Opera highlights life of Frank Lloyd Wright
Mark Abramowitz
Pittsburgh’s Lara Lynn Cottrill as Mamah Cheney with Kevin Kees as Frank Lloyd Wright in “Shining Brow,” an opera about the life of the famed architect. The show is scheduled for June 7 and 8 at Fallingwater in Mill Run.
Mark Abramowitz
Kevin Kees (left) as Frank Lloyd Wright and James Flora as Louis Sullivan perform during a scene of “Shining Brow,” an opera about Frank Lloyd Wright, which is scheduled for performances June 7 and 8 at Fallingwater in Mill Run. On COVER: Pittsburgh’s Lara Lynn Cottrill as Mamah Cheney with Kees perform in the opera.
“Shining Brow,” an opera about the life of the famed architect. The show is scheduled for June 7 and 8 at Fallingwater in Mill Run.
Mark Abramowitz
Jonathan Eaton, director of “Shining Brow” and artistic director of Opera Theater of Pittsburgh poses in this publicity shot.
The artistic director for the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh said “a confluences of influences” led to the staging of an opera about Frank Lloyd Wright to be held at his masterpiece over Bear Run, Fallingwater, in Stewart Township.
Jonathan Eaton said “Shining Brow” will take stage at the world-known Fallingwater in Mill Run June 7 and 8.
The event marks the first time composer Daren Hagen’s opera will be held at one of the famed architect’s buildings and the world premiere of Hagen’s re-orchestration for chamber opera done specifically for the occasion.
“We commissioned a comic opera from Hagen last summer,” said Eaton. “We began chatting about opera, and he mentioned that he had done an opera about Frank Lloyd Wright,” Eaton said. “I’m from England, and when friends come here to visit, they want to see two things — Fallingwater and the Andy Warhol Museum. So, we went to Fallingwater and to their credit, they didn’t turn us away and thought it was a “grand idea” to stage performances there.
“The idea grew from there,” Eaton added.
Treating ticketholders to a reception as well as a performance seemed to grow naturally from Wright’s own philosophy of “organic architecture,” Eaton said. “Fallingwater was built as a summer house,” he added, so holding a party similar to ones that the Kaufmann family, who commissioned the house from Wright, seems fitting. Prior to the opera, hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served, with champagne and desserts provided after the show. The date of the performances also fits naturally as this weekend is the 146th anniversary of Wright’s birthday, June 8, 1867.
Eaton found artistic inspiration for organically staging the opera as well, using the three terraces strategically to meld with the action. The audience will view the opera seated on the bridge and paths below the masterpiece that juts out from the fern- and laurel-laden woods and cantilevers over the waterfall on Bear Run. Each evening, 130 people can be accommodated.
Originally commissioned by the Madison Opera, Hagen’s first of seven operas, debuted in 1993 with full symphonic orchestra composed by Hagen and libretto by Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The Fallingwater performance premieres Hagen’s re-orchestration featuring seven musicians and five performers, under music director Robert Frankenberry, who sung the part of Louis Sullivan in the premiere recording of the opera by the Buffalo Philharmonic.
The opera focuses on a tumultuous 11-year period in Wright’s life, 1903-1914, that ended with real-life tragedy. In 1903, under trying circumstances, Wright left the Chicago firm of his mentor Louis Sullivan. The opera begins with an inebriated Sullivan musing about his estrangement with Wright and philosophical discussions over form and function in architecture. Sullivan famously philosophized architecture in the phrase “form ever follows function,” which Wright changed to “form and function are one” as he developed his integral philosophy of organic architecture.
Then Wright began an affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of client Edwin Cheney.
Act One, Scene One of the opera dramatizes the meeting and Wright’s distancing from his wife Catherine. The affair scandalized Wright, and Act One, Scene Two highlights the growing difficulties resulting from the affair and Wright’s urging Mamah to move to Europe with him. Wright left his wife Catherine and their children, and he and Mamah moved to Europe, where Act One, Scene Three takes place.
After about a year in Europe, Wright returned to the Wisconsin valley settled by his Welsh ancestors and began building Taliesin in 1911, intending to live there with Mamah. The estate was named Taliesin, which means shining brow, because of its situation of the brow of a hill. In 1914, while Wright was in Chicago overseeing a project, a servant set fire to the residential wing of the estate, killing three employees and the child of one. He then murdered Mamah and her two children with a hatchet. The opera ends with Wright imagining rebuilding Taliesin in Mamah’s memory, which he actually did.
Cast members include Kevin Kees as Frank Lloyd Wright, Kara Cornell as Catherine Wright, Lara Lynn Cottrill as Mamah Cheney, Dimitrie Lazich as Edwin Cheney and James Flora as Louis Sullivan.
The Fallingwater performance is part of the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh’s second annual SummerFest started by the 35-year-old company to offer opera in the “off-season” to new and younger audiences at unique venues throughout the area — from historic mansions to the Allegheny Cemetery to the Warhol Museum. Earlier this year, the company took “Shining Brow” to the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks to teach students about opera, according to Yvonne Hudson, marketing director and writer of the curriculum.