Music and memory loss come together in ‘Lucidity’, a new opera: NPR

Soprano Lucy Shelton, at 80, plays the lead role Brightnessa new opera by Laura Kaminsky that focuses on aging and memory loss.

Bowie Dunwoody

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Bowie Dunwoody

Soprano Lucy Shelton has premiered more than 100 new works in a decades-long career as a concert and recital artist. “I didn’t spend my time as an opera singer,” Shelton, 80, explained in a video chat last month. “I preferred vocal chamber music, and especially new music, working with living composers.” But this week, Shelton will do something she’s done only once before in her long, distinguished career: premiere an opera. She plays the leading role Brightness by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist David Cote, in a debut production presented by On Site Opera that opens tonight and runs through Saturday at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City.

Log in to Brightness was an easy decision for Shelton thanks to her longstanding friendship with Kaminsky, which dates back to the 1980s. “Laura wanted to write something for me,” Shelton explained. In 2019, Kaminsky encouraged Shelton to perform a 75th birthday recital at Merkin Hall in New York City. “I thought this might be the last time I would perform on stage,” Shelton recalls. “The fact that I can still do this is scary, but it gives me so much joy.”

The plot of Brightness revolves around Lili, a former opera singer who struggles with memory loss. “I’m the same age as the character,” Shelton acknowledged with a laugh. “Every time I forget something in my daily life, I think, ‘Well, I’m just practicing my part.’ In October, Shelton spoke to NPR alongside Kaminsky, Cote and her castmate mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, who plays Dr. Klugman, a neuroscientist who left a budding career as a singer for a more certain professional path BrightnessThe cast of four includes baritone Eric McKeever, who plays Lili’s adopted son Dante, and soprano Christina María Castro, who plays Sunny, a clarinetist who plays Dr. Klugman hires Lili to provide music therapy.

Soprano Lucy Shelton (right) plays Lili, an aging opera singer who struggles with memory loss. Yasmina Spiegelberg (left) and Cristina María Castro are also in the cast.

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Piper Gunnarson

Kaminsky, 68, also relates to the characters in Brightness. “I was kind of like a reverse Dr. Klugman because I studied psychology, but I just wanted to write music,” she noted. Kaminsky’s active, international career as a chamber music composer changed forever when she broke into the world of contemporary opera in 2014 with As One. Written with librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, As One is based on Reed’s life and tells the story of a transgender woman’s journey to self-acceptance. The opera became an established name and has been produced more than 60 times in the United States since its premiere. Brightness is Kaminsky’s sixth opera, and all of these follow As One‘s leading in telling current, realistic stories about individual self-discovery and the relationships between people.

Librettist David Cote first approached Kaminsky in 2014 after seeing a production of As One at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “I thought, ‘Laura has a beautiful compositional voice,’” Cote recalls, “and As One was a very lyrical, concise and direct emotional expression of opera that I wanted to be a part of.” Kaminsky added: “I didn’t really know him or his work, but then, in 2015, I saw his opera The scarlet ibis (composed by Stefan Weisman) and I thought the stories were evocative and compelling.”

It took time for the couple to arrive at the story that would become Brightness. “David came to me with several ideas for big operas,” Kaminsky explained, “but creatively I live in a very intimate world.” Kaminsky’s operas usually feature small casts, a handful of instruments, and recognizable stories that invite the audience into the story. As she explained, “For me, the idea of ​​a personal story was crucial: if David and I couldn’t get there, we wouldn’t work together.” The duo found the seed for Brightness‘s plot in their shared grief, as Cote and Kaminsky both lost loved ones to long-term illnesses around the time their collaboration began. ‘The way we developed Brightnessit became clearer that we were really drawing on our personal history,” Cote said. ‘Laura, with her father who had dementia, and me, as a caregiver for my wife in her last few months.’

Based on this experience, they created a piece about the sacrifices and sensitivities that arise from the conflict between caring for your family and pursuing your dreams. This theme is expressed in different ways for each character. Lili and Dante argue over his decision to give up piano playing to care for his mother. Sunny argues with her parents about her choice to work as a musician. And dr. Klugman, an old classmate of Dante’s at music school, is confronted with the emotional consequences of her choice to pursue science over singing.

Composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist David Cote created an opera about the sacrifices and sensitivities that arise from the conflict between caring for your family and pursuing your dreams.

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Bowie Dunwoody

One anchor of Lili’s story Brightness takes the form of recurring references to Franz Schubert’s 1828 composition The shepherd on the rock that appear in Kaminsky’s score and Cote’s libretto. In the second scene of the opera, Lili’s increasing cognitive problems become apparent as she struggles to perform the work she once memorized. And later, Lili defiantly listens to a recording of the piece alone, on headphones, to avoid disagreements with Dante.

That recording has its own specific meaning. As director Sarah Myers explained via email, “It is only later in the opera, when the walls between the characters begin to break down, that the audience gets to hear Schubert’s recording.” What the audience hears is actually Shelton singing Shepherd in a recording she made decades ago. The characters on stage naturally hear a younger Lili, who is in full control of her power. “I think it’s really important that this shot opens the first scene in the opera where all four characters are present at the same time,” Myers said. “The music brings them together.”

BrightnessKaminsky’s score is characteristic of the distinctly expressionist style shown in Kaminsky’s other operas. In an aria that opens BrightnessIn the film’s final scene, Sunny finally demands that her parents accept her choice as a musician. Soprano Christina María Castro’s solo part alternates between angular outbursts, accompanied by rhythmically energetic textures in the ensemble, and long, tender melodies. And the instrumentation of the aria – voice, clarinet and piano – provides another subtle reference to Shepherd on the rock.

After BrightnessAt this week’s premiere in New York, the opera begins a national tour, first to Seattle Opera on November 21-24 and then to Houston’s Opera In The Heights on February 21-23, 2025. Select audiences across the country will have already heard parts of it Brightness during unique previews organized by neuroscientists interested in the scientific topic of the piece. “We hope that the opera fuels the need for research into the mechanisms underlying dementia,” wrote Dr. Rui Costa, CEO of the Allen Institute, said in an email. Mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert sang out scenes Brightness during a special presentation given by Dr. Costa in Seattle in March, he noticed the impact of the music on the audience. “I think people are surprised by the extent to which they connect with something they haven’t personally experienced,” she explained.

Many Americans can identify with the complexities of age and caring for aging parents, friends and other family members dealing with dementia, memory loss or more general cognitive decline. Architect Charles Renfro, a longtime friend and follower of Kaminsky’s work and co-sponsor of Brightness‘s premiere performances, connected to the opera because of his experience caring for his mother-in-law after she suffered a stroke in 2021. “The subject immediately appealed to me,” said Renfro, “and I thought, ‘Laura, you’ve done it again, you’ve hit the nail on the head. You’ve made a piece that no one has dared to make on a subject that is in our entire cultural spectrum must be addressed.'”

For Shelton, Brightness continues a new, unexpected phase of her long career. In 2021 she premiered her first major opera as ‘The Teacher’ Innocencea role written for her by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. “I almost didn’t accept the role,” Shelton recalls, “but it (was) an extraordinary project that will even earn me my Met debut in the spring of 2026.”

Musically, Shelton’s roles in both operas employ a flexible and varied range of vocal techniques to make her performance more expressive. “Of course the operas of Laura and Kaija are full of it sprechtimme“, something I enjoy and can still do at my age,” Shelton noted, referring to a vocal performance technique that falls between singing and speaking. Dramatically, Lili’s role calls on Shelton to stretch herself.’ “I’m not one to show anger or frustration, I don’t use aggressive words,” Shelton explained. So I enjoy having that in my character. She added, “Dante calls her a ‘diva’ and I don’t do that. I don’t think I’ve ever been a real diva.”

On Site Opera’s music director Geoff McDonald appreciates Shelton’s performance Brightness as a showcase for how compelling her abilities still are. “Her range of expressiveness requires great technical mastery and a certain courage,” he explained, “and Lucy has made a career by courageously recruiting everything her voice can do.” Shelton shows us that there are some skills that only a singer with decades of experience – lived and performed – could bring to the stage.