Interview: Kelley Rourke – Librettist, Translator, Dramaturg and Prize Winner

Kelley Rouke was driving when she received a text from Mark Campbell informing her that she was the winner of Opera America’s 2024 Campbell Opera Librettist Prize.

Her reaction? She answered, “Stop it! It’s mean. Never joke about that!” because she couldn’t quite digest that she’d been chosen for the prize. “There are so many people doing great work that I couldn’t believe I’d been singled out,” she modestly insists.

The annual prize was established by Campbell with Opera America in 2021 to specifically honor the work of librettists. He doesn’t choose the recipients, which is done by a panel of industry judges, but he knows how critical their work is, as a librettist himself. He’s written dozens of libretti, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning SILENT NIGHT (with composer Kevin Puts) and the Grammy-winning THE (R)EVOLUTION of STEVE JOBS (composer Mason Bates). This is the first award in the history of American opera created to honor this group of writers.

What’s the big deal about having an award for librettists? Simple: They’re a kind of “power behind the throne.” The opera can’t be done without their work--laying out the story, and frequently carving out places for arias that help the composer shape the piece musically--but their contributions are often underappreciated when companies are publicizing a performance.

And that’s true for even some of the most famous librettists in the history of opera. Oh, sure, maybe opera-philes know that da Ponte worked with Mozart on his most famous works (FIGARO, COSI, DON GIOVANNI) or that von Hoffmannsthal did the same for Richard Strauss (ROSENKAVALIER, ELEKTRA, ARIADNE, FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN). But most opera-goers would be hard-pressed to name the collaborators on works by Verdi, Puccini or Bizet--even those considered the ABCs of the art form: AIDA, BOHEME and CARMEN.

“It’s easy for people to take what writers do for granted,” Rourke opines. “As a specialist in words, I think we get more unsolicited advice than other professionals. I don’t think that anyone is going to say to Kevin Puts ‘Maybe that should be in E major rather than E minor.’ But people won’t hesitate about saying, ‘Maybe it should be this word instead of that one’--as if I didn’t think really hard about the choice I made.”

While I was interviewing Rourke as winner of the Librettist Prize, I came to understand that her reputation in the opera industry is much broader than that: She is also active as both a dramaturg helping creators shape new works and translator/adapter, often condensing grand operas to 75 or 90 minutes or creating completely new stories to go with existing scores. For example, she worked as dramaturg with the writer-composer team (Susan Soon He Stanton and Christopher Tin) who created the new ending for TURANDOT that recently premiered at the Washington National Opera.

“Before I even thought of writing a libretto, I had worked as a dramaturg and translator; by that time, I had spent 14 years at Glimmerglass in a variety of capacities. That was my training: grappling with existing works," she explains. "As a translator of supertitles, I have to think not only about the meaning of words, but about the musical phrasing and dramatic beats. I have to understand all of the elements coming together to tell the story and then figure out how to be concise and get out of the way. 

“When I started doing libretti, I had been in on rehearsals for more than 50 operas. I had seen writing that worked well and writing that presented directors and performers with more of a challenge. My experience in the rehearsal room with standard operas continues to inform my work as a librettist,” she adds. “For example, I can say to a composer, ‘I can imagine this aria working like Figaro’s Largo al Factotum [from IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA]; the character will come out and introduce himself not just in the words he sings, but in the energy supplied by the music.’

“Engaging with so much existing work as a translator has given me a set of references. It's a little like a painter who goes into a museum and copies great paintings. You’re getting in there and seeing ‘how does this work?’ or ‘how was this made?’ And that helps you when you do your own thing.’

Consequentially, she’s someone who is happy to wear many hats because she believes all her varied skills overlap. whether she’s writing supertitles (for the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York, among others) or adaptations (creating more than 20 English versions of classic operas, like the Met’s family-friendly CENDRILLON by Massenet, aka CINDERELLA). She also is involved in developing the next generation of opera creators (eg, through the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative).  

When I ask her whether there’s one of these specialties that she thinks of as her Number One professional identity, she answers quite bluntly. “I tend to identify most closely with whichever has the closest deadline.”

At the moment, high on her list of priorities is the libretto for EAT THE DOCUMENT, her opera with composer John Glover. It will premiere in January 2025 at PROTOTYPE in New York City, the trailblazing festival of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works, produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE. 

It’s being directed by Kristin Marting, who insisted that a recent workshop included time to sketch staging. "That was a real eye-opener for me," says Rourke. "Usually in opera, workshops are music-only, but John and I learned so much about pacing and story from seeing scenes on their feet."

The 90-minute opera is based on a 2006 novel by American writer Dana Spiotta about a pair of leftist activists in the 1970s and what happens to them a generation later in the 1990s. (Its title refers to a documentary about Bob Dylan.) The novel shifts constantly between the two time periods, and that structure remains in the new opera.

But--as typical in adapting a novel or play for a different art form--part of Rourke’s assignment was helping to choose which parts of the original would be used and making suggestions about the aspects that might demand an aria. ”It becomes a question of ‘What does it take to tell the story? What’s necessary--and what’s not.”

When she’s working, I ask her “which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” (That is, the music or the libretto.) “I like to think I write differently for every composer, depending on where their musical voice lies and the story we're serving,” she explains. This is the third opera she's written with Glover, along with a couple of song cycles. (They did one for last year’s Weimar Festival from Carnegie Hall.)

Her preferred way of writing calls for lots of back and forth between composer and librettist. “For example, I’ll do a complete outline of what happens in each scene, with notes about where something might open up into a full-blown aria or musical set piece.

"I then discuss the outline with the composer, who might have their own ideas about the big moments for emotional expansion. Of course, when I actually start drafting the libretto, things might change,” Rourke adds. “Then sometimes, when I think I’m finished, I’ll turn it back to the composer who might say, ‘that couplet there, those two lines, I could see that blowing up into a whole aria.’ I know every team doesn’t work in this way. Some composers might say, ‘Ok librettist, you write the libretto and give it to me and I’ll do my thing.’

"But for me, there’s nothing like the interplay with a collaborator. Opera is a most collaborative of art forms, which is both risky and thrilling. One person can really ‘foul it up’--just as one person can elevate it beyond your wildest dreams. I love that you have all these people coming together. It’s so unpredictable--a volatile stew--but sometimes magic happens. And that's what keeps me in this art form."

“One of the things that John and I found uniquely interesting about the novel of EAT THE DOCUMENT--as well as a particular challenge--is that there are a couple of characters who are obsessed with popular music, including some cult classics of the time. They talk in granular detail about specific songs; music forms a big part of who these young people are and how they see themselves,” she continues.

“That attracted us. At the same time, we didn’t want to do a pastiche of the songs mentioned in the book--and not simply because the cost of the song rights would have been prohibitive. But simply because it wasn’t interesting to us,” she admits.

“There are a handful of songs that are really important to the characters. So we decided that we’d have some diegetic music [which happens within the created world of the story, or told by a narrator commenting on the story or on his former self] that the characters are listening to,” she continues.

“So, for these diegetic pieces, we’ve created not-quite-pop songs that, while not totally outside the musical language John has created for the work, also manage to somehow channel the energy of, say, The Beach Boys."

The one thing I notice is missing from Rourke’s “bag of tricks” is directing. I ask her whether that’s the next step for her. “No,” she says firmly. “Lots of people ask me that. It’s not in my constitution. While I love being in the rehearsal room and working with people…but running that room? That kind of energy is not mine.”

Photo: Brittany Lesavoy Smith

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