A World Premiere Opera 155 Years in the Making

Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer)
By Socks Whitmore

Camille Zamora and Monica Yunus (Photo courtesy of the artists)

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“This piece is a gem, a beautiful little jewel . . . You hear elements of Verdi, Liszt, chromaticism that’s unexpected; I wonder how much composer Pauline García Viardot influenced the writing of the day?”

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The world of opera is an ever-shifting landscape, but it’s no secret that the best-known works in the field have historically been written by men. Is this because men were the only artists generating work at the time? Far from it. Today, the classical operas of talented women composers are finally beginning to gain recognition, and this coming Friday, March 3, one such treasure will emerge from the vault for its first professional production, over 150 years after it was first created in 1867; Le dernier sorcier, or The Last Sorcerer, written by Pauline García Viardot with a libretto by Ivan Turgenev, will be reincarnated by the “arts peace corp” organization, Sing for Hope, at the Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater. The prodigious effort is led by the company’s co-founders and acclaimed vocalists, Monica Yunus and Camille Zamora, who are also performing leading roles in the production.

A two-act chamber opera described as a “feminist eco fable,” Le dernier sorcier follows the aging Krakamiche, a formerly powerful sorcerer whose riches and power have faded to near nothing; and his daughter Stella, an independent young woman who craves authentic connection and a vibrant life. Because Krakamiche once stole the forest land from its magical inhabitants, the fairies are upset by his presence and play pranks on him to teach him a lesson. Meanwhile, the Fairy Queen lends both Stella and the nearby Prince Lelio her aide in order to facilitate a romance. Through the combined efforts of the various characters, The Last Sorcerer embraces lessons in humility and living in harmony with the natural world.

Says Yunus, who plays Stella, “In my time at Juilliard, I don’t remember [singing] scores by women. . . it really is exciting to be able to bring something [to life] with such care and creativity surrounding it.” She cites the rich musical language as the primary vehicle for the show’s themes of power and progress, gender equality, environmentalism, and restoring a broken natural order. From the intelligence of the vocal writing to the empowerment of Stella as a character who can’t be swayed to change her desires, the influence of the composer Viardot’s own 19^th century life as a trailblazing female musician is tangible within the opera. “This piece is a gem, a beautiful little jewel… You hear elements of Verdi, Liszt, chromaticism that’s unexpected; I wonder how much she influenced the writing of the day?”

An Unsung “(S)hero”

Camille Zamora (center, in white) with students and faculty at Savanna High School where students are creating artwork and props that will be featured “The Last Sorcerer” at The Wallis. (Photo by Hannah Burnett)

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The composer was herself a French mezzo-soprano who launched her extended vocal career at the age of 17 and quickly became a distinguished musician at the epicenter of 19th century European culture.

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Zamora, who plays Reine, says that Viardot was a “force of nature . . .  People understand that [she was] this fierce woman who for 150 years has not gotten her due.” The composer was herself a French mezzo-soprano who launched her extended vocal career at the age of 17 and quickly became a distinguished musician at the epicenter of 19th century European culture. A friend and collaborator to Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, the novelist known by her pseudonym George Sand, and other household names, Viardot’s extensive career onstage inspired many composers to write for her voice or dedicate their compositions to her. However, Yunus adds, “Pauline had such a storied musical palette;” she served as a music educator to the next generation of women musicians and composed in a variety of styles, often as part of her teaching practice. She wrote five known salon operas in her lifetime, three of which featured librettos by her novelist lover Ivan Turgenev, but like other non-men of the era, her works never received the same acclaim as her male counterparts. It was accepted, or perhaps expected, that she wouldn’t have access to the same resources as the mainstage works of the time, so she organized workshop productions of compositions like The Last Sorcerer at home in her Baden-Baden villa using a limited orchestration and a cast made up of her students. Her audience of peers (including prominent music-makers Liszt, Johannes Brahms, and Clara Schumann, amongst others) hailed the piece as a treasure.

In spite of the noted high caliber of musical writing, Le dernier sorcier never had the opportunity for a professional production. The 1870 German language performances in Weimar and Karlsruhe were clumsily translated and poorly received, and after Viardot’s passing, the original manuscripts for her works went into various archives and private collections. There, they virtually vanished for more than a century. It may be hard to believe that a whole opera could go missing, but as Zamora points out, “It seems absurd, and yet… it isn’t unexpected. I would say it’s representative of women doing great work in the 19th century.” For decades, The Last Sorcerer was all but forgotten…until Harvard University’s Houghton Library acquired the vocal/piano manuscript, where it then found its way into the hands of Camille Zamora and Adriana Zabala (the mezzo-soprano playing Prince Lelio in this production).

“When I want to do something, I do it in spite of water, fire, society, the whole world.” — Pauline García Viardot (1821-1910)

Zamora recalls that her attention was first drawn to Viardot by a track from Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, a vocalist known for bringing lost scores to light, which inspired a years-long conversation with Zabala (a champion of new work and work by women) about the overlooked female composer. With the blessing of the Harvard Library, Zamora was able to transcribe and publish the manuscript of Le denier sorcier, and pen an English narration to pair with the score.

“I knew that we had limited resources,” Zamora says. “We didn’t have tons of time to be in the rehearsal room with our wonderful international cast learning the French dialogue and sharing it in that way, so I thought, okay, an easy solution that highlights the fairytale aspect of the opera is to make it sort of a storybook. … I took Turgenev’s libretto and some scholarship written on the work [by Nicholas Žekulin], put them into a blender, put on my storytelling hat, and created a narration that fills in interstitially between each musical number.” She also notes, “This is handy because we’re singing the piece in the original French and we don’t assume the majority of our audience speaks French, so [our narrator’s] storytelling moves the plot forward.”

The narration was originally intended for a different realization of the work; Zabala and Zamora first spearheaded the release of a world premiere recording, which debuted in 2019 on Billboard’s Top Ten Classical Chart. Featuring a unique team of acclaimed musicians alongside the Manhattan Girls Chorus (including Zamora herself singing the role of Stella), the passion project aimed to inspire more productions of Viardot’s work. Little did they know then that the next opportunity would land in their own laps. When Zamora and Yunus were invited by the Wallis to serve as Artists-in-Residence for its 2022-23 season (its first live performance season since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), and to additionally collaborate with the Wallis through their organization Sing for Hope as its Company-in-Residence, they realized that “Pauline’s benevolent spirit” may have smiled upon them.

“As our Sing for Hope anthem says: ‘Dream big, speak loud,’ Zamora says. “We have had a rather crazy and joyful season that’s still in process, but frankly we are doing crazy, huge things on a shoestring [budget] … I think a lot of artists would have done something simple and small-scale, but we immediately said, ‘We are in this incredible community, this gorgeous theater, [with] this incredible team… Let’s do something really big.’”

Sing for Whom?

Camille Zamora on a classroom visit to Savanna High School (Photo by Hannah Burnett)

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“There is no more raw, unmediated form of expression than there is in using art in times of human intensity . . . In a hospital setting, in a transit hub, places of high stress, [both] tremendous beauty and of tremendous panic and heartbreak. Sometimes the act of sharing the unamplified human voice in that kind of a context can feel quite miraculous.”

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The scale of Yunus and Zamora’s ambitions is hardly surprising when one takes a glance at their collaborative beginnings. The two first met while studying at Juilliard, but the event that brought them together was in fact a tragedy; on the morning of 9/11, the Juilliard campus was less than five miles away from NYC’s original World Trade Center, sharing the block with a firehouse among the first responders. Yunus and Zamora organized a memorial performance of “songs of comfort” at the Lincoln Center, bonding over their common pull to arts advocacy work and an ability to see “art delivery systems” beyond the traditional performance venues and art galleries. After the event’s success, the two took a look at their goals and what life after Juilliard might hold for them, and set off on the path that would lead them to found Sing for Hope.

“We like to say that it just added to our goal set,” Yunus states. “We definitely wanted to pursue singing, which we have done this entire time alongside building Sing for Hope. We really wanted to explore the applications of music and community . . . what arts can do for society . . . and at the time, that wasn’t something that had a curriculum at a conservatory like Juilliard, so we really had to figure that out for ourselves. . .  (It was definitely a journey of many, many emails.) . . . As aspiring musicians in an industry that can sometimes really hyperfocus on self and perfectionism, this was a way for us to get out of that.”

In 2010, Yunus and Zamora launched Sing for Hope Pianos, a global arts initiative that commissions artistically painted pianos that are then placed in schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and other public spaces for all to enjoy. Since then, Sing for Hope has gone on to produce performances and cultural experiences to promote wellness in health facilities and treatment centers; create educational programs that serve youth in grades K-12 in partnership with major agencies (including The United Nations); and earn the status of official Cultural Partner of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates.

Reflects Zamora, “There is no more raw, unmediated form of expression than there is in using art in times of human intensity . . . In a hospital setting, in a transit hub, places of high stress, [both] tremendous beauty and of tremendous panic and heartbreak. Sometimes the act of sharing the unamplified human voice in that kind of a context can feel quite miraculous.”

Le dernier sorcier serves as the cornerstone production for Yunus, Zamora, and Sing for Hope’s residency at the Wallis, but its impact doesn’t stop there. One high priority value for the pair of artist activists is to engage community, and in particular to provide artistic opportunities to youth. Zamora points out, “My intention was not to go to Juilliard and study music and play these beautiful pianos, when the majority of kids in the city I live in… have never seen or touched a piano.” (The Last Sorcerer at the Wallis features the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus as the opera’s cast of fairies, and set pieces by students from Savannah High School designed around themes of climate action and gender equality.)

“Yes, we’re gonna do an incredible opera production,” Zamora shares. “But we’re gonna do it in a way that actually ensures that a group of kids are transformed, and not just because they witness what we do, but because they come and witness what they are capable of.”

The decision to utilize local youth was an easy one — it offers both the heartbreaking symbolism of who will have to clean up the world shaped by our current climate crisis, and the proof that this story can be told by anyone. After all, the people that Sing for Hope wants to reach aren’t the people buying opera tickets. Yunus observes the context of the industry that surrounds opera and music making: “Artists are essentially freedom fighters, and we find ourselves delivering our art in a system that’s exclusionary.”

 In the recorded album’s accompanying booklet, Zamora states: “Le dernier sorcier deserves our attention because it’s funny, fresh, poignant, and profound, and it conveys its larger ideas in compelling, endlessly hummable ways. . . This sense of self-determination and sheer joy courses through Pauline García Viardot’s music, elevating us. It reminds us, as the Fairy Queen sings, that there is always hope.”

Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer), by Pauline García Viardot with a libretto by Ivan Turgenev, is being performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills; Friday, March 3, 7:30 p.m. https://thewallis.org