Opera is latest version of saga
Revival planned in 2008

By JESSICA RYEN
Observer-Dispatch

Margaret Nemyier’s father was about nine-years-old when Chester Gillette was convicted for
the murder of Grace Brown and he remembered the event vividly.

“He told me about all the happenings in the courthouse,” said Nemyier, 75, of Ilion. And, of course, living in Herkimer County piqued her curiosity, so Nemyier joined the Herkimer County Historical Society’s committee to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Brown’s death.

She also took a trip to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in December to see “An American Tragedy,” the opera based on the book of the same name by Theodore Dreiser, which is based on the Brown/Gillette affair.

“It was fantastic,” Nemyier said of the opera. “The music was perfect and so was the acting.”

In fact, Nemyier was surprised at how realistic everything was on stage -from the bedroom scene to the drowning.

“I don’t know how it was done, but it was so clever,” Nemyier said of the latter scene.

The opera’s cleverness came from the creative team of composer Tobias Picker and librettist Gene Scheer, who worked together previously on “Therese
Raquin.”

Picker, whose own father was fascinated with Dreiser’s novel, had always wanted to adapt the story on stage and he hired Scheer to help him out when the Met commissioned Picker to create an opera.

“It’s a great story, it was very successful,” Scheer said of the opera which ran at the Met
throughout December 2005. In fact, NBC’s “The Today Show” sent a production team to Herkimer County last fall to cover the opera’s debut.

A revival with some of the same cast is scheduled for sometime in 2008, Picker said, although dates have not been confirmed.

“It works on so many levels,” Scheer said. “One, it’s a story of America and what’s at the core of culture. It illustrates the negative side to the American dream. But, it’s also a wonderful dramatic story of a love triangle.”

The operatic story is pretty much the same as Dreiser’s book - poor boy Clyde Griffiths moves to Upstate New York to live and work with his rich uncle. When Clyde meets Roberta Alden, he seduces her before moving on to the wealthier Sondra Finchely.

Roberta, heartbroken pleads with Clyde through love letters to marry her and do the right thing, but she is lead to her untimely death when the two quarrel on a canoe.

Grace Brown’s love letters played a vital role in the conviction of Chester Gillette, so Scheer
made sure to feature them prominently in the opera. The show’sdesigner, Adrianne Lobel, projected the actual letters onto the stage’s set while the actress portraying Roberta sings “The Letter Aria.”

The effect, said Scheer, was so dramatic; it did justice to Brown’s story.