The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - The Opera

(Past) Tue, Jun 15 at 8 pm Peter Jay Sharp Theatre $30; Members, Students, Seniors $20; Day of Show $32

The Center for Contemporary Opera (CCO) presents The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button by John Eaton with the participation of The Pocket Opera Players, at the 2010 ACA Festival of American Music. Following his success with the hilarious stage opera, Pumped Fiction (2007), John Eaton's latest work will include Chris Pedro Trakas, Baritone, Linda Larson, Soprano, Jennifer Roderer, Mezzo-soprano, Tenor, Tony Boutté, and Bass-Baritone, Dominic Inferrera. Karl Kramer is conducting and the director will be Marco Capalbo.

The drama in F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, unfolds over a time period of ca. 1860-1930. Quite distinct from the recent movie, John Eaton's opera focuses on the irony and emotional core of the original Fitzgerald story, which is filled with moments of great humor and subtlety largely missing in the film. The dialogue in the opera is taken directly from the story, adapted by librettist Estela Eaton. The musical score, by MacArthur "genius" award winner, John Eaton, draws from the contemporary idiom, and is spiced with songs and dance tunes, such as lullabies, school songs, battle music and marches, all evoking the time period and locality of Benjamin Button's world.

Eaton's masterful use of musical micro-tonalism is blended with techniques anticipated by great American composers such as Charles Ives, Conlon Nancarrow and Elliott Carter in the fusing together of different tempos and styles. Particularly effective in depicting scenes of war and reenlistment of Fitzgerald's story, the composer also tips his hat to John Philip Sousa, whose marches he recalls hearing in childhood, and to both Scott Joplin and William Bolcom, two masters of the ragtime idiom.

In the college campus scene at Harvard, the composer quotes the school's stirring fight song by A. Putnam, which forms the basis of the ragtime and dances that follow. The dance motifs used in Benjamin Button are deeply indebted to Vernon and Irene Castle who popularized them and changed the way Americans - and most other modern cultures - took to the dance floor. (The composer also credits the film of their lives starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as part of his amalgam of sources for creating music to evoke this time period.)

There are other musical tunes used in every scene of the opera - try to listen for them! But above all, you will enjoy the way the tunes establish, and then drive forward the dramatic line of the story.

The composer comments on the choice of this story:

"It was that dramatic line that attracted me to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the first place. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, always remembered to keep the surface level of his writing engaging and amusing. The story of Benjamin Button is full of surprises, hilarious incidents, and completely ironic situations that keep you on the edge of your seat. So often in theater experiences, and especially in opera, you find yourself wondering if the author really asked himself if anything was happening on the stage-to paraphrase the composer-critic, Virgil Thomson. The first scene of my opera is taken almost verbatim from the Fitzgerald story. There is so much movement and excitement in this production-all taken directly from the original story."

One of the most irresistible aspects of the story, almost completely absent in the recent movie, is the ironic way Fitzgerald uses the reverse aging process to shed new light on the present-day social institutions of the family, school, the medical community, personal relationships, and the military.

John Eaton's Pocket Opera Series features a unique use of the performers-the players of the musical instruments also participate in the acting out of the drama, in a sort of all-embracing art form, or gesamtkunstwerk. *Long before the movie was released, the composer had been working on the story as a subject with the late William Glassco, a classmate from Princeton and distinguished actor, director, and personage of Canadian theater. He was to be its librettist and it was intended to be premiered for their 50th class reunion. But before they finished the initial plan, Glassco passed away.

For more details, please visit www.composers.com/benjamin-button