Where to look for treasure in California's new gold rush
World Arts & Cultures/Dance Distinguished Professor and famed theater director Peter Sellars provided the libretto for Girls of the Golden West, called "the most eagerly anticipated new opera of the season" (The New York Times). Girls opened at the San Francisco Opera on November 21 and runs on select dates through December 10, 2017.
"There weren't very many girls to choose from for John Adams' new opera, "Girls of the Gold West," which had its premiere here last week. The California Gold Rush was a young man's game of strike-it-rich. And there was no sense of, let alone regard for, the earth-shaking social implications that a sudden infusion of massive wealth would have on the state, the nation and ultimately the world.
That alone makes "Girls" an opera for our time. It doesn't matter from which direction you approach the War Memorial Opera House. You will pass encampments of homeless seemingly growing in direct proportion to the invasion of newly minted tech millionaires in San Francisco, where there is nothing close to parity for women trying to cash in on Silicon Valley gold.
The few at the Gold Rush camps tended to be wives of important men, prostitutes, entertainers, Native Americans or Californios, the original Mexican settlers. One, Louise Clappe, was a young doctor's new wife. Under the pen name Dame Shirley, she wrote a series of eloquent, richly detailed letters about the thoughtless mob rule, which she described with a clarity, calm and remarkable capacity to retain her sense of wonder.
Peter Sellars was responsible for the "Girls" concept, the libretto adapted from the historical texts (such as newspaper clippings, speeches, slogans and folk songs, but particularly Dame Shirley's letters) and the production. He and Adams chose the title as an arch comment on Puccini's melodramatic early 20th century Gold Rush opera, "La Fanciulla del West" (Girl of the Golden West). But ultimately, "Girls" revolves around a single woman. It is Dame Shirley's opera. She sets the tone, and she is its unlikely heroine."— Mark Swed, Nov. 26, 2017
Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
Read more about Peter Sellars here.