Royce Vavrek — The Language of Opera

In this episode, Lizzie Bowman is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek (Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun, Adoration with composer Mary Kouyoumdjian, Lincoln in the Bardo with composer Missy Mazzoli) who grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada, and is exploding in the international opera scene. We discuss how a childhood of country radio and the rural landscape of Northern Canada shaped his "serpentine" path through film school and eventually into the world of contemporary storytelling.

Serendipitous Release: While this conversation was recorded in December 2025, a few audio technical hurdles (now fixed!) kept it in the vault until now. As it turns out, the timing is perfect. In the interview, we discuss the complexities of the project Indians on Vacation, and this week, on May 9, 2026, that project, in a new form, takes center stage. Against the Grain Theatre (where Royce is Artistic Director) will present "Stories Don’t Die" at the Terminal Theatre in Toronto. This intimate encounter interweaves excerpts from the opera with personal reflections on belonging and identity, featuring a newly commissioned sung land acknowledgement by Ian Cusson and Yvette Nolan.

Also in this conversation:

• The "Energy Ping-Pong": Royce explains why he loves an audience that "talks back"—from $11 tickets at Opera Philly to the electric, "imperfect" magic of live performance.
• Pure Canadiana: A deep dive into our shared love for the Canadian singer-songwriters who define our playlists, including Sarah Slean, Kathleen Edwards, and The Rankin Family.
• Writing for Muses: The joy of creating roles for specific voices like Lauren Worsham, Anne Sophie von Otter, and Thomas Hampson.

All episodes are also available in video form on our YouTube and Spotify Channels. All episodes are hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman. 

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Transcript

Welcome to Royce Vavrek, Librettist and Lyricist

Elizabeth Bowman 0:00

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the scene room. Today I have Royce Vavrek in the room. He is Canadian, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist. He is Grammy nominated for his opera Adoration, which he wrote in collaboration with composer Mary Kouyoumdjian. The opera is an adaptation from the original film written and directed by Canadian Atom Egoyan. He is also the winner of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his opera Angel's Bone with composer Du Yun. His works have been commissioned all over the world. When I met him two summers ago at the Stamp Center for Arts and Creativity, I felt like he embodied creativity in everything that he does, including everyday conversations with people. He's highly engaged and interested in finding the creativity behind anyone he's talking to. So I'm delighted to have him here today. And I wanted to ask him about how one finds themselves as a librettist for opera and his inspiration behind his works and what makes the ultimate collaborating partner for a great opera, which obviously he has succeeded in through multiple partnerships with great creators. If you're enjoying the podcast, please like, share, do all those things. I really appreciate it. It keeps these conversations going. And for now, let's get to the conversation. Right, welcome to the scene room. Thanks so much for being here.

Indians On Vacation And Identity Fallout

Royce Vavrek 1:40

Thank you so much for having me. I am so glad that we made this happen.

Elizabeth Bowman 1:43

Ever since we met at the Bamps Center, I guess that was two summers ago. You were actually working on Indians on vacation at that time. And I know that that's been in the news very much, though, lately. Absolutely. Not to just dive right in there.

Royce Vavrek 2:00

Yeah, that was a really, really tremendous summer, and we learned so much about the piece. And I love the opera so much. And I love the music that Ian has come up with. I love all of the indigenous people that we brought into the room to help create the work. And yeah, there has been a slight hiccup in that Edmonton Opera has canceled the work and now against the grain of the company that I run as artistic director. We are going to have a summit or a sort of gathering in Toronto in January of 2026 to sort of have a healing session and to see if there are ways that we can move forward with this project because I do think that there's a lot of value there. And a lot of people feel like there's a lot of value there. And a lot of people are hurt by the revelation and the disclosure of Thomas King of his non-Indigenous identity or non-Cherokee identity. And so, yeah, it's it's a really, really strange, hard, weird place to find ourselves. And I'm really hopeful that we can find some light at the end of the tunnel. It's sort of uh there's an unwritten chapter that we are going to uh figure out.

From Alberta Farm To Opera

Elizabeth Bowman 3:04

Yeah, I mean it's such a complicated situation. I mean, him being completely unaware of certain aspects of his past, and we've all been told, or most of us have been told, certain certain segments of our family history that we just sort of blindly believe because those are the legends of your family, and probably 85% of those stories have been embellished or changed, or that you know, it's like a game of broken telephone after many, many years. So I definitely feel also for Thomas King because what a nightmare. Because obviously he deeply believed in that identity, and then it just raises a lot of questions about what is identity and how it forms through actions, through nurture, through elevating voice from within, all of these things. Anyway, I'm glad you guys will be coming together and that there will be a next chapter, hopefully, for this project in some way, shape, or form. So I look forward to following up and finding out more about that. Absolutely. So, as a librettist, this is an interesting job. I just want to ask you, how did you get into this?

Finding Composers And First Breaks

Royce Vavrek 4:14

That is a great question. So I grew up on a farm in northern Alberta, just outside of Sexmith, Alberta, sort of between Sexmith and Grand Prairie. And the predominant musical language in our house was country music. My mom always loved for us to come home from school and for there to be noise in the house. And so there would always be the radio playing, and it was always the country radio station. And so opera was something I had to find on my own. I had an amazing uh voice teacher named Ellen Otterson, and she exposed me to so many unbelievable things. And it was also at a time when the internet was coming into people's homes, and so I was able to use the internet as an amazing tool to find obscure musicals, to challenge myself with classical music that I would not have been exposed to. So I was a very lucky recipient of the information superhighway back in the day. But I actually thought I was going to be a filmmaker. So my undergraduate degree was at Concordia University in Montreal, the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, where I thought I was going to be a filmmaker. And I spent those four years doubling down on that. But I also took classes in creative writing and ended up taking a double major in creative writing, focusing on playwriting. And I took other classes like sculpture classes, because in my first year, I randomly sat next to this amazing woman in my religion and film class. She was a bit older than me, and she said, You're a filmmaker. You should maybe consider taking a class in an artistic medium that is three-dimensional. I thought, oh, that's interesting. So I took this year-long sculpture class. And so I feel like I've studied a lot of storytelling techniques, whether I'm telling stories through objects or film or through art song or through opera. And so after my time at Concordia, I quickly jumped down to New York, where I've made my home since. And I went to NYU for their graduate musical theater writing program. I thought it was going to be a Broadway lyricist. And I have done a few musicals, and I love, I love the musical medium. But it was shortly thereafter that Larry Edelson at American Lyric Theater posted an opportunity for the composer librettist development program. And it was the first cycle, and I threw my hat in the ring, and I remember him calling. I submitted my my NYU thesis musical as one of the samples, which was like a musical comedy called The Pope Cicle. And he called me and said, Oh, I really, really, really hope that you will come and do this program with us and that I will get a comedy out of you someday. I've written a few comedies, but it's it's my sort of crazy dramatic work that I'm probably most known for. And so, but I am very glad that I can offer that I have written at least a couple comedies in my how many years have I been doing this? 15 years or so? Almost 20 years, maybe. Yeah, we'll say 20, because there was a little bit of a gestation period before I actually got my first sort of big premiere in New York in 2012. So I've been legitimately doing staged presentations since 2012. So it was sort of a weird, I wouldn't say circuitous, but a sort of like serpentine route to finding opera. But initially, when I was a kid, opera was this thing that was opulent and extravagant, and it was all about the big ball gowns and the chandeliers at the Met and this idea that it was something so different than my farming upbringing. Now, my idea of what opera needs to be is something that is way more democratic, and it opera is for everyone, and I want people of all sorts to feel welcome at my operas at least. I think that that's very, very, very important. So yeah, it's been a sort of crazy ride. I didn't know that my life was going to lead me to opera, but it kind of makes sense in retrospect. Yeah, that's my journey in a nutshell.

Elizabeth Bowman 7:44

Amazing. So, what was your first collaboration with a composer and how did that come to be? And how do you connect with a composer? And then yeah, just I guess for everyone listening, or maybe just me, I don't know. I'm I'm curious about this whole relationship.

Lincoln In The Bardo At The Met

Royce Vavrek 8:01

That's a great question. So I guess to look back, I have my professional collaborators, but then I also have my college collaborators. So my first collaborators were really the folks that were in my cohort at NYU. And it was sort of like a round robin-esque format where we got to work with most of our classmates. I think there were one or two that I didn't end up working with. And it was all sort of random. And I remember the chair of the program, Sarah Schlesinger, at the time, she said that one of the great gifts of this program is that if you want to be a musical theater writer, it's not like you can walk to Fourth Street and 2nd Avenue and bellow saying, I need a composer. It doesn't happen like that. And so you need to find sort of common grounds. You need to visit the sandboxes that your potential collaborators are hopefully going to be visiting or frequenting. And so I was very lucky to be handed my initial slate of collaborators. And I still work with a few people from NYU, which I love. But the real first collaborations leading up to my first world premiers were Missy Mazzoli and David T. Little. And I met them both around the same time, David slightly earlier. I had done the ALT program, and David came to see the final concert. And he was very moved by one of the two one act operas that I wrote and had a commission at Carnegie Hall. And he asked me if I would be interested in writing a 20-minute section from of dramatic work that was to be determined. And he had been explicitly asked by Dawn Upshaw and Osvaldo Goliov, who ran this young composer's workshop program, to write a dramatic work. And so they gave David a collection of singers, students, from Bard, and we had to find a story that fits the contours of this cast. And so we spent a few weeks spitballing ideas, and finally we came back to this one that just kept clinging on to David based on this short film that he had seen that was in itself based on a short story called Dog Days. And so we wrote 22 minutes, I believe, from a prospective full-length piece called Dog Days, and it went really well. And from that presentation, we were given a full production by Beth Morrison Projects and Montclair's peak performances. And we got to collaborate with Robert Woodruff as a dramaturg who is just this amazing American maverick theater director who we it just every idea that he had just ignited such amazing things in my imagination. And so at that Carnegie Hall presentation, Missy Mazzoli came to support David and a number of her other colleagues who run that program, and she handed me a flyer for this presentation that she was doing. And she was offering a morsel of an opera that she was working on called Song from the Uproar. And I went to see this presentation and it blew my mind. And then she took me out for lunch a couple weeks later and asked me if I would help her finish that opera. And so that opera would actually premiere in February of 2012, while Dog Days would premiere in September of 2012. And uh so both of those operas feel like unbelievable foundational things that led to Missy being given her composer in residence position at Opera Philadelphia, where we would then write Breaking the Waves, which has changed our lives, and Dog Days, which would lead to David and I writing what would become my first grand opera, JFK, for Fort Worth Opera. And Fort Worth Opera would actually take Dog Days as well. So we began a really dynamic relationship with Fort Worth Opera and Darren Woods while he was there. It was a really, really insane year that so many things happened. And uh and we sort of drew a line in the sand. We we started making operas in our own context, and we were telling stories that felt really vital, interesting, and that they they connected directly with a contemporary public. Dog Days in particular has such a vernacular language that just feels unlike many things that we have access to in opera. We don't get this sort of biting language and the curse words and the poetry of the everyday like that. And so I think that it was a particular example of the type of operas that that we wanted to write that were sort of fiercely theatrical while being undeniably musical, high musical ideas. And and so, yeah, 2012, massive, massive year with those two unbelievable composers that are truly like my bedrock in many ways.

Elizabeth Bowman 12:18

And you'll be bringing one of those collaborations to the Metropolitan Opera stage soon.

Royce Vavrek 12:24

Lincoln and the Bardo is definitely in the pipeline. It is listed on their new and upcoming projects on the Metropolitan Opera website.

Elizabeth Bowman 12:30

Great. Well, that's so exciting. Since you've obviously spent a lot of time in New York, is that something that has been a vision of yours in the past? Like were you did you ever think, oh well, I I mean you said early on that you were thinking Broadway. Is this sort of unbelievable now? We got the Lincoln Center Plaza going to light up with your opera now.

Royce Vavrek 12:54

Yeah, it's a little, it's it's wild. It is the biggest opera house in the world. And I'm so thrilled that the opera is doubling down on its contemporary works and that there are spaces for Lincoln and the Bardo, but many, many, many other new operatic ideas. It feels like a new era at the Myt. And so I'm very, very grateful to to Peter Galb and everybody there for allowing us to bring these new ideas. It's it's it's really I I can't believe it. It and we also we've been writing this piece for so many years. We signed contracts in 2020, maybe. And so it's it's coming up on six years that this has been in gestation, and so like the bread has been baked. We're ready to share it.

Elizabeth Bowman 13:36

Well, I'm looking forward to that. I'm definitely gonna go to the premiere. Definitely.

Where New Opera Ideas Come From

Royce Vavrek 13:40

You you have to be there.

Elizabeth Bowman 13:41

Tell me a little bit about relevancy, as you say, like the Meta is doing a lot in terms of bringing new works, which obviously aligns with this idea of keeping opera relevant and also I guess nurturing the future of our art form because opera is if we don't nurture the new creators, not sure which direction we're going backwards. Yeah. So what's the thought process behind the new ideas that come? Like, what are you are you just constantly reading? Are you reading the news? Are you like, where's the inspiration coming from?

Royce Vavrek 14:19

Inspiration comes from everywhere. I do read a lot. And Missy, for instance, is a voracious reader. So she's constantly got many things on the go. I find my inspiration everywhere. I am writing original pieces right now and doing a lot of adaptations. Lincoln of the Barta was uh an adaptation of George Saunders' Booker Prize winning novel. I just did uh an adaptation of Adam McGoyan, one of my childhood heroes film Adoration that just got a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Reporting. Um so we'll be going to LA for that. Mary Kouyoumdjian and um Alan Pearson, our conductor. Um, I can't wait to party down with them in LA. And then I have um I'm I'm working on adaptations of Anna Green Gables that's coming up for Against the Grain. I have a couple adaptations of Bergman that I have, one in that's coming up and one that uh has premiered at La Monnaie last Christmas. I have my two Lars von Freer adaptations. So I do love film as a source of literature, and that I think that looking back at my sort of teenage years when I was watching a lot of American and international cinema, that was really the thing that provided a window to the world while I was, you know, on my family farm. And it offered this really, really exciting cornucopia of experiences that I think I carry with myself, and I also love to put additional things. I'm always carrying stories. I feel like I am a receptacle for other people's ideas and I'm constantly in dialogue with the artists of the world. I think that that's very important. I don't want to create work in a bubble. I also, Missy talks a lot about how she doesn't want opera to just be a place for adaptation, that we should be able to go to the opera and have a story being told to us for the first time, so that there is that element of surprise. But I do think that there is this particular thing about opera that rewards the repeat listener. There is something about knowing the contours of a score so well that you are sort of breathing with it. So I see the value, the great value in both, having that first blush experience and then also knowing something so intimately. It's like that one of those um those films that you keep going back to, maybe from your childhood or just something that delights you. It's for me, it's bridesmaids, for instance. I can watch that once a month and still be completely and utterly delighted. Yeah, so ideas come from everywhere. They often come from other people. Sometimes you are given ideas. I'm currently working on a passion for Bregans with my collaborator Daníel Bjarnason, and that was an idea that we were we were asked to write a passion. And so there's a lot of room for us to dream within that context. And so I think that that's another example of how ideas, good ideas come from anywhere. You just have to be brave enough to decide to devote a good amount of your life to rendering them an operatic form.

Elizabeth Bowman 17:10

When we met, you were teaching or mentoring some young up-and-coming librettists or writers or people considering that direction. How important is teaching to your career life, like inspiration, learning, that kind of minimum?

Royce Vavrek 17:28

Yeah, well, I think it's important that we cultivate a new generation, not only of audience members who want to take part in our form, but also of the storytellers. And because it's uh it's not an easy career, and we are in a golden age of new American opera, and it seems like there's there's some really cool stuff happening in Europe too. I'm I'm and I've been very lucky to be the recipient of some commissions in that ecosystem. But yeah, we are the idea that the best opera recording category at the Grammys has five contemporary pieces is a really stunning indication that there is some some cool stuff going on within the contemporary sphere. And so I don't have a teaching position. Missy and David, as composers, both do teach as well as as composing. And it's something that will become part of my life in a bigger way, but I do welcome opportunities to teach the the next generation. And I think that I keep thinking of this Denzel Washington quote, and I'm not sure that he necessarily came up with it, but I saw it on uh on one of the social media platforms. He said, There are three stages in life. You learn, you earn, and you return. And so I think that it's very important that there comes a time when my main focus is returning. Right now, my service is through my being the artist stretcher of Against the Grain and trying to put as many really exciting projects through and lift up as many voices as as possible while also writing these operas for all of these houses. And but I do, if there's ever an opportunity for mentorship that I can put into my schedule in a good, honest way, I I want to I want to make sure that I'm giving these young minds as much of as much of my experience as possible. So yeah, it's something that I'm I'm very actively trying to figure out how to do as much of as humanly possible.

Elizabeth Bowman 19:09

Yeah, that's what I loved about that Banff program is that they do have professionals who are actively in the fabric doing the art and then mentoring for those very intensive weeks that the students were there, are there. And I also obviously enjoyed mentoring during those those times too. And I also don't have a teaching position, but it it does certainly give a good perspective on what it is you're doing. And I think it helps focus the mind. It's sort of like a meditation almost, because the students all have these questions and and then you're forced to think on a different plane than you're necessarily used to, because you're used to being like, well, it goes like this. And then yeah, and then you have to explain certain concepts that are just at your fingertips, and then you it makes you step back for a second and think, wait a minute. And then it might actually introduce new ways of of thinking. So I love that about the whole teaching and return. And I I like that um mentality.

Royce Vavrek 20:19

It's definitely I've been stuck in my in my brain. But that idea.

Elizabeth Bowman 20:22

Are you doing any summer programs this summer?

Royce Vavrek 20:24

This coming summer. I well, I have my premiere on Brigends and I have another premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival, so it's a little insane. From that's before we do Lincoln and the Bardo. So it's just it's it's like back-to-back production, so I don't know. There's talk that I might try to fit something in over in Europe, but uh I'm not exactly sure yet. It's all scheduling insanity.

Elizabeth Bowman 20:45

These are good problems to have.

Royce Vavrek 20:47

I know, I know. I'm very, very lucky.

Elizabeth Bowman 20:51

Oh my goodness. Have you ever heard a voice and then decided to create something for that voice? Have you ever heard like someone sing and then you think they must tell this story or that story or whatever? You hear something in their voice that represents.

Royce Vavrek 21:12

Yeah. I think that I I've heard a lot of voices now, and the ones that that really sink into your soul are the ones that you write continually for. So I have many muses, but my earliest muse was uh and remains Lauren Worsham. Lauren is this extraordinary actress singer who I met through NYU. She was a friend of one of my collaborators, and she was brought in to sing a song that we wrote for the Bill Finn. He had a masterclass every week or a sort of a well, not a master class, but a seminar workshop that was a weekly thing where he gave you an assignment and if he liked the lyric, he would send a composer downstairs to try to compose something within the class time, and then they would perform ideas and it was it was a sort of a weird working Hive of uh creativity. And so I I really I fell in love with everything about Lauren at that time. And then I was working at the public theater in New York, and I was at the opening night of hair when we did it at the Delacourt in Central Park in the summer. And Lauren worked for a really awesome Broadway producer named Ruth Hendel. And so she was at the party. And I remember we were dancing on the roof of the castle just behind the Delacourt. And I was like, we need to do things together. And uh and it was then that we decided that we would create the the Coterie, which was a small company that would do concerts for a few years. And I knew that she should be Lisa in Dog Days, and I wrote a musical for her that she ended up not performing because she uh she just couldn't uh make it work schedule-wise. But um I so I've written a lot of things, I've written song cycles for her. There's something about her spirit. She's a musical theater performer who can sing opera, and she can do very complex things, and her emotional intensity just shatters me. So um, there's Lauren Worsham, and then a newer muse is Lauren Snofer, who I wrote The House of the Christmas Tree for. I didn't know her at the time, but she ended up being the perfect person for that part, and she sang breaking the waves for for me, and I just have so many desires to write a million stories. I think that Lauren, both Lauren's, have the most glorious voices. They both went to the same high school, I believe. So there's something in the water in Austin, Texas. I'm just saying. But but Lauren, we actually recorded Breaking the Waves when we did it in Houston, and so the world will get to hear her performance as best. It'll be available commercially. And um, and I'm so, so thrilled because she just there's something about her instrument. There are many things about her instrument that just they have a direct access to my heart. And then there are people like Susan Bullock, who was a singer that I was introduced to at the last minute when she came in to replace a singer in our production of Breaking the Waves in in Edinburgh. And she and I just hit it off in every way. She also did Fanny Alexander, she she played the role of Helena for me and Mika Karlsson. I uh Missy and I wrote a role for her in The Galloping Cure, which is the opera that will premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival this summer. And she is another, like she's a legend, and her instrument just directly communicates in a way that I'm always moved by. It just I love her spirit, I love her ferocious theatricality. She's such a theater woman, and she is just one of the truly remarkable singers. And so I'm not letting Susan Bullock go. And there are people like Thomas Hampson, who I've written a lot for, and Anne Sophie von Otter has become one of my major collaborators. I've written three or four things for Anne Sophie. So maybe by definition, Anne Sophie is my my biggest collaborator, uh, for former collaborators, since she's done so much of my work. But there are so many voices. It's interesting that I've just cited four women because there are beautiful male singers that I loved. Like John Moore. John Moore, who was our Jan in Breaking the Waves, and then Missy and I wrote roles for him. The Listeners, which we premiered in Norway, and John sang the role in Philadelphia and Chicago. Yeah, John, I just adore again his theatrical, what he brings as a character to the work, is not only just the most gorgeous voice, he brings an intensity that is still, it scratches the theater itch, and opera is theater. So I love collaborators who are not only gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous vocalists and musicians, but who bring a desire to truly embody and tell stories. And John is a great example. And I, for some reason, Peter Tonsetz pops into my brain as well as somebody that I must mention. We've only done two projects together. Three, he was in the uh dog days, and then he was in the first 40-minute incarnation of Angel's Bone, my opera with An with Du Yun that won the Pulitzer Prize back in 2013. And then he was just in Fanny and Alexander as Oscar, the the dad. So he went from being this teenage boy who's smoking pot in his basement in Dog Days to the patriarch of this theatrical family. So I feel like I've been through a whole life with Peter, and hopefully we have another life or two left to go.

Elizabeth Bowman 26:21

So fascinating to hear the relationship between the voices and the creative team, and then also imagine because the art form is so old. So obviously, all these productions being performed now through modern interpretation, and to imagine what these these composers would have really intended for what is on stage. I mean, obviously everything is completely changed. I mean, and the same as how you write a piece and then once it goes out into the world, it's now open for interpretation and you lose that sort of control, which is also the beauty of art.

Royce Vavrek 27:03

Absolutely. Everybody thinks it's terrifying. For some reason, I get a lot of like, oh, are you ever worried? Or what happens when somebody does something that is so counter to your intentions? And it never happens. Like I think that we we go to meet the piece where it's at. And of course there are pieces or productions of things that don't have the resources, don't have the time. And you watch these amazing people come together to it as best as humanly possible under those situations and under those circumstances. And there's gorgeous magic in that. And so I always go to these presentations with the spirit that I am excited to see what little trinkets they pull out of the libretto and the music, and what are those different interpretations? I want to see radical stuff. I would love to see a production of Breaking the Waves on the Moon. So why not? Why not? We have so many traditional examples of that presence of that opera being um being staged. I'm open to people imposing singing the words and the music, but if you can make it work in a strange, cool context, why not? It's a roadmap. We've created an incomplete document that needs the musicians in the pit and needs the singers and needs that director to wrangle everything and that conductor to be the captain of the ship and and we write black and white things on pages, and we need so many other people to add the colors.

Life Inside The Orchestra Pit

Elizabeth Bowman 28:26

I mean, it's fascinating because you can see a production of well-known pieces that you're familiar with, and you, as the audience member, if you're familiar with the piece, can identify certain major artistic license changes, like if tempo changes, you know, if they're taking it really quickly, and then really, wait a minute, you know, and that's where where you say I uh I like the 1953 recording of this and that everything else is wrong. And uh it's I also love this about music because anytime I go to a recital or I go to a production, that's what I'm also looking for. I I want to see all the the interpretation and explore it, even if I don't agree with it, I love it.

Royce Vavrek 29:16

A question for you. So your husband being a very important musician um who gets to experience a lot of shows during a season and playing them, does he come home and say, Oh my goodness, tonight three was super slow? Or oh my goodness, tonight's show was magical because the timpani did this and the singer did this, and I'll remember this show because of this particular musical thing that happened. Or what is the energy in the pit and the way that they understand the nuances of different performances?

Elizabeth Bowman 29:48

Yeah, without giving too much away. I can't speak for him. My husband is Benjamin Bowman, the concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. And yes, he does come home some days thinking or speaking out loud and telling me about certain magical moments or less magical moments or precarious moments, where you know, one couldn't even imagine that anything would ever sound precarious at the Metropolitan Opera, you know, because everyone is a musician of a certain level. And I'm sure that his definition of of precariousness definitely differs from what I would imagine would would sound precarious, you know. I'm sure everyone's sitting there enjoying the show, and he's like, Oh my god.

Imperfection Live Performance And AI

Royce Vavrek 30:38

I think it's amazing. And the losing who wants is like I keep saying if we wanted things to be perfect, we would be recording artists. We would buy ourselves that all that Ariana Grande time in the studio. And I saw a video of her working through a recording, and I was so impressed with how thoughtful everything was in the way that she was laying down a vocal track. But she has so much more time and she has takes Billie Eilish in her bedroom, has so many more opportunities to get something right. But there is something so perfect in the imperfection of a live performance. And I don't want a perfect performance. I want to see the I I've been thinking a lot about AI and how the perfection, whatever of for sort of the future of AI is going to sort of like round off all the edges potentially. And is there something in the imperfections of humanity that are going to be seen as assets in art moving forward? I think that there's yeah, I want I want there to be the the strange infelicity that happens in a performance that I can relish in because it's a human thing.

Elizabeth Bowman 31:36

It's all about that. I mean, that's the magic of the live performance, I think. It's the possibility also of imperfection, but also you can have nothing as perfect, but I mean, it could be perfect for that moment.

Royce Vavrek 31:52

Yeah.

Elizabeth Bowman 31:54

I guess that's the way that I would word it, but the idea of sitting and listening and then I guess it also depends on the feeling of the person sitting there. Like if you just went through some major life event and then you're sitting there, and that's also the joy of live performance, is that you're sitting there and you're going through this amazing turmoil in your life, and then you translate whatever you're going through onto what is happening on the stage. And then the energy that comes from you, I have no doubt, is brought into this room and reacted to by the singers. I mean, if you've been on the stage, there's definitely will you say, Oh my gosh, the the audience is dead tonight. Like I'm not getting anything from that. Like they're just staring or, you know, they're not engaging. And so you if that energy didn't exist, then then we wouldn't have that phenomenon, right?

Opera Philly And New Audiences

Noise Etiquette Across Opera Traditions

Royce Vavrek 32:47

So really unique experience with energy from a house that I just would love to offer. We did the listeners in Oslo, which was really well received, and the audience was into it. We could definitely feel the energy for the audience, but we were not prepared for the energy of the audience at Opera Philadelphia, where Anthony Roth Costanzo he put this initiative uh right at the top of last season, where every ticket was being sold for eleven dollars. And so the any sort of financial barrier, well, eleven dollars is eleven dollars. So uh let's say many of the financial barriers were lifted, and it meant that the audience was remarkably new. And on opening night, he, Anthony, walked out on stage and asked the audience to raise their hand if it was the first time that they'd been to an opera, and it was a sea of hands. And the way that they communicated with that show was something that I had never seen or experienced before. People were talking at the stage, they were vocally reacting to moments, and it there's there are really, really funny moments, really weird moments, and they were in it in a very, very, very vocal way, almost like they were in a movie theater or watching a comedy at home on their couch, and it was so exciting. It felt like it was alive. The house felt alive, and I I really hope that that is something that the creators get to experience is a an honest, really, really intense dialogue running with the show that you've written. You see it in in musicals on Broadway all the time. People they feel welcome to respond and hoot and holler and all those things. And opera, there's a revenance to it that I think is sometimes a bit of a barricade to honest human reactions. And so uh yeah, I was just so excited to get to experience this.

Elizabeth Bowman 34:32

Well, this is how the earliest opera was. There was a lot happening in the audience. People weren't just sitting there stationary, and then the opera was happening to them. It was happening amongst things that people would stop when the aria's would happen. I imagine it was more in line with that energy ping pong.

Royce Vavrek 34:52

Yeah, I mean I went to an opera in Hong Kong with Du Yun when we were doing Angel's Bone over there, and we went to a traditional Chinese opera, and I think there were six players in the pits amplified within an inch of their lives this six-hour extravaganza on stage. We staged for for a good portion of it, but there was a woman behind me who was on her telephone for part of it, another woman beside us who was eating a full-on lunch, and it didn't impede the sonic experience because it was so amplified. But I think that that's how they get away with it to a certain extent. In the Western tradition, we're paying so much money to come and see these operas that a cough or a crinkling of a bag or the bangles on I know that people want to be pretty and wear all their finest jewelry, but sometimes you're like, oh, there's another percussion section, the section that's four seats away. And so I think that when you're paying so much money and expecting the idea of these like sounds that are not meant to permeate your experience from the stage, I get it. But there's also something that is so remarkable about just human noise. The idea that we're all breathing together and we're our heartbeats are at the same, we're we're getting to the same beat. And there's something that you can't when you have 4,000 people in a space like the Met, there's going to be ancillary noise. And so, yeah, I I get why people are so particular about their sonic experiences, but I've experienced a couple of different versions of how that can go down, and it's it's also really, really, really exciting.

Elizabeth Bowman 36:22

Hopefully, there's some sort of happy medium. I've definitely been guilty of being annoyed if someone keeps opening cough drops constantly. You know, it's it's like very loud.

Royce Vavrek 36:33

But then again, people to put like a it would I would also it would almost be great to have people put a row of cough drops on their pants. They're like, I'm gonna need three for F1, so let's just have them ready.

Elizabeth Bowman 36:45

Yeah, yeah. I'm convinced that the person who was doing it couldn't actually hear themselves, the the crinkle. I you know, I try I'm trying to I was like, just take down a notch, Lizzie. Just take it.

Royce Vavrek 37:00

I I just on one of the performances of the world premiere of Breaking the Waves, there was a lady who sat behind me and Missy who ate a full bag of MM. I'm like one by one pulling them out.

Elizabeth Bowman 37:11

I'm like, live your best life, but also can I have one?

Royce Vavrek 37:16

Also, please, yes, share.

Advice For Aspiring Librettists

Elizabeth Bowman 37:19

I feel like this episode is suddenly gonna get too long, so I better ask you like something else. What advice would you have for the next generation coming up who are interested in doing libretto writing? And maybe like this question it might be a little bit much more than one question, but who do you think might be well suited to this as well? Because like someone listening might be like, Well, I really enjoy writing, but I could never write a libretto. But I feel like there might be more people suited to this than one imagines.

Canadian Music Nostalgia And Identity

Royce Vavrek 37:56

Sure. I I think that the ideal librettist is somebody who has an interest in both theatrical storytelling, but also has a bit of a poetic approach to their writing. But poetry is not the be-all end all. There are many libretti out there that I think are super successful that are not as poetically rich as others. But I think that the great librettos do pair a thrilling theatricality with a sense of poetry, uh and whatever the libretto's poetic gumption is. And so I think that if you what I love about opera is that it's a canvas for huge ideas. And so for some reason, it really became apparent that the types of stories that I was wanting to tell the breaking the waves, the melancholias, the fanning Alexanders, the adorations, the silent lights, they need a space that allows for big musical ideas and big narrative ideas. And not that Broadway can't do that, but Broadway doesn't often do that. Broadway has become a place for big commercial projects. And I am really excited to try to find ways that opera can participate in a more commercial way, especially with Against the Grain. I'm trying to think of projects that people will want to see and that we can tour and that will hopefully bring money into the company so we can continue to commission and bring in new artists and new voices and new stories. But I think that that opera, it's been a very welcoming place for me to tell stories that I don't know that I would have had much traction if I was trying to do them in a commercial Broadway space. That being said, many of my collaborators are obsessed with the idea of moving into a more musical theater, which actually excites me so much because my gateway, uh well, not my gateway, my many of my heroes in the musical theater occupy this middle ground space. As a kid, and even today, I I was just listening last night to The Wild Party by Michael John McCusa, who was a professor of mine at NYU and who I just think is one of the great composers who walks on this earth. And he was firmly writing in this music theater tradition. And the wild party is a great example of something that has insane musical ideas and a ferocious theatricality. And I could potentially see that sort of moving its way sort of in this music theater rep that's going into the opera houses. There's there's like that is a great example, or uh or like an Adam Gettle and Floyd Collins, even though that has a a more popular musical language. The Wild Party has a popular musical language, it's very jazzy, and Floyd Collins is very sort of country western, but they both have these heightened musical languages that I think are are so exciting. And back in the day, I was I believe it was Mark Kutish who told me that when when he was pursuing all these projects with he was in the wild party, that musical theater was was reaching out and doing these more advanced or or these bigger, more experimental musical projects. And now opera is sort of doing that. Whereas musical theater has sort of lost, yeah, for some reason, the the ecosystem has not been so generous to these hybrid projects, but opera is sort of leaning over there through the help of people like Beth Morrison projects and American Lyric Theater. We are getting these really cool projects that feel like they are in dialogue with contemporary music that we hear on the radio, and just so opera is not conceived in its bubble. It's not this this thing that is only inspired by itself. It is we are Missy talks about how one of her primary heroes is Madonna, and one of the reasons why she wanted to write opera was because of music videos back then when she was young. And I feel the same way. So many of my earliest titles, my my earliest inspirations were people like Mariah Carey and then all the the Canadian singer-songwriters like Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Slean and Sarah Harmer. And Sarah Slean, I get to write my first piece with one of my childhood heroes um in Sarah Slean. She's writing a Cantata with me that we will premiere it against the grain in in April. So yeah, I I I feel like it's it's an exciting time when opera can be anything, which is also, I feel like I'm very lucky that I'm coming up at a time within the operatic ecosystem where all of these different musical ideas are welcome. It's not like you have to write in one style to get funding. I was at the Yale Institute for Music Theater back over a decade ago, and the late Michael Friedman was one of our mentors, and he was talking about how for him, it doesn't matter if he likes the music of a of another composer. It's whether or not it feels like it's an authentic voice to them. And so he went into a lot of musical theater and said, Well, maybe this doesn't speak to me directly, but I know that this composer was authoring it from their heart, and that's that's what matters, is getting to experience something from a perspective that feels thoughtful and honest and and fully examined.

Elizabeth Bowman 42:45

Just an aside, I love Sarah Slean. She's the best I love her so much. She did the inaugural scene room episode. No way.

Royce Vavrek 42:54

Oh my goodness, I'm gonna have to text her and say that we uh I'm almost as full as she is now.

Elizabeth Bowman 42:59

I met her. Well, I mean, I listened to her music long before I met her, but I met her when she was doing a tour with the Art of Time ensemble.

Royce Vavrek 43:08

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Elizabeth Bowman 43:09

And yeah, they had just released the Black Flowers album, and that is a great album, everyone. Go and listen to it. And yeah, Ben is actually on that album as well. So yeah, so that's why I met her on that tour because Ben was on that tour.

Royce Vavrek 43:26

So I also I talk a lot about um my relationship with Sarah Slean and Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Harmer and Edwards too.

Elizabeth Bowman 43:34

I've never met her though. Sorry to interrupt.

Royce Vavrek 43:36

I haven't met her yet, but Kathleen, love you. Um and and Martha Wainwright as well. I think Martha Wainwright might be the the one singer, songwriter, singer that I've seen most in concert. I think I've probably seen her seven times when I was a a youngster in Montreal and through now in my life. I just I love that directness in her songwriting. But I I do feel like my relationship with Sarah Slean has been made possible by the Canadian Han Kong Law. Because when I was in high school, when that radio was going, somehow we managed to switch it to the the pop rock station at some point, or maybe that was just on my ghetto blaster down in my bedroom. But I remember Sweet One, her her big single and how pervasive that was in my life and how I getting that first the Nightbums record in particular. That wasn't her first record, but that was the the first record that came into my life and I just there's her voice, there's something about the quality it it feels embroidered to me in the most stunning way. I just oh every every time I revisit I think I've I've watched her live on AOL performance of California about 400 times.

Elizabeth Bowman 44:46

I'm just I'm I'm a super fan her her creativity shines through I mean she is also a very creative person just a you know a poet and artist all the things and I think that that shines through in in her performances. Yeah living in the states and being a Canadian as we both are my playlist is often I've got this Sarah Slean I've got Blue Rodeo I've I've got Sarah Harmer I've got Kathleen Edwards I mean I've got a solid rotation of Canadians tragically hip obviously it's the most Canadian all the Canadiana is just it's integrated into the the classical also sphere as well.

Royce Vavrek 45:36

Absolutely I have an amazing best friend named Amelia Watkins and she is a Canadian soprano born in Calvary and has a family home in Saint Silver Quebec and then also um lives in Westchester which is just about 30 minutes north of New York for those of you who don't live down here. And I will spend New Year's with Amy and we will probably spend four hours five hours a day singing and dancing around the kitchen to all of our favorite Canadian songs at Tragically Factors in huge Sarah's big we love the Rankin family. Oh yeah Rankin family Oh my gosh my first live show ever my grandmother took me to the arena in Grand Prairie and my goodness I must have been five or six and that just yeah we dance around the kitchen we'll we'll sing on the road we'll probably drive from Quebec to New York in early January and we'll sing all the way and it's just it's it's pure Canadiana.

Elizabeth Bowman 46:34

It needs to be yeah I don't know what it is about that music but it it there is a stamp of identity in there. I guess there there are lyrics that reference Canadian places and things and throughout but it's more than that. It's more than the the those little lyrics.

Royce Vavrek 46:52

I think that hockey states by Kathleen Edwards has to be truly one of the the great songs ever and that even though I don't know that it I don't think it references Canada but it references hockey which you know come on.

Elizabeth Bowman 47:05

There I think Canada owns that sport. All right okay on that note I do have to conclude things here otherwise it's just talk forever we'll talk forever exactly which is another reason why I invited you here because I knew it would be a very fluid conversation. Uh thanks for being in the scene room today and I look forward to seeing your projects as they come. Congratulations on the Grammy nomination and all the thanks