer is not standing still during the global pandemic; he’s as creatively productive as ever — while still socially distancing, of course.
Andersen’s original tale depicts a chilling murder that exists in a otherworldly realm between humans and nature. The title character is an elf who lives amongst the rose petals, and the premiere in the catacombs, starring Samantha Hankey, offered plenty of colorful and flowery accoutrement for the performance.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Hertzberg, a Los Angeles-based composer who has found great success in recent years. He is currently at work on his third opera: Grand Hotel. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When you first read The Rose Elf by Hans Christian Andersen, did you immediately believe it could be adapted into an opera?
I had for a while been fascinated (obsessed?!) with the morphology of fairy tales, the way these stories recur and recombine across cultures and eras. This Andresen story is actually a kind of a reframing or reimagining of a fabulously lurid, psychologically tangled Decameron story, about a girl whose servant-lover is murdered by her brother. Andersen recasts it as a kind of fable where a sprite living among rose petals witnesses the murder and exacts a supernatural revenge. I wanted to take this mythic DNA and use it to tell the story about a sort of magical voyeur, who witnesses this strange human tragedy unravel with fear and fascination, and is somehow changed by it.
How long did it take you to construct the opera before its premiere?
I wrote the libretto in the fall of 2015, in a sort of ecstatic 48-ish-hour gush. Then I revisited it in the spring of 2016 and wrote the vocal score, as well as the full score for Part I, which was produced by Opera Philadelphia that spring. A commission for my other opera, The Wake World (a recording of which was released on Tzadik this past spring) meant that I had to postpone work on The Rose Elf until the winter of 2017, when I was able to revisit it and finish orchestrating Part II.
Hearing your work performed in the catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn must have been quite interesting. What was the experience like?
The story of how we got to premiere this work in the unlikely (though gloriously apropos!) location of the catacombs of Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn is a funny one. I had just finished a full workshop of the piece with Opera Philadelphia, as part of my stint as composer in residence with them, when Samantha Hankey, the singer for whom I wrote the title role, broached the idea. She had a friend who had started a concert series in the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in Harlem and wanted to expand it to other magically macabre locations in New York City.
I’d never been to Green-Wood, or known there were catacombs in New York, but went on a site visit and discovered not only were they starkly gorgeous but also acoustically dreamy, lush and perfect for the nine-piece chamber ensemble for which the work is scored. Organizing and orchestrating the premiere with them was crazy and thrilling, and involved more than a few non-musical production tasks (catching spiders for arachnophobic singers, dumpster-diving for roses at the crematorium) — but thanks to an intrepid cast and orchestra, the premiere run was totally electrifying, and I think facilitated a kind of revelatory hearing of this strangely enchanting story of loss, exhumation and transformative grief.
I’m also excited about a new upcoming co-production of the opera, a totally different (and not cemetery-based) conception of the drama about which I can’t say much yet (!), that will premiere in an upcoming season.
How did this recording come about? Do you feel the recording captures the energy of the live performance?
Yes, and then some! Quite a luxury to get the chance to make a studio recording of an opera, in which one can really turn over every nuance of the musical fabric of the work, some aspects of which are invariably lost in a theatrical production. Of course, there is a kind of kinetic, inimitably visceral quality to live opera performance which can only be felt in the acoustic space, but the vocal and instrumental performances on the recording, which stars Samantha Hankey as the titular elf and is conducted by Robert Kahn, are scorchingly, savagely good. And it was a joy to sculpt this definitive version with the two of them, who have been a part of the process since the piece’s first workshop with Opera Philadelphia in the spring of 2016.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on my next opera, Grand Hotel, a collaboration with Yuval Sharon and his LA-based company The Industry. Going to be a very different animal. Though it also delves into the language of myth and have been sleuthing the sordid closet of Golden Age Hollywood to figure it all out.
Who are some of the composers you most admire?
Currently, I have Coltrane’s Ascension (1966), Meditations (1966) and Expression (1967) on loop. I also like Wagner, Mozart, Schubert.
When did you realize you wanted to work in opera?
I’ve known since I started making music when I was 7 or 8, though I’m still trying to figure out what exactly opera is — but secretly maybe kind of relish not really knowing.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Rose Elf, words and music by David Hertzberg, is now available from Swan Studios. Click here for more information.
