Juneau poet Tripp J. Crouse and composer Spencer Edgers have created an original opera called Black Rock, USA. A workshop performance of it will be on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
The duo talked about the opera during Juneau Afternoon on Wednesday.
Spencer said he’s written several short operas but wanted to do a full length one. When he got a Juneau Community Foundation artist grant, he had the opportunity.
“I really wanted to center things that I’m that I’m passionate about, which happen to be labor rights and queerness and queer visibility, and so we’re telling a story that centers those ideas through the context of a fictional 1890s mining town,” he said.
Spencer composed the music. Crouse is the librettist, which means they wrote the lyrics and words. Crouse says they based the opera’s main character, Penelope, on a real-life friend from Anchorage.
“I kind of wrote Penelope for her, and I was like, ‘We need a love story in here somewhere, and we need some heartbreak happening somewhere else. And how do I make those happen?’” Crouse said. “And I think one of my favorite things about writing is I might not know the whole story through. I might know the beats, and so the fun for me is figuring out how to get from this beat to that beat, and make it cohesive.”
The Sunday performance will feature a 22-person orchestra, a 12-person chorus, 5 principal singers, and a 4-person house band – plus a small production crew. That totals about 50 working artists from Juneau and Southeast – all of whom, Edgars said, are getting paid.
The artists and crew have been rehearsing every night this week. The work will culminate in a “workshop performance” on Sunday. Which production manager Cate Ross said is like a combination of a play reading and a concert.
“That means full string section, percussion, horns, the whole deal, as well as a full chorus of singers and then the principals who are singing those principal roles,” Ross said. “And so, there’s a ton of people that will be all on stage, but it is not staged in terms of there’s no blocking, we’re not doing scenes and interacting in that way; no costumes.”
The community can watch the workshop performance of Black Rock, USA this Sunday at 2 p.m. at the JACC. You can reserve a seat by a pay-as-you-can donation here, or at the door if seats are still available.
