The Glenn Korff School of Music’s opera program presents “O Pioneers!,” which will be performed in Scottsbluff, McCook and Red Cloud, Nebraska, in October as part of the Lied Center for Performing Arts’ Arts Across Nebraska program.
Arts Across Nebraska connects Lied Center artists with Nebraskans everywhere through annual tours to communities across the state. Each tour stop includes public performances, student matinees and educational outreach.
“O Pioneers!” was composed by Professor of Composition and Conducting and Director of Orchestras Tyler Goodrich White and is based on Willa Cather’s 1913 novel—her first masterpiece and one of the most compelling tales of the Great Plains.
Presented in connection with the 2023 Cather Sesquicentennial, the production features student and alumni singers of UNL Opera, the UNL Chamber Singers and a sextet of live musicians. The production is conducted by White with stage direction by William Shomos, the Richard H. Larson Distinguished Professor of Music (Voice) and Director of Opera. Design will be done in collaboration with the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film.
“O Pioneers!” will be presented in Scottsbluff, McCook and Red Cloud Oct. 15-20. Tour dates include:
• Midwest Theater in Scottsbluff on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 4 p.m. Tickets for this performance are $15 for non-members/$10 for members of the Midwest Theater and can be reserved at midwesttheater.com or by calling (308) 632-4311 or visiting the box office.
• Fox Theatre in McCook on Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 6:30 p.m. This performance is offered free of charge with no tickets required. Visit foxtheatremccook.org for more information.
• Red Cloud Opera House in Red Cloud on Friday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. Tickets for this performance are $20 in advance or $25 on the day of the show and can be purchased at willacather.org or by calling (402) 746-2653. This performance is sponsored by the National Willa Cather Center.
The opera will also be performed at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 12 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are $18-40 and are available from the Lied Center Box Office or online at https://www.liedcenter.org/opera.
White has always been a fan of Cather’s work.
“Ever since my teen years, I’ve been a huge fan of Cather’s,” he said. “And I remember thinking from literally the first time I picked up a Cather novel, ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop,’ looking at that first chapter, I was so struck by the clarity and evocative simplicity of her writing style.”
White said, “O Pioneers!” is probably the most operatic in its conception.
“It has an adultery and murder plot in there. And then there’s endangered love, lost love and all sorts of very heartfelt and lyrical subjects,” he said. “Also, it’s one of her novels that has the clearest sort of plot arc.”
He was also intrigued by Cather’s opposition to dramatic adaptations of her work—she even put it in her will that there be no adaptations done of her work, which has since lapsed, making the opera possible.
“But I can understand why she felt that way,” White said. “Because when you put something on the stage or on screen, the first thing you lose is the author’s narrative voice. And that, for Cather, is so crucial to the impact of her novels as the way she describes things and the way the narration moves forward. What intrigued me as a composer was then the possibility and necessity of reflecting the tone of Cather’s narration in my musical language.”
White has continued to update the opera since it originally premiered in 1999 and completed his final revisions in 2019.
“I made some important changes gradually over the years since the first production,” White said. “The main revision was that originally the show had passages of spoken dialog, and I’ve recast all that musically, so the whole piece is sung virtually beginning to end.”
Shomos has always found the music White composed for this opera to be beautiful.
“The music has always been, to me, astonishingly beautiful, and it’s just a good piece of theatre,” Shomos said. "If you haven’t seen the opera before but are familiar with the book, I think Tyler does a really wonderful job of sticking to the detail and intent of Cather. It’s what I would call a very faithful adaptation of her work.”
Shomos is eager to tour “O Pioneers!” with his cast and crew.
“I think the experience and the excitement of getting to do a show in a different space and having to adapt to different settings is really good for them,” he said. “And it’s a lot of fun. We connect with the communities outside of Lincoln.
Last year’s tour of “La Traviata” included their fifth stop in Ord, as well as their first performance in Scottsbluff, which drew an audience of 700.
“That’s pretty amazing if you think about that,” Shomos said. “In Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 700 people coming out for opera. It was just an overwhelming success, and we had a couple of days in the community doing programs for students and arts supporters to build relationships. It was just a fantastic experience for the students to work with these audiences. The University of Nebraska belongs to the entire state. Everyone pays their taxes to support the university. It’s so important that we share the work that we do here with as many people as we have the resources to do, especially in rural communities that don’t have easy access to the theater in Lincoln.”
“O Pioneers!” is presented with generous support from the James C. and Rhonda Seacrest Tour Nebraska Opera Fund with additional support from the Glenn Korff School of Music, Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, Lied Center for Performing Arts, UNL Friends of Opera, and the Ariel Bybee Visiting Professorship Endowed Fund.
The Lied Center’s Arts Across Nebraska is also supported by The Richard P. Kimmel and Laurine Kimmel Charitable Foundation, the Nebraska Arts Council/Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and Friends of Lied.