Peter Weathers, a second-year Bienen School of Music graduate student, has spent the last several months working to make opera accessible to both the “red wine and Bud Light crowds.” Weathers is co-producing “No Exit,” a chamber opera, based on the 1944 play of the same title by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with a new downtown opera company called Chicago Opera Vanguard. Last June, Weathers received a grant from The Graduate School at Northwestern to produce “No Exit” and has since received additional private donations.
In producing the opera, Weathers said he wanted to appeal to a mixed audience of both traditional opera-goers and a younger crowd.
“We want to make accessible theatre (opera) at affordable pricing in spaces people are comfortable going,” he said. “This is something between a high-class event and going to see a storefront play.”
As a chamber opera, the production uses only four singers and four instrumentalists on soprano saxophone, viola, cello and percussion, which Weathers said is a unique combination for a chamber opera. Many of those involved in the production are current NU students or alumni.
Percussionist Joseph Gonzalez said the opera is accessible to people regardless of their musical background.
“This production reaches people that don’t listen to opera or classical music,” said Gonzalez, Bienen ’09. “It is more accessible because the story is easy to catch and there is more humor, but it is still a great work of art.”
Weathers said many people are familiar with the play or at least recognize its most famous line, “Hell is other people.” The plot of the opera is the same as that of the original play. The three main characters from different backgrounds have all recently died and never met on Earth. One at a time, they are escorted by a valet into a sparsely decorated room. They soon realize they are in hell, where Weathers said they are surprised to see “no fire and brimstone or pokers.”
According to Weathers, the idea is “they are the torturers of each other.” Each character needs the validation of the one other character who will not give it to him. As the plot progresses, tension mounts, and the characters become more and more violent.
“It is all in real time,” Weathers said. “(The opera) is an hour and a half of them in hell, with the idea that they will be there for eternity.”
The plot progression and the character development made it easy to convert the play into an opera, Weathers said.
“The play lent itself well to operatic adaptation because the three characters are each musically defined in interesting ways,” he said, adding the music effectively conveys the sense of “claustrophobia” that mirrors what the characters feel in hell.
Music doctoral candidate Sean Patayanikorn, who plays soprano saxophone in the production, said students should attend even if they find the idea of going to the opera daunting.
“People think (opera) is hard to grasp because they have never experienced it,” he said. “It would be equally bewildering to go to a rock concert if you aren’t familiar with rock. People are intimidated by their lack of experience, and there is only one way to fix that.”
“No Exit” premieres tonight at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre at Center on Halsted, a Chicago LGBT community center, with additional performances at the same location on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday night show is sponsored by NU’s Rainbow Alliance and the NU Gay and Lesbian Alumni. A concert version of the opera, without full sets and lighting, will be performed Oct. 30 in NU’s Lutkin Hall.
