Michael Hersch's New Opera AND WE, EACH To Have World Premiere In Baltimore And D.C.

This season brings the world premiere of and we, each, Michael Hersch's searing new opera in collaboration with poet/memoirist Shane McCrae.

Produced by the Baltimore-based organization Mind on Fire, and we, each will take the stage at Baltimore Theater Project on Saturday, September 28 (7:30 pm) and Sunday, September 29 (4:30 pm). Tickets are available here.

Performances will follow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC on Sunday, October 13 (4:30 pm), and at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY on Thursday, February 6.

The opera's two singing roles will be taken by soprano Ah Young Hong, a frequent Hersch collaborator hailed by Opera News for her "fearlessness and consummate artistry," and Jesse Blumberg, described by The New York Times as "a golden-toned baritone." James Daniel, who previously staged Hersch's opera On the Threshold of Winter and his cantata Agatha, will direct the multimedia production. Tito Muñoz will conduct a five-piece ensemble of top New York Players.

Set designs are by Kevin Tuttle, based on sculptures by noted artist Christopher Cairns; the two also collaborated on On the Threshold of Winter. Projected onto the scene and captured in single, uninterrupted takes, are dance videos performed by different companies in each of the two acts. The complete production team is listed below, along with venue details.

and we, each takes as its theme an exploration of the treacherous territories of relationships – between individuals, within societies and ultimately, the collapse of both. Set in a surreal landscape where realities blur, two individuals navigate a complex and intimate relationship fraught with longing and uncertainty. Themes of destruction, transformation, and self-discovery emerge through fragmented narratives, inviting audiences to contemplate the enigmatic spaces between connection and oblivion.

Hersch, one of the leading composers of his generation, is known for music that explores the frontiers of human emotion and experience. He has been praised by The New York Times for compositions "that are often startling in their complexity, beauty, and demonic fury," and by the Philadelphia Inquirer for music of "devastating emotional impact.” Composer Georg Friedrich Haas has called Hersch “the explorer of an unconditional, radical expressivity that reveals the human abyss without any palliation.”

McCrae is a National Book Award finalist and the celebrated author of eight poetry collections. McCrae's work has been called “Ingenious…” poetry where “the dignity of English meter meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality – and often the brutality – of American speech” (The New Yorker). He drew praise last year for his devastating memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, in which he recounts being kidnapped as a young child from his Black father and being raised by white supremacist grandparents. Kirkus Reviews called it "intricately wrought and unrelenting in its honesty."

and we, each grew out of an off-and-on ten-year correspondence between Hersch and McCrae. Over time, their mutual admiration developed into a plan to collaborate. The resulting libretto combines texts drawn from four of McCrae's books with a large amount of material written especially for the opera.

Says McCrae of Hersch's music, "I realized I had discovered something special. There was both tumultuous darkness and great intelligence in the music, and these appealed tremendously to my sensibilities... This completion of Hersch's project would be the fulfillment of one of the few long-held hopes I've had for my work... I can't think of another composer so suited to expressing with music what I've tried to say with words."

Comments Hersch, "I was stopped in my tracks by Shane McCrae's ability to conjure images of the opposing extremes of human behavior in equal measure with such precision, and often in the closest of proximity. The ability to navigate these kinds of juxtapositions is a kind of command that I have encountered only a few times in my life. One of the more remarkable aspects of his work is how it at once speaks so unsparingly and accurately about our public and private spaces." 

Shane McCrae has dedicated his latest book, New and Collected Hell, to Michael Hersch. It will be published in February 2025 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Director - James Daniel

Lighting Design - John McAfee

Director of Photography - Tyler Davis

Projection Designer – David Adam Moore

Choreography - LaTeisha Melvin and Orlando Johnson

ENSEMBLE

Ah Young Hong, soprano

Jesse Blumberg, baritone

Emi Ferguson, flute

Gleb Kanasevich, bass clarinet

Adda Kridler, violin

Leah Asher, viola 

Coleman Itzkoff, cello

Tito Muñoz, conductor

Baltimore Theater Project: 45 West Preston St., Baltimore

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center: 555 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC

National Sawdust: 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn

A composer of “uncompromising brilliance” (The Washington Post) whose work has been described by The New York Times as “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music ... claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity,” Michael Hersch is widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation. Recent performances include the French premiere of his Violin Concerto with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Ensemble intercontemporain, the script of storms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; his cantata Agatha with the Camerata Bern in Bern and Geneva, and I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals.

Hersch's 2019 opera, Poppaea, premiered at the ZeitRäume Basel Festival in 2021, and in late 2019 the Wien Modern Festival presented the world premiere of Hersch's 10-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves. In the autumn 2024, Hersch's opera, and we, each premieres, and the Violin Concerto will be presented at the Lucerne Forward Festival in Switzerland. Other recent projects include new works for the Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, the Loadbang Ensemble, and a new opera for Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg, and Ensemble Musikfabrik.

Poet Shane McCrae grew up in Texas and California. The first in his family to graduate from college, McCrae earned a BA at Linfield College, an MA at the University of Iowa, an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a JD at Harvard Law School. He is the author of several books of poetry, including In the Language of My Captor, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award, Sometimes I Never Suffered, which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and his recent collection, Cain Named the Animal. McCrae is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

Praised by The New Yorker as “transfixing…commanding” and by the Chicago Tribune as “absolutely riveting,” soprano Ah Young Hong has interpreted a vast array of repertoire, ranging from the music of Bach and Monteverdi and the songs of Poulenc and Shostakovich, to works of some of the 20th and 21st century's most prominent composers, including Babbitt, Kurtág, and Haas. Ms. Hong is best known for her work in Michael Hersch's operas, including Poppaea (2019) and On the Threshold of Winter (2012), The New York Times praising her in the latter as “the opera's blazing, lone star.” Other operatic performances include the title role in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, Morgana in Handel's Alcina, Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, Fortuna and Minerva in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and Asteria in Handel's Tamerlano. Ms. Hong's command of the music of our time has led to recent appearances with the Talea Ensemble, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Bern, Ensemble Klang, ensemble unitedberlin, and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, amongst others.

Baritone Jesse Blumberg enjoys a busy schedule of opera, concerts, and recitals, performing repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque to the 20th and 21st centuries. He has performed featured roles at Minnesota Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Atlanta Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Atelier, and at Château de Versailles Spectacles and London's Royal Festival Hall. He has been featured on nearly thirty commercial recordings, including the 2015 Grammy-winning and 2019 Grammy-nominated Charpentier Chamber Operas with Boston Early Music Festival. As a young artist, he took First Prize at the International Hilde Zadek Singing Competition in Vienna in 2007, and in 2008 he was awarded Third Prize at the International Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau, becoming its first American prizewinner in over thirty years. 

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