Preview: Marble City Opera Follows Up With ‘Follow Suit’

When Marble City Opera sprang to life in May 2013, few could have envisioned that five years later it would have defined the sub-genre of chamber opera performance in Knoxville. Over those five years, the organization has also embraced eclecticism in its choice of works and performance spaces—from notable and familiar 20th Century works like Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors in a church nave, to non-traditional venues for familiar 19th Century works like La Traviata performed at Westwood, to an all-female version of La Bohème in a nightclub, and to contemporary works like The Stronger and Amelia Lost.

Part of MCO’s mission is also giving life to brand new chamber operas. That mission  has driven their next production, the world premiere of Follow Suit by composer Griffin Candey and librettist Emily Anderson. Once again, MCO has gravitated to a reality-based venue in which singers and audience are intermingled in the same space—the Lounge at Windows on the Park at the Holiday Inn World’s Fair Park.

Appropriately, Follow Suit is set in a hotel bar and the two characters are Jo, the bartender, sung by soprano and Marble City Opera artistic director Kathryn Frady, and a sole customer, Hixon, sung by baritone Morgan Smith. From MCO’s plot synopsis:

“A comic wedding-centric romp set in a hotel bar. A lone bartender (Jo) serves a lone man (Hixon) who seems to be separating himself from something. Through their flash-in-the-pan interaction, we draw out both the backstory of each of them  Jo still very much reeling from having cancelled her own wedding, and Hixon facing down his apprehension about long term relationships  and the foolish, selfish trends that surround the modern wedding.  Who is a wedding for?  What do we hold onto for tradition’s sake, and what do we hold onto because others demand it?  Full of both tongue-in-cheek energy and genuine self-reflection, Follow Suit stands true to one central theme: no one can tell you that there’s right way to live your life.”

Follow Suit is the second MCO production featuring a Griffin Candey score, the first being Sweets By Kate from 2016. Following that production, Frady introduced Emily Anderson to Candey and the pair began talking about the idea of collaborating on an opera for MCO.

“The original idea was Griffin’s,” explains Frady. “Since his bar-tending days in college, he had wanted to see an opera based on the human drama that takes place in a hotel bar where guests gather during the photography session of a big wedding. Emily started with that setting and created Jo and Hixon. As they tell their stories, a host of other characters we don’t see come to life. When Emily started writing, she didn’t know what the plot would be or the outcome. The double love stories developed pretty much on their own, as did the happy ending.”

Since Marble City Opera doesn’t have their own theatre, the choice of performance space becomes part of the experience. “This opera is tailored to that idea,” Frady says, “all the way down to the ensemble we chose—Piano, Clarinet, and Cello. I wanted the ensemble to be small enough to fit easily into a bar, but also be a combination that you might actually see in a hotel bar. I even went as far to ask Griffin to compose music for the ensemble that could be played as guests arrive into the space, as to really immerse the audience into the story.”

Candey’s previous score for Sweets By Kate featured an intriguing melodic and textural complexity, something that promises to be the case with Follow Suit.

“Textures are really meant to highlight the different characters that we see and hear about in the opera,” explains Candey. “…the main characters that we see, as well as the whole coterie of clambering family members and priests and everyone else who have their hands in this wedding, some of whom want to make it all about them.”

“Jo’s music is very fast,” offers Frady, “and even has what Griffin is calling a patter aria, which is an unusual opportunity for a soprano. There is a lot of text which Griffin sets in the rhythm and notes very well, but it is very fast. The opera is challenging to sing because it sits in the passaggio [transition between registers] for a lot of the music  … It is also wonderful working with such a talented singer and musician like Morgan Smith, who is very precise in his attention to detail.”

It seems Smith’s attention to detail has plenty to work with in Follow Suit.

“It is challenging for a composer and librettist to get the audience laughing about a subject as serious as marriage,” says Smith. “The subject seems to be where all of our fears and insecurities intersect. Jo and Hixon give voice to these fears, while conjuring the stereotypes and the ridiculous aspects of the institution, and the ceremony surrounding it. Something truly special about their interaction is that they are complete strangers, “scared as hell,” and yet they open up and express their deepest vulnerabilities to each other.”