Project

"...solid dramatic timing, compassionate characterizations, and huge potential.”
- The Philadelphia Inquirer's Best in Classical Music for 2009

PAUL'S CASE
Music by Gregory Spears
Libretto by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat
Based on the story by Willa Cather

About Paul's Case

Based on Willa Cather's story of the same name, Paul's Case chronicles the dissolution of a high school dandy living in sooty turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. Paul, fleeing the "petty economies" of life, eventually escapes to New York City's Waldorf Astoria to experience a world of "shiny surfaces" and "cool luxury." Unable to avoid a world that demands payment, Paul martyrs himself in a final act of shocking audacity that has troubled critics and readers alike.

Equal parts angry teenager, anti-capitalist, decadent aesthete and cold realist, Paul is also an American symbol of passive dissent in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.

Paul's Case is being developed in part with generous grants from the BMI Foundation, the Virgil Thomson Foundation and the "Composers & the Voice Circle of Friends". 

About the Creators

GREGORY SPEARS (composer / co-librettist)
Gregory Spears has written music for the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the NOW Ensemble, So Percussion and Eighth Blackbird. His music has won prizes from ASCAP and BMI as well as grants and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fulbright Foundation and Yaddo. Recent commissions have come from the Present Music Ensemble, the Bard Summer Music Festival and choreographer Christopher Williams. In 2007 Spears worked with musicologist Simon Morrison to reconstruct the original score for Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet for premiere by the Mark Morris Dance Group. For the 2007-2008 season, Spears was a participant in American Opera Project's Composers and the Voice workshop series. In addition to composing, Gregory teaches a Writing Seminar at Princeton University called Music and Madness. He lives in Brooklyn. (www.gregoryspears.com)

KATHRYN WALAT (co-librettist)
Kathryn Walat’s play Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project, and was published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007 (Smith & Kraus) and in Dramatics magazine. Her play Bleeding Kansas premiered at the Hangar Theatre (Ithaca), and was also produced at Moxie Theater (San Diego). Her work has been also been performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, La Jolla Playhouse, Salvage Vanguard Theater (Austin), and Perishable Theatre (Providence); and developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater, Sundance Institute Theatre Program, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Boston Theatre Works, Ars Nova, MCC, and New Georges. She received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from Yale Drama School, and is currently working on a commission for Yale Repertory Theatre entitled Creation, a play about music, obsession, and the creative process.

Media

Listen to music from
Paul's Case - Act I

Click above image

View images from
Paul's Case

Press

September 13, 2009 - MUSIC WEB INTERNATIONAL
Opera review: Workshop of PAUL'S CASE

December 13, 2009 - PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Best of 2009: Workshop of PAUL'S CASE

AOP Presentations

May 29-31, 2009
South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY and Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Developmental workshop of Act I
MUSIC DIRECTION: Jennifer Peterson
PERFORMANCES BY: Marcus DeLoach, Chad Johnson, Hai-Ting Chinn, Kirsten Chambers, Katherine Wessinger

October 3-4, 2008
South Oxford Space
Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes presents Scene 1
MUSIC DIRECTION: Jennifer Peterson
STAGE DIRECTION: Ned Canty
PERFORMANCES BY: Jennifer Berkebile, Marcus DeLoach, Abigail Fischer, Melissa Fogerty, Thomas Wazelle

Other Presentations

September 9-13, 2009
The Lantern Theater, Philadelphia, PA
Center City Opera Theater presents
Concert workshop of Act I & II
MUSIC DIRECTION: Andrew M. Kurtz
STAGE DIRECTION: Albert Innaurato
PERFORMANCES BY:

Siddhartha Misra, Paul
Branch Fields, Principa
Chloe Moore, History Teacher & Maid 1
Toni Marie Palmertree, Drawing Teacher & Maid 2
Hai-Ting, Chinn, English Teacher & Maid 3
Jean Bernard Cerin, Father
Kyle Bielfield, Yale Freshman

Paul's Case image photo by Matthu Placek.