Felix Jarrar’s Halloween Festival
A Halloween interview with Felix Jarrar, written by Yutong Yang.
“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.” —— Poe
With approximately 230 works under his belt, Felix Jarrar has something for every season. At 9PM this October 21, the composer and pianist is returning to Emerging Artists Theatre for his inaugural Halloween One-Act Opera Festival. After a deep dive into the repertoire, I realized that this isn’t going to be your average Spooky Season show. It’s a celebration of the beautiful macabre, and on a very personal level, a love letter to the literary genre and exploration of what music can express and communicate in an age of uncertainty and isolation.
1 / Tell us a bit about your relationship with horror. When did you first discover your passion for it?
I love to read. It’s one of my great passions in life. Ever since I was in school I was obsessed with classical literature. I wrote my sixth grade book report on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
2 / Who’s your favorite horror writer?
The author I especially love is Edgar Allan Poe. I actually started writing opera because of Poe’s works. When I was 11, I went to see a play adaptation of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. My desire to set that as an opera inspired me to go into the business. I have not only adapted The Fall of the House of Usher as an opera. Of my 12 operas, I have also adapted three other Poe tales (The Oval Portrait, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Tell Tale Heart.)
3/ Can you shed some light on the rich literary tradition of the Halloween Opera Festival?
Two of the aforementioned pieces in the show, The Oval Portrait and The Cask of Amontillado, are adaptations of classic Edgar Allan Poe tales. “The Tree: An Old Man’s Story” is a setting of a poem by Thomas Hardy. Patience & Pearl, with a libretto with Bea Goodwin, is about Pearl Curran and her symbiotic relationship with the ghost Patience Worth. They wrote several novels, poetry and prose together, and some of those novels became New York Times best sellers. This festival not only celebrates my works around themes we associate with Halloween, but the rich literary tradition associated with this time of the year as well.
4. Do you often work with horror as a composer/pianist, or is it more like a “guilty pleasure” for occasions like this?
Horror is a theme that is associated with the many macabre themes I explore in my work. What I love about stories that involve horror such as Poe’s work is the psychological depth he puts into his characters, which I feel fits the operatic stage beautifully. The inner thoughts and words of these characters and their emotions are so intense that music is the perfect thing to describe how I hear these tales as I read them.
5. Horror is at once a common human feeling, and an intimate reaction. What tools do you use to convey the inner turmoil of the characters?
I approach writing horror in the same manner as any work for the stage. It’s a commentary on the human condition and the psychology behind it. The themes of these stories are so universal and relatable. In “The Tree: an Old Man’s Story”, a doomed love triangle is at the center of an epic ballade, while The Oval Portrait deals with themes of addiction, The Cask of Amontillado personifies the wrath of Montresor’s murderous revenge in music, and Patience & Pearl (on the opposite end of the spectrum) is an empowering story of women giving voice to other women. The latter is a work that shows that Halloween shows don’t always have to be frightening (don’t worry, the entire festival will have plenty of scares!) - it can also inspire the imagination.
The Oval Portrait was premiered by Opera Elect in a virtual production that was directed collaboratively between artistic director Jordan Bowman, baritone Andrew Jurden who premiered the work, and myself. We really wanted to explore his journey through the art he makes alongside the experiences he has with addiction.
Photo Credit: Eliana Brea
6/ Would you like to take us on a deep dive into your inspirations for these works and what you’re trying to convey or accomplish with each?
I can relate to The Oval Portrait because of how the artist had a muse in his art besides his partner. In the opera, he sings of how he has two brides - one in his art, and the other in his actual wife. The way his obsession with his art eats his soul from the inside out really mirrored what I was going through during the pandemic. The way I coped with my trauma with all of the COVID-19 cancellations was by pouring myself into my work. This opera was a way for me to examine what happens when the artist takes that obsession way too far.
Fascination and obsession with beauty and perfection in art can definitely be an allegory for my identity as a queer artist - I wasn’t consciously writing the piece from that place, but I was working on my adaptation of The Tell Tale Heart at the same time as this opera. In that work, queer themes were very present and they sub-consciously made their way into The Oval Portrait, even though the artist in the work is in a seemingly heteronormative relationship. However, is he himself straight? Is there a desire for someone else that he cannot have? We never see his wife on stage, so the idea of her existence could almost be called into question. I’ve left a lot of things in the work open to interpretation because the vacuum of what could be happening is so immense and contributes to the momentum behind the drama of the artist’s frustrations with his work.
For “The Tree: an Old Man’s Story”, I was really inspired to take my work with Thomas Hardy in an entirely new direction. I have song cycles with his poetry that I have set over the years, and they are some of my favorite songs I’ve written to date. During the pandemic, with social distancing, lots of the works I wrote were initially produced virtually. This includes The Cask of Amontillado, Patience & Pearl, and The Oval Portrait. However, I wanted to explore the idea of an acapella piece that conveys a truly intense narrative. This song is about a man who finds out his girlfriend conspired with her former married lover to murder his wife so they could be together. However, her married lover gets hanged. His girlfriend does not regret this, as they would not have met had the conspiracy successfully come to fruition. The man, now old, recalls this conversation from the last time they were together. He then proceeds to wander in his thoughts, and she goes mad with love for him. The acapella tenor line over the course of 10 minutes documents all of the feelings around this vivid tale, and in this production, the narrative of the song will be mimed by members in the cast.
For The Cask of Amontillado, I was really inspired by the idea of revenge, and was mentally at a real breaking point at the time of its composition. It was written during the 2020 election, when the world was waiting to see whether Biden would win (which he did end up winning). During those sleepless nights staying up till 4am watching the live streams of 24 hour news cycles around the clock, the only way I could let my mind go and separate from the tragedy of the pandemic and the political upheaval was to throw myself into writing a work with a subject that was just as dark and creepy as the world we live in. In this work, I truly experimented with mixing comedy with the tragedy to make the horrifying murder at the end of the work more terrifying than I could have imagined.
For Patience & Pearl, I was really inspired by the idea of women giving voice to women (as I mentioned earlier). Bea introduced me to the historical figure of Pearl Curran when she sent me the libretto for this piece, and I was so inspired by the world she brilliantly created in a snapshot. Musically, I really can’t say this one came from any personal experience of mine outside of the fact that I was just simply inspired by Bea’s text. I love writing counterpoint, and the finale of the opera, a fugue, really allowed me to explore how Pearl communicates with Patience and vice versa. The text of this part, “You gave me voice/I couldn’t speak on my own”, really inspired me to write counterpoint highlighting the symbiotic relationship between their two voices.
7/ How is casting for horror different from finding singers to sing your other works, if at all? How do you work together to establish what they’re comfortable with trying, in terms of vocal techniques, gestures, etc.?
For myself, casting is always the same no matter what. I’ve been working professionally in the opera industry since I was 19-years-old when I first held auditions for my second opera, The Fall of the House of Usher, in 2015. In the several years since then, the criteria hasn't changed. I am looking for the singer that can vocally create the part in the way I hear it in my head, and look to see how they work with the director for a project through cold readings. My works are entirely based on the bel canto tradition, and even when examining horror, I never sacrifice narrative for the vocalism, the musical momentum, or the general cadence of the words I am setting. Those are paramount, and within those confines and boundaries, I work collaboratively with my colleagues to find the sound for the character with their own voice.
I am truly honored to have the cast of artists I have assembled for my first ever Halloween Opera Festival. My dear friend and collaborator Douglas Sabo will sing “The Tree: An Old Man’s Story”. We have done many art song collaborations together and are currently working on prepping the Liederkreis Op. 39 by Robert Schumann for a concert next month, and I am thrilled to continue our exploration of art song with my acapella piece. For The Cask of Amontillado, I’m thrilled to work with a new collaborator of mine: tenor Daniel Kamalic who will perform Montresor, while longtime collaborator baritone Miguel Angel Vasquez will perform Fortunato. This will be my first time working with Daniel Kamalic on my music, and I am very excited about this piece going up. The Oval Portrait will feature baritone Harrison Singer, who I was introduced to after playing, coaching, and accompanying at Mannes Opera while he was a student there. We collaborated in many capacities through the conservatory, and are now finally working on my music together, which is a real treat! Patience & Pearl features sopranos Katy Lindhart and Natalie Polito, two magnificent artists who are in my private coaching studio. I started working with Katy this past Spring while coaching her on Tatyana from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and we absolutely hit it off. Since then, she has sung as a guest artist at my concert to benefit reproductive rights last month with myself and my duo-partner soprano Maria Brea. She performed mine and Bea’s “Walking Past a Window” at that concert, and I am so excited to have her vocally explore and leave her mark on the role of Patience. Natalie Polito, who will perform the role of Pearl, has become one of my most frequent collaborators. We’ve worked together before on productions of G & S’s HMS Pinafore and Puccini’s Il tabarro. Outside of this previous work together, Natalie sang on my Ukrainian Benefit concert that was co-produced by City Lyric Opera, my reproductive rights concert that also featured Katy, and gave the live world premiere in concert of Patience & Pearl this past August at Rockwood Music Hall opposite soprano Caroline Spaeth as Patience and violinist Adam von Housen. I’m so excited to stage Natalie in the role of Pearl after working on the concert performance of the piece that we did this summer. Violinist Chloe Kim will perform alongside myself while I conduct from the piano and stage direct.
Jarrar is very excited to finally perform these pieces live, and expect an artistically fulfilling experience. He calls on the audience to wear their Halloween costumes and come to be entertained by the variety of stories and modes of story-telling this production will feature. He hopes his Halloween One-Act Opera Festival will be a chance for audiences to engage with new operatic repertoire that doesn’t necessarily live within the confines of the traditional opera house.
He shares that “opera is changing, growing and expanding in so many ways, and it’s a reflection of real life blown up to huge proportions. The themes of horror, Halloween, ghosts, murder and mayhem this show features will entertain audiences and introduce them to familiar stories told through new means with some of the most exciting up and coming talent in the business.”
Tickets for this event can be purchased at the door. Please visit Felix Jarrar’s website and social channels for more information.
-written by Yutong Yang