The origins of Madison Opera\u2019s new world premiere sound like a Hinge love story.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met in a Facebook group that was like, \u2018composer\/writer connections,\u2019\u201d said Scott Gendel, the Madison-based composer of \u201cEverlasting Faint,\u201d opening Friday, Feb. 13 in the Capitol Theater.<\/p>\n
In groups like this, writers of music and words send out their work and see what comes back, testing the waters for a new collaboration. And just like on Hinge and other dating apps, Gendel had tried this tactic before. It had not, he said, \u201cbeen super successful for me in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Scott Gendel composed “Everlasting Faint.”<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But a few years ago, something caught. Sandra Flores-Strand, an Arizona-based librettist, had a story in mind \u2014 a ghost story, about a murder and a mother\u2019s determination to get justice for her daughter. (An opera\u2019s text, or story, is called a libretto.)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been a singer for a long time, and my husband\u2019s also a singer,\u201d Flores-Strand said. \u201cWe were living up in Calgary when the pandemic started, and I was working on another project.<\/p>\n \u201cI found this timeline of the Spanish American War \u2026 and there was this tidbit about the first case to be won based on the testimony of a ghost. I lost my mind a little bit. I had to figure out what\u2019s going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Gendel was resolving to his wife that he would \u201cwrite an opera with all the bells and whistles and an orchestra and chorus and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sandra Flores-Strand wrote the libretto for “Everlasting Faint.”\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was asking librettists, do you have librettos you really want to do?\u201d he said. \u201cSandra shared this one with me and immediately, I was like, \u2018that\u2019s an opera I have to write.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Flores-Strand took some liberties with the story behind \u201cEverlasting Faint,\u201d but the core concept comes from the Greenbrier ghost story of 1897. As the story goes, young Elva Zona Heaster marries Edward Trout Shue, a blacksmith who\u2019d been married twice before, in West Virginia.<\/p>\n Three months later, a neighbor finds Zona dead in their home. Her husband rushes the doctor and coroner through their examinations, buries her in a high-neck dress, and that\u2019s that \u2014 until Zona\u2019s mother, Mary Heaster, says her daughter appeared to her as a ghost.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emily Birsan, at left, plays Martha Jones and Katherine Pracht plays Mary Heaster in “Everlasting Faint,” shown in rehearsal at the Madison Opera Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Zona\u2019s ghost tells her mother she was murdered. Mary persuades the local prosecutor to reopen her daughter\u2019s case and exhume the body, where it is revealed that Zona was choked to death. A judge sentences Shue to life in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s a ghost story perks a lot of interest, because we like true crime,\u201d Flores-Strand said. \u201cWe like things that seem like they couldn\u2019t possibly happen. It\u2019s a very engaging story.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a story that feels sadly, perpetually relevant,\u201d Gendel added, referencing the domestic violence at the story\u2019s beginning. \u201cIt took place 130 years ago but there is a piece that is obviously commenting about today. \u2026 All my favorite movies are taking on some really serious issue while doing something entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n Gendel and Flores-Strand staged a reading of \u201cEverlasting Faint\u201d at the Hamel Music Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December 2023. Gendel is the principal pianist and vocal coach for Madison Opera. So Kathryn Smith, the opera\u2019s general director, came to see it (\u201cas a favor to me,\u201d Gendel said).<\/p>\n Smith saw the work\u2019s potential. And though opera premieres are difficult for a variety of reasons \u2014 they\u2019re expensive, they\u2019re risky, there can be resistance among opera audiences to new things \u2014 she put it on the current season. A\u00a0Friends of Everlasting Faint<\/a> donor group helped bring it to life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Katherine Pracht, left, plays Mary Heaster and Tori Tedeschi Adams plays Elva Heaster Shue, shown in rehearsal for “Everlasting Faint” at the Madison Opera Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEverlasting Faint\u201d runs two acts and roughly two and a half hours. It will be sung in English with supertitles \u2014 a key tool for new operagoers, Gendel says \u2014 and the story \u201cmoves at the pace of 21st century life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With a scene structure modeled after Verdi, \u201cEverlasting Faint\u201d includes a trio of ghosts singing about vengeance. There\u2019s a classic opera drinking song, as Shue pours one out with his buddies to \u201cmourn\u201d his dead wife. Flores-Strand\u2019s story closely follows the mother, Mary, as she tries to get justice for her daughter \u2014 her rage aria is called \u201cThat Devil Killed Her.\u201d<\/p>\n The story arc, Flores-Strand said, is about \u201cpower and control \u2026 who\u2019s falling apart, who\u2019s winning. Scott also does that musically.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From left, Alan Dunbar plays Dr. George Knapp, Tori Tedeschi Adams plays Elva Heaster Shue and Andrew Bidlack plays her husband, Trout Shue, in rehearsal for Madison Opera’s “Everlasting Faint.”<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n
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\n COURTESY OF MADISON OPERA<\/span>
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nTrue crime in West Virginia<\/h3>\n
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\n JULIA SIMPSON<\/span>
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\n JULIA SIMPSON<\/span>
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\u2018The pace of 21st century life\u2019<\/h3>\n
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