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    Opera Preview: Opera Theatre at Ohio State Presents Ohio Premiere of ‘Sweets By Kate’

    Contemporary American opera is having a moment and Columbus is lucky to have an acclaimed example of the form coming to town this month, Griffin Candey’s Sweets By Kate, a dark comedy set in the 1950s. Elizabeth Brigmann returns to the small town she left, with her partner Kate in tow, to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death.  

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    After rapturously received runs at Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers Festival, Boston University’s Fall Fringe Fest, Washburn University, Knoxville, and New York City (at the historic Stonewall Inn), Sweets By Kate comes to Opera Theatre at Ohio State through professor and director Lara Semetko-Brooks, also in collaboration with local chamber group Chamber Brews, founded by alumni. I had the pleasure of talking with the composer, the director, and music director Ed Bak via Zoom. This has been edited for clarity and length. 

    Richard Sanford: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Griffin, could you talk a little about the writing of the piece? 

    Griffin Candey: This kind formed around a little summer festival in Illinois, near where [Lara and I] went to graduate school, called the Midwest Institute of Opera out of Illinois State. And I sang with them many, many years ago.  

    [I was joking with a writer friend] that one of the running themes in Roald Dahl novels is if your family sucks, find a new family and don’t be sad when your family dies, because it happens a lot. There are quite a few Roald Dahl stories where that’s the case. And as much as that is a joke, that’s also true. And a kind of narrative that doesn’t happen a lot [in fiction, in favor of] like, your blood’s your blood. Blood’s thicker than water. Your family’s your family, no matter what. 

    Ed Bak: There’s no place like home. 

    GC: Exactly. And for me, I’m very close to my family. I adore my family. But I have a lot of friends who have very broken relationships with their families. The primary sort of family that they consider their family now is their found family, not blood-related. So we kind of wanted to just dive into those waters a little, to see how those relationships shake out. 

    What ended up sort of forming is this multi-generational story of Elizabeth, who sort of comes back to her family home after having grown up. [She has] positive memories of childhood, but then [we look into how] she separated from her parents and what that means to her now. And how that affects her life. Eventually, sort of the core of the thing [is] that she recognizes, especially through Kate, that she doesn’t necessarily need posthumous permission from her family to pursue the life that she wants to pursue; to be the person that she is. As much as it is a peppy comedy, it is also sort of a family-based multigenerational [story]. 

    RS: Lara, tell us about coming to Ohio State and bringing this project.

    Lara Brooks: As Griffin stated earlier, he was passing through his masters as I started mine and we got to meet. I just fell in love with the work. It is so incredibly… It’s beautiful in its simplicity, and I really appreciate that it shows a lesbian couple going through what every other couple does; we don’t have a lot of that representation in opera.  

    Thankfully, it’s starting to change and we’re seeing a lot more diversity in works, [such as] Fellow Travelers that opera Columbus is performing. It’s really exciting to see this kind of representation and to show that everyone experiences grief, everyone experiences joy and excitement. How can we help show these different people on the stage in real-life situations? I was really excited to bring it to Ohio State and have the opportunity. 

    It’s really exciting to see this kind of representation and to show that everyone experiences grief, everyone experiences joy and excitement. How can we help show these different people on the stage in real-life situations? I was really excited to bring it to Ohio State and have the opportunity. 

    Lara Brooks

    Working with Griffin – we performed this work in Kansas – and here we have this incredible opportunity to really shake upcasting. The cast has so many different voice types and requirements and at OSU, we have so many incredible female singers that we just want to highlight what they can do. And with a living composer, we can gender-bend a good chunk of the roles and have these beautiful soprano voices singing parts that they typically wouldn’t get the opportunity for a professional performance or at another university. And it’s been a really wonderful experience. 

    RS: Ed, how did you get involved as Music Director? 

    EB: Lara Brooks brought the idea with her when she joined the faculty here at Ohio State. I’ve never done any of Griffin’s work before, and there’s a lot of wit going on. And for sure, it’s a challenge for the students to work on it, but the challenge is good. It makes them grow. The skills they get from doing this apply absolutely to every other type of work, if it’s Mozart or Monteverde or Puccini or something that’s by a living composer, they’re going to look at things a little bit differently.  

    This is a piece where there’s not a commercial recording they can rely on; they have to go through the thorny thickets. [They’re] really starting to tell a story. The people are really hearing this language and feeling the rhythms and the characters are really coming out, so this has been a really worthwhile investment with these young singers.  

    I’m really excited to work with you, [Griffin] when you come here, is it two weeks? 

    GC: Yeah. Around the corner. 
     
    EB: What a great chance for students to work with the composer, who wrote the thing, and get feedback. Maybe change a couple things, and say, “Oh yeah. You don’t have to do exactly what’s in the score here. Let’s figure out something that you and I both like better.” This has happened all the time [historically]: If you look at Handel’s Messiah scores, there are very many versions of it according to who was performing. Even in modern times with Carlisle Floyd, looking at one publication of Susannah to another, from year to year, [and see] variations going on according to what the performers were doing. This is a living work and I’m thrilled that our students have this chance. Not every school will give that opportunity. 

    RS: What else do you want someone to know about Sweets By Kate? 

    GC: It’s not an opera that you need to know anything about opera for. I come from a family that doesn’t like opera. No one in my family listens to it for fun. And they, after this, went like, “You know what? I like this.” Do you know what I mean? And I think not just because they were blood-related to me. They did actually like it, there was something in it that connected with them. That’s always a ringing endorsement for me because they have not held back on disliking other operas, ones that I performed in. I think there’s something for everyone in it. 

    It’s not an opera that you need to know anything about opera for.

    Griffin Candey

    EB: You know, they’ve said it for so long: Composers should stop writing those new works. But I think this is in English and people are going to relate to it really quickly, because they’re going to understand the story immediately. I think that’s a big selling point on this. Because the humor, the cuteness of it, is not going through any filters. It’s in English. That’s what we speak. 

    GC: I’ve said many, many times in the past – at Washburn [University] even – that if every composer had a champion like Lara, we would all be very happy. 

    LB: I’m a big believer in new music. You have to create exciting new pieces that people are hungry about with different emotions than just singing Strauss and Mozart all the time. This is not an opera that is going to… It’s not scary. When people think of opera they think of Wagner and Bugs Bunny and “Kill the wabbit.” And this isn’t that. It’s charming. It’s sweet. It touches on real emotions and you’re going to feel things, but it’s not something that… You’re not going to be sitting there wondering when is it going to end?  

    And it’s actually funny. There are moments in there that are going to make you laugh and go, “What did they just say?” And then true moments of you’re going to feel absolute tragedy for the singers on the stage, but this is not anything to be scared of. Come see it. It’s great work. And we need audiences to come out and support new works so we can keep performing them. 

    Sweets By Kate is performed at Hughes Hall on the OSU campus. Performances at 8 p.m. February 25 and 26 are free to the public but require registration. Visit music.osu.edu/events/opera-sweets-by-kate-sp22 to register. Additionally, Talkback on February 26 will include a panel of Ohio State faculty and students discussing the project and relevance of the work. Learn more here: music.osu.edu/events/opera-theatre-talkback-sweets-kate. There is also a dress rehearsal open for high school performers and directors on February 24. Please visit music.osu.edu/events/open-dress-rehearsal-high-school-students for details.  

    Bonus: Read more from the interview with Ed Bak, Griffin Candey and Lara Semetko-Brooks here

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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