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Mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato and string-vocal trio Time for Three appear in \u201cEmily \u2014No Prisoner Be,\u201d a Cal Performances commission, in UC Berkeley\u2019s Zellerbach Hall. (Shervin Lainez\/Cal Performances via Bay City News)<\/p>\nColoratura mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato\u00a0jumped at the chance to sing\u00a0a song cycle based on Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry by\u00a0Pulitzer Prize-winner\u00a0Kevin Puts.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018No\u2019 was never\u00a0an option\u00a0for me,\u201d says the opera star, who was\u00a0portraying\u00a0Virginia Woolf in\u00a0Puts\u2019 premiere of \u201cThe Hours\u201d at New York\u2019s Metropolitan Opera in 2022 when the composer\u00a0approached her about a new\u00a0piece pairing\u00a0her with the string-vocal\u00a0trio Time for Three.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0saw and felt\u00a0immediately that this would be something truly special,\u201d\u00a0adds\u00a0DiDonato, who\u00a0premiered \u201cEmily \u2014 No Prisoner Be\u201d in 2025\u00a0at Bregenzer\u00a0Festspiele, a music festival in\u00a0Austria.\u00a0The singer and ensemble, both Grammy Award winners, bring the\u00a024-part song cycle with instrumental interludes\u00a0to Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley this weekend.<\/p>\n
Though\u00a0Puts, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his opera Silent Night,\u201d\u00a0began composing \u201cEmily\u201d without a commission,\u00a0he found support for\u00a0it\u00a0from Bregenzer\u00a0Festspiele\u00a0and Cal Performances.\u00a0An album was released on Jan. 30, its\u00a0North American premiere\u00a0was\u00a0Feb. 1 at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State\u00a0University,\u00a0and\u00a0it will\u00a0tour\u00a0to venues including New York\u2019s Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo prisoner be\u201d is the final line from one poem by Dickinson (1830-1886),\u00a0the innovative, unconventional Massachusetts writer\u00a0whose\u00a0nearly 1,800\u00a0poems\u00a0were not\u00a0published as a set until 1955.<\/p>\n
DiDonato describes\u00a0Puts\u2019 composition as\u00a0musical time travel:\u00a0\u201cHe can follow the dramatic pivots of Emily\u2019s world in a flash.\u00a0The opening number, for example, is rebellious, larger than life, defiant and resistant \u2014 Emily as one has likely never heard her \u2014 and then within a single sustained note in the strings holding into the next song, we are catapulted into the total isolation of her room for \u2018I was the slightest in the House,\u2019 where we leave the rebellion and find a small, poignantly thoughtful and tiny, questioning Emily.\u201d<\/p>\n
She adds, \u201cHis understanding of the poetry means he can find her world,\u00a0galaxy\u00a0or corner with staggering ease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato and string-vocal trio Time for Three appear in \u201cEmily \u2014No Prisoner Be,\u201d a Cal Performances commission, in UC Berkeley\u2019s Zellerbach Hall. (Shervin Lainez\/Cal Performances via Bay City News)<\/p>\n
Directed by Andrew Staples, who also designed the lighting and sound, \u201cEmily \u2014 No Prisoner Be\u201d is\u00a0a\u00a0blend of music and theater\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0ripe for interpretation.\u00a0DiDonato\u00a0finds it at times cinematic, at times like indie rock, with bursts of contemporary,\u00a0classical\u00a0and \u201cmind-blowing\u201d elements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this bold, innovative piece we feel completely free to present it in a way that helps the audience truly enter the mind and heart\u2014at times isolated and solitary, other times spanning the edges of the galaxy \u2014 of Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Time for Three\u00a0violinist-violist\u00a0Nicolas\u00a0\u201cNick\u201d Kendall says\u00a0the group, which had known Puts for a while, solidified\u00a0its relationship with\u00a0the composer when he\u00a0was\u00a0writing\u00a0music for the trio\u2019s concerto \u201cContact.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was\u00a0almost like\u00a0he was spending the time\u00a0to\u00a0study\u00a0us\u2014how we work and make our unconventional instrumentation sound the way it does, which, of\u00a0course,\u00a0includes vocals. Two violins and upright bass and we sing? How does that work?\u201d<\/p>\n
The collaboration\u00a0between Time for Three (also featuring\u00a0violinist Charles Yang\u00a0and\u00a0bassist\u00a0Ranaan\u00a0Meyer),\u00a0DiDonato\u00a0and Puts\u00a0\u201corganically developed,\u201d\u00a0says Kendall, who adds,\u00a0\u201cKevin did the lion\u2019s share of the work by creating the show\u2019s \u2018bible,\u2019 but we have all been closely involved in almost every part of the show\u2014even weighing in on the order of the poems in some cases, to album art design to what we all might want for dinner.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0become\u00a0a very close\u00a0and loving family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time for Three\u00a0players,\u00a0making\u00a0their\u00a0Cal Performances debut,\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0vocalizing throughout \u201cEmily.\u201d\u00a0They\u2019ll\u00a0be playing\u00a0their\u00a0instruments\u00a0only on\u00a0the\u00a0work\u2019s\u00a0scherzos, \u201cappropriately named \u2018Bee Scherzos\u2019 because of Dickinson\u2019s love for bees,\u201d Yang says, adding\u00a0that they \u201cfly with virtuosity and exuberance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yang\u00a0notes that\u00a0concert\u2019s immersive experience begins as soon as\u00a0patrons enter\u00a0the hall:\u00a0\u201cAudiences are cast into this world of contrast through lighting, staging, set and sound design that completely puts you inside the world of Dickinson\u2019s poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyer echoes the sentiment:\u00a0\u201cAs musicians we hopefully grow and learn to focus less on the technical and more on becoming the music,\u201d he explains. \u201cStaging\u00a0\u2026\u00a0helps us get into character and prioritize the emotion into our performance\u00a0\u2026 and\u00a0to enhance the voice and spirit of Emily Dickinson. It\u00a0resonates\u00a0love, joy, sadness,\u00a0defeat\u00a0and loneliness.\u00a0The audience will experience the four performers in various pods working together to share each poem while creating the story.<\/p>\n
Dickinson\u00a0famously\u00a0faced\u00a0oppression\u00a0while she was alive;\u00a0Meyer\u00a0feels \u201cEmily \u2014 No Prisoner Be\u201d\u00a0offers\u00a0a different view:\u00a0\u201cHer works were barely celebrated during her life,\u00a0but have been a reflection for the rest of time and humanity, and all set to gorgeous not \u2018new music\u2019 but music that happens to be new,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
For\u00a0DiDonato, Dickinson\u2019s work\u00a0remains\u00a0potent\u00a0in the 21st\u00a0century:\u00a0\u201cShe was\u00a0creating\u00a0not to be published or to go viral or to methodically check algorithmic boxes.\u00a0She created to navigate a world that fascinated and terrified her, and in finding this power within her, she made herself completely free. If I could\u00a0impress onto each audience member one thing, it would be to nurture the creative, free spirit within themselves. It aligns perfectly with my favorite quote of Jonathan Larson: \u2018The opposite of war is not peace, it\u2019s creation.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Cal Performances presents \u201cEmily \u2014 No Prisoner Be\u201d\u00a0at 8 p.m. Feb. 7 in Zellerbach Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus. A free artists\u2019 talk\u00a0with\u00a0UC Berkeley English professor\u00a0John\u00a0Shoptaw,\u00a0 DiDonato\u00a0and Time for Three\u00a0follows\u00a0the show. Tickets\u00a0are\u00a0$36 to $86\u00a0at\u00a0calperformances.org.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n The post Cal Performances\u2019 multimedia \u2018Emily\u2014No Prisoner Be\u2019 brings Dickinson\u2019s poetry to life with music<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coloratura mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato\u00a0jumped at the chance to sing\u00a0a song cycle based on Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry by\u00a0Pulitzer Prize-winner\u00a0Kevin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-162974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}