Milwaukee’s Present Music gave the Brooklyn composer Missy Mazzoli her first commission in 2006. The result, a piece for violin, viola and cello titled “Lies You Can Believe In,” was premiered at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2007. Critical acclaim for Mazzoli’s work has grown steadily and Present Music remains a champion. Her “Magic with Everyday Objects,” aptly subtitled “a piece on the edge of a nervous breakdown,” was part of the company’s 30th anniversary program in 2012.
In that year, Mazzoli composed her first chamber opera, Song from the Uproar, based on the life of Swiss adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) whose biography the composer happened upon in an airport bookstore. The opera premiered at the Kitchen in New York City and that production has been reconstructed in several cities. Now, Milwaukee Opera Theatre, Wild Space Dance Company and conductor Viswa Subbaraman of Skylight Music Theatre will perform the first new interpretation of the work. The earlier staging used film for visual enhancement, but this production features Debra Loewen’s choreography for dancers Dan Schuchart, Mauriah Kraker, Kelly Radermacher and Veng Yang-Strath.
The daughter of an anarchist, Eberhardt was vehemently anti-colonial. She travelled through North Africa as a teenager, fell in love with the desert cultures and converted to Islam at age 17. She dressed as a man to gain full entry to Sufi society and survived a subsequent assassination attempt. She reported on wars in North Africa for European news services and was a thorn in the side of the French Foreign Legion. She wrote fiction and hoped to become a novelist but drowned in a flash flood, at age 27, with her neighbors in their desert village.
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Much of her writing disappeared in the flood. From the surviving passages, librettist Royce Vavrek constructed the opera’s spare poetry to capture Eberhardt’s radical spirit. This production’s conceptual approach, collaboratively devised by Loewen and MOT’s artistic director Jill Anna Ponasik, follows suit. As Ponasik put it, “Isabelle is gone but we try to save her story.” “When disaster happens,” Loewen added, “people’s natural inclination is to come together to try to right the wrong.” Mezzo-soprano Colleen Brooks will play Eberhardt with five singers as her desert community, a five-person chamber orchestra and electronics.
Song from the Uproar shows at 8 p.m. on May 6, 4 and 8 p.m. on May 7, and 2 p.m. on May 8 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets and further information, call 414-291-7800 or visit wildspacedance.org or milwaukeeoperatheatre.org.
DANCE HAPPENING
A Real Time Year-Long Recap
Danceworks
1661 N. Water St.
8:30-9:30 p.m., Friday, May 6
If you haven’t seen a Real Time performance, this 13th episode of the monthly series by Daniel and Andrea Burkholder sounds like a great place to start. Assisted by the fine Milwaukee choreographer and dancer Maria Gillespie, the show will recap all 12 episodes of the past year in an event that includes aerial arts, dance, music, improvisation, audience participation, drinks and conversation. One story that might emerge would tell of the growing bond between Milwaukeeans and the hard-working Burkholders, who’ve relocated from the Maryland-D.C. area to create new work while teaching dance at UW-Milwaukee. The hour-long show is provided pay-what-you-will (but-pay-something) in cash at the door.
