Production Dates
December 20-21, 2024
7:00 pm
Greer Auditorium
Wesley Black Fine Arts Center
Central Christian College
McPherson, Kansas
Production Personnel
Director: Tracelyn Gesteland
Assistant Director: Josh Styskal, Alexandra LaVake
Music Director/Conductor: Aaron Ames
Assistant Conductor: Hayoung Jeong
Pianist-Coaches: Yu-Hsuan Lu, Nicole Santos, Benjamin Pessognelli, Tim Sanchez
Costume Designer: Jen Stephenson
Set Design/Construction: J. Bradley Baker
Cast
Read about the 2024 Music On Site Artists
Pauline Viardot:
Michaela Larsen, Hayley Shoemaker, Alexia Rivera*
Younger Pauline Viardot:
Tina O'Malley, Sofia Vidali, Josephine Barstad*
Garcia:
Tyler Warwas, Zachary J. Reinert, Erik DeMario*
Madame Garcia:
Erin Sura, Stephanie Brink, Jill Galvin*, Alexia Rivera*
Maria Malibran:
Kate Bishop, Olivia Currier, Valérie Filloux*
Manuel Garcia:
Gage Campos, Mitchell Waggoner
Claudie Viardot:
Kate Bishop, Olivia Currier, Elsa Persson*
Paul Viardot:
Gage Campos, Mitchell Waggoner
Desiree:
Micaela Rebb, Maryn West
Louis Viardot:
Erik DeMario
Ivan Turgenev:
Brian Alvarado, Paul Hindemith, Mitchell Waggoner*
Younger Ivan Turgenev:
Filip Duda
Reporter:
Claire Marguerite Iverson, Faith Kopecky, Cameron Kidd*
Editor:
Theodore Chang, Zachary Bligh Kelly
Giulia:
Josephine Barstad, Cameron Kidd, Maryn West*
Fanny:
Jill Galvin, Alexia Rivera, Valérie Filloux*
Georges Sand:
Giselle Bautista, Ina Torres O'Ryan, Micaela Rebb*
Charles Dickens:
Anthony Belin, Zachary J. Reinert
Alfred de Musset:
Erik DeMario, Valérie Filloux
Chorley:
Elsa Persson,
Voice Student:
Micaela Rebb, Maryn West
*denotes cover role
Ensemble:
Chasey Briggs
Victoria Erickson
Becky Giles
Madison Hershberger
Abigail Johnson
Mikaela Pace
Isabella Ruano
Leah Yackanech
Alison Crosley
Jarrett Cox
Joseph Sevig
Michael Arriaza Aroche
Ethan Nott
About Notes on Viardot
Music, Words, and Treatment by Michael Ching
Based on a concept by Dr. Tracelyn Gesteland.
Commissioned by the University of South Dakota-Vermillion.
Tracelyn Gesteland, Producer/Director.
Premiere Date: April 27-28, 2024
Language: Sung in English
Composition Date: 2024
Runtime: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Plot Summary:
Prologue and Act I.
The opera starts with a brief prologue. We are in 1905, and the young female reporter arrives at Pauline’s apartment. Before Madame Viardot comes into the room, the Reporter recalls a conversation she had with her Editor, encouraging her to get past Pauline’s illustrious career in order to ask about her possibly scandalous relationship with the late, great Russian writer, Turgenev. Pauline enters; the Reporter is a bit nervous, but Pauline sets her at ease. The first question launches Pauline into recollections. Amongst her first
memories are the family’s trip to America as an operatic troupe (Characters) and then their trip to Mexico, where they were waylaid by bandits. She remembers her Voice Lessons with her father–gentle with her but strict and fiery with her sister. When her sister–who became the famous La Malibran–dies in an accident, Pauline must switch from studying to be a pianist to become a singer and to follow in Malibran’s shadow. Although there are skeptics, she is recognized as a major talent. Pauline makes her debut (Paris Debut/Musset’s Review). An early reviewer, Musset, is infatuated by her and tries and fails to sleep with her. She meets and is brought under the wing of the talented and influential writer, Georges Sand. Sand idolizes her and insists that Pauline must sacrifice everything for her phenomenal artistic talent. Pauline begins to tour (The Road to Success) and goes from success to success. This first act ends with her great success in Petersburg. During this scene, we incidentally learn that she has married her husband, Louis who introduces her to a young writer, Ivan Turgenev.
Act II
As the second act begins, we now see Pauline and the Reporter sitting side by side looking at scrapbooks of calling cards (cartes de visite) and boxes of letters she has saved from famous correspondents (Calling Cards). Their relationship is now friendlier, less formal. The Reporter finds a letter from Clara Schuman and reads it. The letter congratulates Pauline on the birth of her first child, Louise. The next is a letter from Charles Dicken’s congratulating Pauline for her performance of ORPHEUS AND EURIDICE in Paris. This time, Dicken’s appears and reads (sings) the letter. Next the Reporter finds a letter from Turgenev and again, he appears and takes over the reading/performing of the letter. It is a gloomy, yet humorous letter sent from his family estate in Russia in the 1850s. He clearly misses her and the recollection has clearly moved Pauline. The Reporter tries to find out more, but Pauline moves on to recollections of
working with Berlioz on Gluck’s ORPHEUS AND EURIDICE. The ensemble of furies singing “Chi mai del erebo” starts as it did, blocking Orpheus (played by Younger Pauline) from entering Hades. But it quickly also comes to symbolize forbidding the reporter to get more truth from Pauline about Turgenev. The Reporter becomes like Orpheus, begging Pauline to talk to her, but as in the Gluck, they and the two Paulines firmly and resolutely shout “No! No!” Her boss/editor appears demanding that she find out about Pauline’s personal life, saying that “I’ve been told by reliable sources that there was a menage a trois.” This is told salaciously and viciously by the two Parisian rivals from the first act; they gossip nastily, pondering about how the relationship between Pauline, her husband, Louis, and Turgenev works, with all three in the same house. During this, the Furies–who have disappeared–come back as guests and dignitaries to Pauline’s salon, crossing the stage and entering the parlor. The two rivals are greeted at the entrance to the VIardot salon by Pauline, and they suddenly become fawning and friendly. They take their seats in the salon.
Pauline welcomes everyone to the salon and says they are gathered to hear Saint-Saens’ new opera. Looking at the music, (Older) Pauline begins to sing “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” which morphs into a summation of the joys of her career of performing, creating, and collaborating. During this, she invites the Reporter to sit in the salon, thereby melding the timelines of present and past. As Pauline reaches the end of the aria, the Reporter “gets it” and realizes her duty is to help her readers understand the importance of this historic female singer and composer, and not be obsessed with the gossip of the past.
The salon memory fades and the guests disappear. The Reporter gently asks more about Turgenev. Pauline briefly summarizes how they met and goes on to say how much fun he was as part of family gatherings. She recalls the “Portrait Game” he invented and we see a round of the game with the family. The Reporter asks about Turgenev and her husband Louis and Pauline tells her that they were great friends and we see Louis telling everyone a hunting story. As the Reporter continues to gently prod, Pauline recalls how she read all of Turgenev’s work and he always solicited her opinion about it. And they worked together–we see a fragment from
their operetta “The Last Sorcerer.”
Act III
Knowing that she is about to break the taboo, the reporter asks a more prying question about Turgenev. Pauline refuses to answer on the record, ending the interview, but then goes on to tell the Reporter, now her friend, about the relationship.
Pauline recalls her life with Louis Viardot and Ivan Turgenev, both who have been dead now for 25+ years. First, with very good reasons, her mother and Georges Sand encourage her to marry the older Louis Viardot. He has connections, can manage her career, and he will be faithful. A single female opera singer would be pursued relentlessly and assumed to be of easy virtue. Love with Louis Viardot? It may grow later. Pauline recalls Louis fondly and remembers an incident where Louis may have learned that Ivan and Pauline were more than friends. In that scene, Turgenev and Pauline (portrayed by their younger selves) were reading Goethe together under a tree in the gardens together. It was an intimate moment emotionally, and perhaps physically (we leave for the director to decide how intimate). When Pauline returns to the house she realizes that Louis may have been watching them from the house. We come back to the
present (1905). Pauline looks at an old envelope from Turgenev with the instructions “Do not read until I am gone.” She opens it and he appears–it is his last prose poem to her. The older Turgenev, Pauline, and their younger selves sing a quartet that encapsulates their strong feelings for each other. Pauline is briefly lost in a reverie about the past. A knock at the door draws her back. It is a student, arrived for their voice lesson. The opera ends as the lesson begins, with Pauline enthusiastically training the next generation, echoing the advice she got from her father sixty years in the past. The opera ends with the two Paulines downstage center.
