In a Room Making Music With People: The Pigeon Keeper with Stephanie Fleischmann and David Hanlon
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Release Date: 06/29/2022
Connections Across Time and Space: Opera in the Cosmos
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Seven years ago, Santa Fe Opera started a conversation that would reverberate throughout American Opera, shaping this celebrated art form into something more reflective of the world in which it's created. Today, Opera For All Voices (OFAV) commissions have surpassed even our wildest storytelling expectations. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia tuck into the time machine for a season-ending trip around the OFAV universe, revisiting the initiative's greatest hits and offering fans a glimpse at what's to come––with Ruth Nott, consultant, Opera for All Voices;...
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Competing Interests: How Do You Workshop a New Opera?
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Roadtrip! After many long months of necessary virtual collaboration, the creative team behind The Pigeon Keeper, a Santa Fe Opera Opera For All Voices (OFAV) commission, finally got to spread their wings for an emotional workshop in San Francisco. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia discover what it was like to have everyone (well, almost everyone) in the same room for the very first time––featuring composer David Hanlon, librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, stage director Mary Birnbaum, music director Kelly Kuo, dramaturg Cori Ellison, Ruth Nott, consultant for...
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Hometown to the World Debuts on Broadway
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
If a chorus of 12 teens can provide compelling commentary on immigration enforcement from the stage of a venerable performing arts center in Santa Fe, how might ten times that number of voices impact the debate? From a Broadway venue that has welcomed some of the twentieth century’s most influential social justice visionaries? Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows-Fineberg and Anna Garcia pilot the time machine east to find out, setting a course for the 2022 premiere of at New York’s storied . Adding their insights to this aural postcard are Hometown’s composer Laura Kaminsky...
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Telling Hard Truths
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
What do you know about the life and legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer? Chances are, not much. That's about to change. Co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia dust off the Key Change time machine for a trip back through time and place to the real-life inspiration for This Little Light of Mine (TLLoM), the modern operatic masterpiece commissioned by Santa Fe Opera's Opera For All Voices initiative. Good thing this ride is roomy because joining them are two women who can claim a direct connection to Mrs. Hamer: Jacqueline "Cookie" Hamer Flakes, Mrs. Hamer's last surviving daughter, and...
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A Day in the Life Before a World Premiere
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
It’s October 28, 2022. As a brisk, still night settles over Santa Fe, things are heating up inside The Lensic Performing Arts Center. Longtime opera patrons mingle alongside never opera goers. Soon, the curtain will rise on This Little Light of Mine (TLLoM), a modern operatic masterpiece composed by Chandler Carter with libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover. The one-act production is an unflinching yet uplifting dramatization of the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black woman born on the very lowest rung of the American caste system. A Black woman who nonetheless rose to speak at the 1964...
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Spark of Imagination: Generations of the Pueblo Opera Program with Sonja & Seth Martinez
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
If you’re unfamiliar with Santa Fe Opera’s (POP), take a quick journey back in time for of this conversation. Go ahead; we’ll wait. In it, you’ll meet Renee Roybal and Claudene A. Martinez, both members of Pueblo of San Ildefonso. The pair recall the early days of POP and the formation of the (POCC). Now that you’re sufficiently caught up, join Andrea Fellows Fineberg as her time machine co-pilot Kyle Gray, SFO’s Manager of Community Relations & Government Affairs, wraps up the conversation (for now.) Renee and Claudene return to share recollections of their early...
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Story With Purpose: The Origin of the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council with Renee Roybal and Claudene A. Martinez
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
All aboard the Key Change time machine for a two-part trip! On this half of the journey, we toggle back to the origins of a beloved community-based program and then forward to celebrate its exciting expansion. 2023 will mark the 50th anniversary of the , lovingly known around the Santa Fe Opera as POP. Key Change commemorates this momentous event by passing the mic to colleague Kyle Gray, SFO’s Manager of Community Relations & Government Affairs. Kyle and his guests discuss the POP legacy and (POCC), which blossomed out of an artistic collaboration between legendary director Peter...
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In a Room Making Music With People: The Pigeon Keeper with Stephanie Fleischmann and David Hanlon
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Hurry up and wait. When your world premier is stopped in its tracks by forces beyond your control, “momentum” is measured a bit differently. Andrea Fellows Fineberg chats with composer David Hanlon and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, the creative duo behind about maintaining artistic progress during the pandemic, the limits of virtual collaboration, and finally (finally!) preparing for live performances. All aboard the Opera For All Voices time machine for a quick review! The Pigeon Keeper was initially scheduled for a workshop in 2020 and its world premier in 2021. Best laid...
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Influence and Inclusion: The Impact of Hometown To The World with Estevan, Ely, and Francesco of the Youth Chorus
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
You’ve heard of main character energy? Well, get ready for youth chorus energy! Andrea Fellows-Fineberg connects with an optimistic, pragmatic, and empathetic mindset courtesy of the youth chorus members who participated in the December 2021 world premiere of Opera For All Voices’ Hometown To The World. Their insights and post-performance emotion speak to art's ability to foster community––with Ely Aguilar, Francesco Aimale, and Estevan Flórez-Mansi. We also hear post-show reactions from artists, creators, collaborators, and the audience buoyed by musical excerpts from the premiere at...
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This Doesn’t Happen Without Audience: The Hometown To The World Premiere
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
When an initiative is called Opera For All Voices, who’s the “all”? Key Change Season Four examines OFAV’s burgeoning legacy of co-creating new operatic works through a community-centric lens, beginning with an OG favorite, Hometown To The World. Host Andrea Fellows-Fineberg revisits the production with core members of its artistic team, young performers, and the most influential collaborator: the audience––featuring Ruth Nott, Composer Laura Kaminsky, Librettist Kimberly Reed, and a behind-the-scenes segment with Estevan Flórez-Mansi, youth chorus member. There’s perhaps no...
info_outlineHurry up and wait. When your world premier is stopped in its tracks by forces beyond your control, “momentum” is measured a bit differently. Andrea Fellows Fineberg chats with composer David Hanlon and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, the creative duo behind The Pigeon Keeper, about maintaining artistic progress during the pandemic, the limits of virtual collaboration, and finally (finally!) preparing for live performances.
All aboard the Opera For All Voices time machine for a quick review! The Pigeon Keeper was initially scheduled for a workshop in 2020 and its world premier in 2021. Best laid plans, right?
But one thing opera and a pandemic have in common is the power to stretch time. Or maybe freeze it. However defined, those protracted months presented David and Stephanie with additional opportunities to tinker, aided by technology and unexpected (if limited) solitude.
“One of the joys of working with Stephanie is it's a very collaborative back-and-forth thing,” David says. Still, he admits that some discoveries can only happen in real life.
Now that conditions have improved (fingers crossed), The Pigeon Keeper is set to soar. Accompanied by a stirring chorus of young voices provided by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, this OFAV commission follows a father and daughter as they navigate unimaginable loss.
The story couldn't be more immediate in light of so many concurrent global tragedies, says Stephanie. “Now, with Ukraine, the question of refugees and children leaving their homes, making huge journeys to other places and losing everything that they know, the resonance and relevance of this piece have only grown in the time we've been waiting to bring it into the world.”
FEATURING
David Hanlon, Composer
Stephanie Fleischmann, Librettist
Audio Sample from the San Francisco Girls Chorus from The Pigeon Keeper
Audio Sample of “We’ve Been Getting By” from The Pigeon Keeper featuring bass-baritone Michael Sumuel and pianist Kseniia Polstiankina Barrad.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Opera America - New Works Exploration Grant
RELATED EPISODES
Season 2, Episode 4 “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers” - A first look at The Pigeon Keeper
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Key Change is a production of The Santa Fe Opera in collaboration with Opera for All Voices.
Produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios
Hosted by Andrea Fellows Fineberg
Audio Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Show Notes: Lisa Widder
Theme music by Rene Orth with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello
Cover art by Dylan Crouch
This podcast is made possible due to the generous funding from the Melville Hankins Family Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and an OPERA America Innovation Grant, supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
To learn more about Opera For All Voices, visit us at SantaFeOpera.org.