Studio Artists Faith Adams and Gabriel Chona Rueda rehearse for Chautauqua Opera Company’s performance of Anne of Green Gables while Studio Artist Lindsey Weissman annotates her music sheets Saturday in Jane A. Gross Opera Center.
LAYLA VINSON
Staff Writer
With a story as imaginative as its heroine, Anne of Green Gables — written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery — has amassed multiple screen adaptations and cultural significance as a prominent coming-of-age tale. Continuing to expand its influence in the storytelling world, Chautauqua Opera Company will offer about twelve minutes of developing scenes in the first of two workshops at 3:15 p.m. today in Fletcher Music Hall.
Brought to life via a partnership between composer and librettist Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Royce Vavrek, today’s workshop will feature about 12 minutes of music framed by conversation regarding the evolving opera. The duo initially collaborated on 2019’s Jacqueline.
“Working on Anne of Green Gables together has been different because we know each other so much better. We know each other’s strengths and we have so much fun talking about the possibilities of the piece,” Woolf explained. “… It’s a really special thing, too, that [Anne] is a Canadian writer, a Canadian character, and Royce and I are both Canadians… there’s an interesting cross-section there of how this piece feels a little bit like coming home.”
Following the spunky, eccentric character of Anne throughout her adolescence, Woolf said she has found it intriguing to revisit a time when one discovers the world as an “almost independent, but not quite” person.
“In this opera, we enter into Anne’s world where the trees are alive and speaking to her in a beautiful language and where the natural world is welcoming her — we’re in her world,” Woolf explained, hoping to immerse the audience within Anne’s perspective rather than the characters who might perceive her as unusual or strange. “… I really want musically for us to feel like we’re swimming in this beautiful kind of loving, sensual world of nature.”
Using surrealist elements through the inclusion of facets such as a chorus of trees, Woolf has navigated that world with concepts that may otherwise feel absurdist in cinematic interpretations. Discovering the unique identity of Anne of Green Gables told through an operatic medium has been a crucial, exploratory process that has helped Woolf navigate audience expectations.
“Some audiences will have read the book, some audiences will have seen the TV shows, and I don’t want to think about pleasing anybody. What I think about is, ‘What does the book speak to me as a work on the stage with live performers with music?’ It’s 100% different from a TV show or fan fiction or whatever,” Woolf said. “It has to be its own thing, and there are things that media can do, that opera can do, that other types of media can’t.”
Faith Adams, a studio artist and soprano playing the role of Marilla Cuthbert, further expanded on the adaptation being brought to audiences.
“I have so much appreciation for this in an operatic setting because, so often, in opera we have to deal with really heavy topics because it’s a massive art form and the scale of an orchestra lends itself to telling really dramatic stories,” Adams said. “But for Anne, we have the ability to tell a very simplistic story but with so much grandeur and beauty that really reflects how Anne sees the world.”
Despite potentially daunting audience expectations, Woolf said she hopes to tell the story of an “outsider” and is excited by the prospect of garnering attention due to the source material.
“I think it’s an exciting idea that people know Anne and might be curious enough to come see,” Woolf said. “But then it’s on Royce and me to make something worth coming back for, and I hope we do that.”
