Portions of a new work—for now The Calling—will be performed June 16 & 18

By Peter Alexander June 14 at 11:25 a.m.

Composer Tom Cipullo is seeking a name for his new opera.

Right now it’s The Calling; before that it was The Next Voice you Hear. His work-in-progress is the subject of the 2023 CU New Opera Workshop (CU NOW) in the College of Music, and the first thing Cipullo wanted to do in the workshop was find the right title.

“I think it was the first thing I said when I arrived here,” he says. “I need a better title!” The Calling was suggested by one of the performers, and so far that is the title that everyone likes best.

But whatever you call it, you can catch a preview this Friday and Sunday at the Music Theater in the CU Imig Music Building (7:30 p.m. June 16 and 2 p.m. June 18; admission is free). Portions of the opera-in-progress will be performed by early-career artists from the CU Eklund Opera program under the direction of conductor Nicholas Carthy and stage director Leigh Homan. They will be accompanied by pianist Nathália Kato.

The libretto, written by Cipullo, tells the intertwining stories of three characters: televangelist Pastor Dove; IRS Agent Cordero, who is investigating Dove’s ministry for potential tax violations; and Dolores Caro, an older woman who supports Dove’s ministry.

Two of these characters are based on models. The televangelist was inspired by someone Cipullo won’t name that he saw interviewed about his extravagant lifestyle. “He was so charming and frightening at the same time that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him,” Cipullo says. But he wants you to know he is not trying to mock the televangelist. 

“I was trying to tell his side of it,” he says. “He’s giving to people. Maybe it’s worth it for these people, what he’s giving them. (It makes) me think, the preacher actually believes he’s doing good.”

Dolores, the homebound contributor to the ministry, is partly Cipullo himself. She is surrounded by old-fashioned consumer goods and feeling left behind by the 21^st century. “There’s a lot of me in her,” Cipullo admits. Like Dolores, “I still have a landline. And I can’t figure out how to work this (smartphone)!”

The character of the IRS agent was suggested to Cipullo, and he is more of an original creation. As someone who grew up religious and knows both the Bible and literature, Agent Cordero is an ideal foil to Dove.

With these three characters it would be easy to write a biting satire, but that’s not Cipullo’s game. “I hope it’s more nuanced than that,” he says. “The biting satirical way is the way that a lot of people in New York would look at people who give to televangelists, but I’m more interested in what the people who listen to these televangelists get out of it.”

When pressed, Cipullo says that The Calling is neither satire nor comedy, but both—and partly tragedy, in a way. “It’s all of these,” he says. “I think it is a commentary on the condition of the country, with tragic and comic overtones. Any good opera that wants to touch your heart has to have light moments in it.”

Getting the right balance of ingredients is one purpose of CU NOW and similar workshops. Composers can hear portions of their new works and see what works and what doesn’t, and to write new material when required. Often the performers themselves provide ideas that end up in the finished work—and not just the title.

When he arrived for the workshop, Cipullo says, “I had specific things that I was concerned about, and I had various epiphanies. I didn’t really have the title, there was too much wordiness and (I was concerned about) the momentum and how to shape it.

“Then there are specific levels—for example, someone’s singing an aria, there are specific musical things. Maybe it’s only a moment, maybe it’s a beat, maybe it’s too long. Maybe something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but we have to try to figure out what it is, as a group.”

CU NOW, founded by Holman in 2010, provides a longer working period than most workshops—up to two or three weeks. This gives composers a chance to tackle more changes than they could in a few days, which is valuable to the creative process. Composers who have been part of CU NOW in the past include Cipullo, Kamala Sankaram, Jake Heggie and Mark Adamo.

But Holman makes it clear that CU NOW is first and foremost for the students, giving them experience they will need in their careers. Working with composers, and learning new music on short notice, have become more necessary as more new operas are being produced around the country. At first, she says, the singers struggled to keep up with the changes they had to make overnight. 

But “it’s developed now to they’re begging for music,” she says. “They ask, ‘Did you write me any music last night?’ And Tom is writing new music almost every day and sending it to them every morning, and by 2 o’clock they know it already!”

That experience prepares the students for the facts of professional life today. “This is a golden age of American Opera,” Holman says. “The singers, if they’re going to work, they need to have these skills. When we started, there weren’t other universities doing these workshops and now they’re doing them all over.”

And at this point Cipullo speaks up. “But there’s nothing like this one”! he says.

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CU New Opera Workshop
Leigh Holman, director
Nick Carthy, conductor
Nathália Kato, pianist

The Calling by Tom Cipullo (portions)

Music Theatre, Imig Music Building
7:30 pm. Friday, June 16
2 p.m. Sunday June 18

Free, no tickets required