spotlight as one KELLY MARKGRAF:


I’m so fascinated by this opera, in particular the story, but also how popular it has become. Especially in the context of the times we’re living because there has been so much push back around the transgender community and that it’s been performed against that backdrop. How did you initially become involved? My wife Sasha and I have both sung for


Laura Kaminsky the composer. She used to run Symphony Space on the Upper West Side in New York City, which was a very progressively-minded institution. We had done some really interesting stuff together. She had been in Russia, I think it was in St. Petersburg in the library there, she had asked the librarian, “I’m looking for something of Shostakovich’s that people in America might not know about.” It was one of those moments that she was for sure


happy she asked, because the librarian said. “Give me one second…” She walks away and comes back with a manuscript and says, “No one knows about this.” It was a manuscript of songs and popular melodies, patriotic melodies and opera arias, things like that, that Shostakovich had transcribed for only violin and occasionally violin/viola...The maximum size being a string quartet along with the singers. They were called the “Front Ways Songs” meaning the war front and he had written them specifically to take out to Russian soldiers on the front for entertainment purposes. Laura is incredibly interesting and brought back


these songs for string quartet and singers and we premiered them at Symphony Space. I had known her maybe eight years or so and we had randomly kept in touch, when she came across this idea based on aNew York Times article about a New Jersey couple, one of which wanted to transition. It meant that they’d be in a same-sex relationship and all of a sudden, they were thrown into turmoil around the legalities and around keeping benefits, which gave her the idea to write an opera around it. She contacted my wife and I and said, “I really want to write this opera for you guys, will you do it?” It really sort of came to us from the beginning and


once Mark and Kim wrote the libretto, they sent it along. I still recall sitting down with Sasha to read through our parts, sort of like a script reading and we both sat there in tears, having trouble holding it together. It was because they had written something so clairvoyant and to the core of what the human


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struggle is. It doesn’t matter what your orientation is. Whether it’s what you might call in slang terms, about an uber-straight guy who is insecure about his own identity, wondering who likes him, what group he fits into, or whatever it might be. I’m of the mind set that sexual orientation, even gender orientation, exists on a spectrum. No matter where you exist on that spectrum, people really do have the same kind of struggles. We all have those voices in our heads that drive us crazy, making us unhappier than we should be. The truth of this, even though I had never been a person who was well- acquainted with transgenderism, partially because of my Wisconsin upbringing, but even through my city life, I had never really come across it strangely enough. Yet, even though I hadn’t been exposed to that on a personal level, reading through this script really sort of manhandled me, emotionally. That was my first exposure to the piece as well, reading the libretto. You are absolutely right, it was a powerful, emotional journey through a incredibly well-thought out, charged verse. I look for ways to enlighten understanding in what I do. Ways to reach across divides, this is whyAs One was such a powerful draw, because it does illustrate the transgender journey, yet it’s done in a way that everyone can relate to… that


Music... will help


dissolve your perplexi- ties and purify your


character and sensibili- ties, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”


- Dietrich Bonhoeffer


process of self-discovery. It really captured my wife and I and fortunately, Laura wrote a score that even though it’s complex musically, once you get through the complex rhythms and the other challenges it offers, the audience gets something that is truly elevating for the text. One of the hardest parts to get through in the whole show without falling apart is the letter poem called, “Home for the Holiday.” It’s when Hannah is first transitioning and can’t face the idea of seeing her parents, because she hasn’t told them yet that she’s going through it. The letter that she writes about it being her first Christmas coming back is intense. The production of that opera in Colorado we did last spring was particularly intense, in that one moment because, the director decided to add a supernumerary into the show, a female extra nearing seventy years old, the perfect mom, the iconic-looking mother. She came onstage from behind me (Hannah), just as I was composing that letter home, carrying a paper in her hand too, implying that she had read the letter already. As my writing came to a close, she came downstage and I could actually kind of feel her presence behind me as she did it, she put her hand on the back of my head like a mom might do and ran her fingers through my hair…It was so intense. Everybody knows that feeling, at once exhilarat-


ing because you are claiming sovereignty as an adult or as having your own sense of self. But, it’s also deeply sorrowful to be breaking those bonds and moving away from something you were so used to referring back to. It just captures so much.


The San Diego Opera’s premiere ofAs One takes pace at the Joan B. Kroc Theatre, 6611 University Avenue in San Diego formFriday, November 10 through Sunday, November 12. AnOut Night discount of $10 is available for Friday night’s performance, featuring a preshow lecture. For tickets and more information, go tosdopera.org.


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