DanielSonenberg.com

Well, since I alluded to it below - my opera - and since I've been meaning for there to be some ink spilled at this location in its honor, and since I've really nothing else to talk about (although I'm meaning to write a post about my fourth grade teacher, a sort of revenge piece, stay tuned) I'll mention a bit about the grand opus in progress. Man, I see what they mean about writing operas. I mean how long can the words "in progress" carry any sort of real weight on my c.v., you know? But Josh takes some living with. The opera is called The Summer King, and it's about the life and death of Josh Gibson, who was one of the great Negro League baseball players. If you know your baseball you've heard of him or shame on you. He was a catcher, but famous mostly for his bat. Although many Negro Leaguers were called "the Black Babe Ruth" at one time or another, Gibson probably deserved it more than anyone else. Or maybe the Babe was the "White Josh Gibson." Among Josher's most notorious, and perhaps most apocryphal feats are 1) hitting a ball clean out of Yankee stadium; and 2) Killing a ball out of a park in Pittsburgh, and then at the next day's game in Philadelphia, after a ball came out of the sky and landed in an outfielder's glove, being told "You're out yesterday in Pittsburgh." Surprisingly, it's the first of these events (and not the colorful and ubiquitous second) that plays a central role in the opera. Gibson's much debated 1930 homerun out of Yankee Stadium becomes a kind of metaphor for the entire Negro League history, shrouded as it is in mystery, hearsay, and scant public record. Gibson may have hit 800 or more home runs in his life, perhaps more than 80 in a single season. He also hit for average, and grew to be a more than decent catcher. Ultimately, however, the relentless grind of life in black ball began to wear away at the hulking slugger, and he became increasingly attached to alcohol and hard drugs. He also may have been diagnosed, in about 1942, with a brain tumor. The picture I've posted here gives a taste of Gibson later in life, somewhat bloated, still an accomplished trash talker, and delirious. He ended up dying in 1947, only months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the months leading up to his death, teammates and friends overheard him having imaginary arguments with Joe DiMaggio, and some have maintained that he died of a broken heart, for note having been The One.

In any case, Gibson has fascinated me for years. He is a stark contrast to his seemingly more operatic counterpart, Jackie Robinson. Jackie was such a noble figure. Heroic, driven, composed. A titan among men, who understood his historic responsibility and, against terrifying odds, rose to the charge. I don't know if any other human could have done what Jackie did that first year, the '47 season - withstanding the taunts, the death threats, the endless screeching epithets. Certainly not Josh. For Josh, being a great ballplayer was enough - wasn't that answering the call of history? Sure, he would have liked to have been chosen by Branch Rickey in '46, but by then Josh was in his mid-thirities, addled with injuries and worse, bloated, and living too far on the edge. It was not in Josh's horizon, nor in his ambitions, to be a pioneer - forging the way for his plethora of talented brethren. He did his pioneering with his bat - and were he white, this would have been enough. I mean can you imagine? His name would be a household word. He'd have a candy bar. I think in some ways Josh felt the swirling winds of history too late to raise his sail.

So the opera. I worked out a treatment with the poet Daniel Nester, who then wrote several drafts of the libretto. As is often the case between librettists and composers, Dan and I had a bit of an artistic parting of the ways, but the bulk of his excellent writing remains, with some inferior finishing touches by yours truly. We first cobbled together about an 18 minute scene, and you can hear all of it in the listen section of this site. This was for a workshop sponsored by American Opera Projects. We were working under great time pressure, so we didn't come up with a treatment for the whole opera, and the result is that this quirky little operatic chunk stands alone as a kind of suite: a meditation on Josh Gibson before our thoughts had fully congealed. Most of the music will not survive in the final version of the opera (except for the aria, which you can also hear on this site). The Summer King Suite, as that bit has come to be known, was performed in a staged version in March 2004 at the Manhattan School of Music, with some wonderful performers and under the inspired direction of Caren France, who works in the opera division there. Anyhoo, the opera occurs as a series of nested flashbacks, beginning in a barbershop in Brooklyn, 1957. It is ten years after Jackie broke the color barrier (and after Josh's death), and the year the Dodgers are leaving town, and a young exuberant barber gleefully sings along with an old chestnut that pops up on the radio: "Did You See Jackie Robsinon Hit That Ball?" (by Buddy Johnson). This prompts his elder colleague, a former Negro Leaguer himself, to wax philosophical about the great Josh Gibson. Eventually his reminiscing yields to a vision of the 1930 game at Yankee Stadium, told in pantomine with an exuberant sportscast through a bullhorn. Additional flashbacks find Josh, on his dying day, wracked by visions of his past - his first love, his triumphs in Mexican winter ball, his legendary acumen at trash talking, and ultimately, his most famous home run of all. Did he or didn't he? You'll need to stay tuned.

I've a long way to go. Have written some of the second act, which had a workshop reading by AOP in New York in April, 2005, and am now working on the first act. A portion of this will be presented in a concert performance up here in Maine on March 9, 2007, on my Faculty Recital, with a big 14 piece ensemble and a bunch of singers (the singers part is kinda standard for operas). There will also be workshop performances (piano/vocal, I fear) and maybe a libretto reading in NYC in the 2006-07 season (sponsored again by AOP), and perhaps another staged bit at the Manhattan School. It's an odd feeling to be with a single project for so long - a leap of faith, I suppose. The writing is going well, and taking me to some strange places (why does Debussy pop up in everything I write lately? I mean, what did HE know about baseball?) but it is a joyful pursuit.

You read this whole thing??? You weirdo!