Writing a Libretto

As an undergrad at the College of Creative Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara, I shared literature classes and wonderful walks on the beach with Merie Kirby, who now teaches Literature at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

When she’s not teaching, concocting delicious meals, and raising her daughter, she writes poetry and librettos for operas.  I conducted the following interview by e-mail with her at the beginning of May.

MH: What exactly is a libretto?
MK: A libretto is the lyrics to an opera; typically, in an opera, nearly every word is sung, and so every word is a lyric, will be sung. It’s a hybrid of a play and a song, really.

MH: How do you go about researching and writing one?
MK: The first libretto I wrote, “The Ascension of Radegunde” was adapted from a novella, “souls” by Joanna Russ, so the composer and I went through the process of getting permission from Russ, and then shaping the story into a dramatic format.

The next one, the composer who commissioned me knew he wanted the opera to be about genocide, and had a particular news story he thought would work as a starting point. So, my research involved that particular story, the genocide in Rwanda, and genocide in general. It was heartbreaking and fascinating research; the resulting opera was “Sanctuary.”

For my current project, the producer commissioned me and my husband, composer Christopher Gable, to write an opera for the 150th anniversary of the renaming of his hometown, Ladysmith, WI. So the research has been about the history of the town, turn of the century Wisconsin, lumberjack culture, period songs; I’ve used a mix of historical figures and invented figures to make a story that is about this small town, but also about this point in American history and the place of the small town in the American imagination.

MH: You’ve worked closely with your husband, Christopher Gable, writing librettos for his operas, “The Ascension of Radegunde” and “With a New Name: how a small Wisconsin town grew.”  Will you describe the process of collaborating with him and a couple of highlights?
MK: Chris and I really enjoy working together. For me, it helps so much that he really has a good ear for poetry and language, and that he cares about story. The words almost always come first when we work together – he waits until I have a draft I’m pretty happy with (and he is pretty accepting of the fact that he probably won’t see anything until then, except perhaps an outline).

Then we go through it and look at places where it gets a little wordy for singing and ways to let the music itself carry some of that burden. We look for words that are hard to sing and what they might be replaced by. As he works through the text, he will sometimes ask about changing something, or in constructing an aria he’ll sometimes rearrange parts or repeat phrases – but he runs it by me, too, to make sure it makes sense to me.

Often, composers are not used to working with living writers and don’t really understand a writer’s process, and I know some writers who have had less enjoyable experiences this way. I feel like I’ve been lucky in that respect. Collaboration can be hard if the artists involved don’t have an understanding of how each one works – developing a common language can prevent a lot of problems.

MH: Why might writers want to consider working in this particular genre?
MK: It’s really fun and rewarding to hear your words sung by a really great singer! I am always amazed and delighted at that part. I can’t say it is a particularly lucrative field, but it is rewarding. And in cases like “Sanctuary” where I really felt like I was bringing something into the conversation that wasn’t there before, that’s a kind of reward as well. Also, working with another artist gives you a chance to stretch in a new direction and to see how someone else’s process works.