A commissioning grant for $250,000 US has been awarded to City Opera Vancouver for the creation of a chamber opera to be scored by Powell River-raised Tobin Stokes.
Stokes, who works out of Victoria and Vancouver, will be composing the music for an opera to be written by American-Iraqi playwright Heather Ruffo. The chamber opera will be based upon the real experiences of US Marine Corps Sergeant Christian Ellis in the Battle of Fallujah in 2004.
City Opera Vancouver approached Stokes about the project in the fall of 2010, although at the time he only knew minimal details on the scope. City Opera became aware of Stokes after he wrote his Powell River-produced opera The Vinedressers in 2005.
The grant, believed to be the largest single commissioning grant ever awarded in Canada, is from the Annenberg Foundation, a private US-based foundation that provides funding to non-profit organizations worldwide. The money will fund the creation, but not the production, of the chamber opera, which is expected to take about two years all told.
“It’s great to have a job that’s going to go for the next year,” said Stokes. “It’s an honour to get this...It’s a great project that I’ll learn a lot from.”
Work is very much in the early stages and Stokes does not have all the details as to what he will be writing. The writing of the story and lyrics, done by the librettist, is in progress and Stokes expects that he won’t start working on the music until May. He is in touch with Ellis and Ruffo and knows that the story will be told from both sides of the conflict. The overarching theme will be one of the connection and similarities between all humans, regardless of the area of the world or extreme situations. He also knows that it will be a two-act opera, close to two hours long.
“It’s a pretty unique project actually,” said Stokes. “I’ll be able to study what [Ruffo] writes and just look at her character development and try to be true to the story, try to be really true to what she’s written...to try to understand the intent of each character.” From there he said he pretty much has carte blanche for his approach to this music, within the framework of a chamber opera. He plans to incorporate a taste of Iraqi music into the score, something which he has done before with Chinese and first nations’ music.
To have all of the money lined up is another unique aspect of the project. This means they will have money available to hire actors to study the libretto and musicians to work with Stokes in development of the music through workshops.
He said that one of the reasons City Opera approached him to do the music is his ability to write accessible opera music. The goal is to perform the opera for soldiers, so it’s important to have the opera be understandable and listenable with one performance.
In June Stokes will be in Powell River as music director of the production Good Timber, a collection of songs and stories about loggers and the history of logging, which will be performed at Max Cameron Theatre.
