ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190012
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Composer Jon Polifrone and conductor Craig Fields were relaxing at the post-concert reception following the Blacksburg world premiere of Polifrone's highly successful "Requiem" a few years ago.
"Craig said, 'What do you want to do next?'" reports Polifrone. "I said, 'I don't know. Do you want to try an opera? I've got a story, I think.'"
Such was the genesis of "Keepers of the Night," which combines Polifrone's talents as composer and Fields' dramatic sense as librettist. The opera - soon to be retitled "Keepers of the Light" - gets a partial production as a "work in progress" tonight and Saturday night in the Squires Studio Theater at Virginia Tech. Already two major American regional opera companies have signaled their interest in a full production when the work is finished.
The basic plot has been percolating in Polifrone's mind for over three decades. Like his well-received "Requiem" (which just got a Chicago performance), the opera is based on words by Helen McGaughey, a former English professor who is now a century old and who taught with Polifrone in the '60s at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.
"It's a kind of gothic 'Peter Grimes,'" said Polifrone, referring to Benjamin Britten's landmark opera that was set in a seacoast town. "It's a dark tale, but love wins out in the end."
There's a mystery about just where the original story came from. McGaughey, when she handed Polifrone a few sheets of typescript three decades ago, said her poems were inspired by a 19th-century French novel called "The Dispossessed." But nobody knows who wrote a French novel by that name, and McGaughey - now a centenarian who requires constant care - is unable to help.
"She said a French novel prompted her to write it when she was very young, but we've asked the French literature people and we can't find it. No one can nail this book down," said Polifrone.
It's definitely a story for the opera stage. The scene is a lighthouse on a desolate, rocky island off the Atlantic coast. The old couple who have tended the light have been terrified by nightmares and premonitions, and their places are taken by Jonas and Melinda, a handsome young pair of newlyweds who are deeply in love.
Things would be fine were it not for the "mooncussers." The mooncussers, based on historical fact, were residents of bleak coastal towns who would lie in wait for ships passing on moonless nights, when they would disable the lighthouse beam and cause the ships to crash on the rocks - at which time they would steal the cargo and murder survivors.
Add to this situation an island full of hostile ghosts and a plague epidemic carried by local sailors. Melinda, attacked and raped by the mooncussers, walks out to her death in the sea while delirious from fever. Jonas contracts the plague as well from a ship that hits the rocks when the light is out. And when you learn that the name of the ship that goes down in the dark is the "Hope," you realize that none of this exactly adds up to an episode of the "Andy Griffith Show" - it's the kind of story an opera composer loves.
Polifrone says the story has tapped a vein of Romantic tunefulness in him that was also evident in his accessible and moving "Requiem." "I guess as I get older, the less I care about what people in the academic community think, and the more I care about what average people like. I was brought up in a time when the 12-tone stuff was it. You couldn't get anywhere among your colleagues unless you wrote something that nobody understood."
But McGaughey's pronounced artistic fingerprint has drawn something correspondingly rich and strange from Polifrone, according to Craig Fields, who says the music of "Keepers of the Night" is "a cross between Puccini and Britten. The tunes are very melodic, very late-19th-century and early 20th-century."
"In recent years she [McGaughey] has really gotten to me," said Polifrone. "She's got a little Scottish blood in her, the wailing of the wind through the heather. It's the Emily Bronte sort of thing, very melancholy and kind of lonely."
Writing an opera libretto is new for Fields, though he has plenty of background for the job. An operatic baritone who sang scores of roles in opera houses in Europe and America, Fields in recent years has been stage director and now general director of Opera Roanoke.
"As a stage director I have a very clear idea of what I want to see and sometimes that can get in the way of being a writer. But we have worked closely on this. After I'd give [Polifrone] part of the libretto he'd come back and we'd say this transition needs to be longer, this needs to be shorter, let's throw that line out, let's change this one. We are continuing to refine the work," said Fields.
Polifrone hopes to finish "Keepers of the Night" by the end of the summer. The tough job of orchestration will take another year. The work could be ready for production by the fall of 1998.
In this weekend's sneak preview of the entire first act and highlights from the other two acts, the role of Jonas will be sung by tenor Eric van Hoven, who just appeared in Opera Roanoke's production of "Candide." Soprano Cynthia Lohman of Minneapolis will sing the role of Melinda. Lawrence Evans and Patricia Campbell will appear as the old lighthouse couple, and there is a male chorus of sailors. Though accompaniment will be by a single pianist, there will be costumes and scenery. Curtain time is 8 p.m. for both performances and admission is free.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. Jon Polifrone (left) composed the musicby CNBand Craig Fields wrote the libretto for "Keepers of the Night."
color.