Speaking Out on Sacco & Vanzetti

Sacco & Vanzetti
Dead Man Writing

by Joel Honig

Living American composers don't realize how lucky they are. A worst-case example of what can happen after they're dead or lose control over their work took place in Westport, Connecticut, on August 18. Lured by the promise of a "fascinating and stimulating" discussion, a hopeful crowd shuffled up the steps of the White Barn Theatre for a seminar on Marc Blitzstein's Sacco and Vanzetti, commissioned by the Ford Foundation in 1960 and optioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Blitzstein had explored the subject in 1932 (in an unproduced oratorio), but returning to it for the opera, he found his creativity stymied by the subject matter, and the work languished, despite sleeve-tugging by general manager Rudolf Bing.

Early in 1964, while vacationing in Martinique, Blitzstein was robbed and savagely beaten to death by three sailors in an alley outside a waterfront dive. In retrospect, it seems almost suicidal that the normally circumspect composer should have taken such a risk. He could not have been overly preoccupied with Sacco and Vanzetti, or concerned that such a heavy-duty pickup could go fatally awry After a frantic search for the libretto and score, both were discovered by a used-car dealer in the trunk of the composer's Peugeot, which Blitzstein had left in a friend's garage. "He was very meticulous," she told reporters. "It was not like him to leave the manuscript stored in the car." Small wonder that Blitzstein had dodged Bing, for there was no opera. The cartons pulled from the trunk held a mound of ideas and intentions, jotted down in thousands of shards and fragments. Some scenes had been sketched sixteen times, only one was even remotely finished, and not a note was orchestrated. In a commemorative tribute, Leonard Bernstein articulated the impossibility of trying to do what only Blitzstein could have done. "With what notes?" he asked. "Only yours, your own private and mysterious notes. Neither I, nor anyone I know, has access to your luminous caves where those word-notes are forged." Bernstein later tried unsuccessfully to collate the sketches for a New York Philharmonic concert and enlisted the help of Daron Hagen, a young composer with extensive knowledge of Blitzstein's works. As Hagen recalls, after trying to fill in the blanks, "There just wasn't enough there." The eminent composer David Diamond agreed. "There was not much there," he says. "I saw all the fragments, and I didn't think there was much to go on."

Yet in 1978, composer Leonard Lehrman, who never knew Blitzstein, received permission from the Blitzstein estate to try his hand. The results (which I did not see) were presented at the White Barn as a staged reading, with piano accompaniment, for four performances in August. Moderator Joan Peyser, whose 1966 article on Blitzstein first acquainted Lehrman with his work, began the White Barn seminar with a brisk, well-focused review of his life and music, highlighting the wealthily-born composer's communist affiliations and empathy for the toiling masses. Lehrman followed with a rambling self-serving soliloquy that rapidly degenerated into petty bickering and hairsplitting. In a gratuitous and humiliating attack, Lehrman dissed panelist Anton Coppola, the eighty-three-year-old composer-conductor whose opera on the same subject had its premiere last March in Tampa.

Returning to Sacco and Vanzetti, Lehrman recalled his own long march, which began during his year at the Metropolitan Opera as assistant chorus master. After getting the green light from Blitzstein's sister, he was referred to production director John Dexter but found sexual politics blocking his path. He made the reason clear at an earlier symposium in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "John Dexter was very well known for pinching little boys' behinds," he explained, "and I was quite notorious for being the only nongay assistant conductor on the staff." Two years ago, he got permission to complete the opera from a reluctant Christopher Davis, the composer's nephew. "I'm a writer," Davis told him. "I wouldn't want anyone messing with my work after I die." What changed his mind? Lehrman didn't say.

Perhaps it was the efforts of panelist Robert Palmer, to whom Lehrman-in a ghoulish act of artistic expropriation-dedicated Sacco and Vanzetti. Palmer had played through parts of the score with Blitzstein in Italy forty years ago, and his soporific ramblings were just enough to nudge panelist Brenda Lewis into the arms of Morpheus. After copping a few well-earned z's, the soprano was roused long enough to share her memories of Blitzstein's disciplined and punctual work habits, which she had observed first hand. By then the scam was obvious. A work dissembled as Blitzstein's, which the composer obviously never intended to be seen or heard, and which he ultimately-in the most profound sense-abandoned forever, had been cobbled together by a stranger's hand. Blitzstein's road map, scrawled over with posthumous "improvements" such as Governor Michael Dukakis's 1977 proclamation acknowledging judicial prejudice against Sacco and Vanzetti, was being passed off as both his vehicle and his voyage. An opera "completed" at long overdue last? The wishes of the dead duly honored? Hardly. The twice-murdered composer, whose works resound with his hatred of social and political injustice, had himself been the victim of a grievous artistic one. His lifelong fight for the worker, the underclass and the foreigner was cut short by the very type of men he had held so high. Thirty years later, the gold of his legacy has been melted down into cufflinks for someone else to display. Poor Blitzstein - it's just as well he was cremated. I'm sure he would be rolling over in his grave.

(from Opera News; 11/01)

STEPHEN E. DAVIS
Tiverton, R.I.
October 22, 2001

Editor OPERA NEWS
1865 Broadway
New York, NY 10023

Dear Sir:

In your November issue Joel Honig makes a vitriolic attack on an opera-in-progress which he admits he never attended. The opera, a concert version performed in August at the White Barn Theater in Westport, Conn., was Marc Blitzstein's "Sacco and Vanzetti" as completed by Leonard Lehrman with the authorization of the Blitzstein Estate.

As one of Blitzstein's heirs, I cannot comprehend your publication of a "review" of an opera by a so-called critic who did not bother to attend any of the three performances. Nevertheless, he concludes that the Blitzstein Estate should not have authorized Mr. Lehrman to undertake this effort.

Please inform your readers that the Estate authorized this effort in part because Mr. Lehrman did an excellent, critically acclaimed job in completing another opera left unfinished at the composer's death ("Idiots First") and in part because of the belief that there was sufficient material available to enable a composer with a thorough understanding of Blitzstein's music and spirit to rescue what otherwise might have been forever lost to the opera-going public.

Sincerely yours,
Stephen E. Davis

Valley Stream, NY
October 30, 2001

To the Editor:

It is a misreading of history to say that Marc Blitzstein's "creativity was stymied by the subject" of Sacco and Vanzetti. He was frustrated by the Red-baiting of both the '20s and the '50s, and awed by the scope of what would become his largest work, his magnum opus. He was also working at a time of national depression, very much like the one in which we find ourselves now: he died two months almost to the day after President Kennedy was shot. That's why he put the work aside for a time, to work on smaller pieces, one-act operas based on stories by Bernard Malamud.

When Leonard Bernstein wrote in 1964 of Marc Blitzstein's unfinished work, "Neither I, nor anyone I know, has access to your luminous caves where those word-notes are forged," he was referring specifically to Blitzstein's first Malamud opera IDIOTS FIRST, which he, Bernstein, had tried to finish. Nine years later, I completed that opera, receiving Bernstein's blessing and approval of my work. As the result, Leonard Bernstein told Richard Flusser, "Leonard Lehrman is Marc Blitzstein's 'dybbuk.'" The work's 4 productions received critical raves--including OPERA NEWS.

There is a noble tradition of completing unfinished operas that goes back to Borodin completed by Glazunov and Mussorgsky completed by several different composers--among them Nikolai Tcherepnine, whose FAIR AT SOROCHINSK is an amalgam of fragments from many Mussorgsky works. It was in this tradition that I spent 23 years completing Blitzstein's SACCO AND VANZETTI, utilizing portions of works which Blitzstein was himself re-using.

The work had first been called to my attention by Joan Peyser's _Columbia University Forum_ article on Blitzstein in 1966. I invited her to the August 18 symposium on the opera, along with Anton Coppola. He and I outlined our different approaches to the same story. I certainly never "dissed" or "attacked" him (a videotape of the symposium is available, which will show that), and Maestro Coppola and I have had numerous friendly discussions since then.

Brenda Lewis's words on Blitzstein at that symposium are worth quoting: "This was a man for whom his art was his weapon, in trying to make a better world. That was his whole life thrust. I don't care what philosophy you want to call it. Marc's aim in life was to use what creativity, what came out of him, to say that there _can_ be a better world. We _can_ heal the breach: People don't have to prey on one another. I think if you will look at all his work, you will see that his whole heart, his thrust, his musical sense always said that to you. And in the most successful pieces, that message reached home. That's why a man like Leonard, who was inspired by that message, and who I know has the same message in his life, that's why I think in a sense he felt drawn to these works, and I don't think he's had a moment's rest 'til he decided he was going to finish SACCO AND VANZETTI. He has done it, and I hope all of you will come and hear it. It is a powerful work."

It was she who encouraged me to include the 1977 Dukakis exoneration, not as Marc might have done in 1964, but as we both felt he would have done, had he taken 13 years or more to complete the opera which, had he lived, he might well have done.

A webpage with photos of the production and comments by critics who did attend performances of it may be found at http://www.artists-in-residence.com/~ljlehrman/SaccoAndVanzetti.html

Sincerely,
Leonard J. Lehrman

November 5, 2001

To the Editor of Opera News:

I was astonished to read Joel Honig's harsh disapproval of the August 2001 premiere of the opera that Marc Blitztstein died before being able to complete: Sacco and Vanzetti ("Dead Man Writing," November 2001).

The noted composer/conductor/pianist Leonard J. Lehrman, in order to make the work performable and give a full sense of its scope, has fleshed out the music, hewing closely to Blitzstein's musical style and dramatic sensibilities. In this, he has received the approval of the Blitzstein estate and of many of Blitzstein's closest friends and musical associates.

I have now listened to four excerpts from the work (on A Marc Blitzstein Songbook, an Original Cast CD, OC-4441) and studied the same excerpts in the recently published _Marc Blitzstein Songbook_, vol. 2 (Boosey & Hawkes). I find them overwhelmingly powerful and incisive. The libretto itself (which I have now read in its entirety) is trenchant without being preachy.

Opinions can differ, of course. But Honig blasted Lehrman's completion without going to hear it (as he casually admits) or even, it seems, seeing a copy of the piano-vocal score. He merely disliked what he heard about it at a pre-performance round table. Indeed, his highly colored language suggests that he disapproves of posthumous completions and adaptations, generally.

But, for many eager music lovers, the proof of the pudding in such situations is in the listening. After all, various fragmentary compositions by Mozart, Schubert, Bizet, Musorgsky, Borodin, and Mahler would have lain unheard without substantial intervention--sometimes including extensive compositional work--by another musician, whether a close contemporary or a skillful specialist from a later generation.

Opera News readers deserve a responsible accounting of the premiere of this important and persuasive (if inevitably conjectural in many spots) completion of a major work that Blitzstein labored on for years.

Ralph P. Locke
Department of Musicology
Eastman School of Music

Tuesday, November 06, 2001 9:19 AM
From: "Ann Stamler"
To: <fpdriscoll@operanews.com>
Subject: Dead Men Writing

Editor OPERA NEWS
1865 Broadway
New York, NY 10023

Sir:

I object to Joel Honig’s article “Dead Men Writing” in the November 1 issue of Opera News, about Leonard Lehrman’s completion of Marc Blitzstein’s opera Sacco and Vanzetti, on two grounds.

The first is epistemological. Mr. Honig did not attend any of the three performances of Sacco and Vanzetti at the White Barn Theatre in August. He has a right to interpret the facts of Blitzstein’s life and the history of the unfinished opera differently from Mr. Lehrman. He has a right to believe unfinished works should not be finished posthumously.

But whatever his interpretations and beliefs, he has no right to judge a work he has not seen. That he almost boasts of doing so only adds insult to the injury.

The second is more subjective. It is difficult to believe Mr. Honig attended the same pre-concert seminar I attended on August 18. I heard no “dissing” (strange choice of words for a serious critic) of Anton Coppola, who sat with Mr. Lehrman on the stage and was treated, as I recollect, with respect and courtesy. Nor did I view any of the panelists less than fully wakeful and attentive throughout the discussion. I certainly found myself reliving an era I experienced as a young adult living in Greenwich Village, with expanded comprehension through the excellent and impassioned contribution especially of Brenda Lewis. (Perhaps it is Mr. Honig who dozed?)

I am sorry Opera News published this piece. If the writer had taken up the work, his views would be a matter of opinion. Since he has not even given the work the respect of looking at it, he forfeits the right to gain the respected platform of your journal for any views at all.

Ann Stamler
Fairfield, CT

Tuesday, November 06, 2001 1:58 PM
From: Morgulas@aol.com
TO: OPERA NEWS,
att. Mr. F. Paul Driscoll, Editor

Gentlemen:

I have just finished reading Joel Honig's appalling article "Dead Man Writing" in the November issue of "Opera News". As character assasination the piece is grotesque and border-line actionable. As a piece of critical writing, it is absurd. Mr. Honig has undertaken to write [an] article about Leonard Lehrman's completion of Blitzstein's "Sacco and Vanzetti" without having heard a note of the music and without having examined the printed score. The entire article is nothing more than a waspish expression of Mr Honig's annoyance with Mr. Lehrman--whom he has never even met-- personally. If Mr. Honig had actually listened to the music and didn't like what Mr. Lehrman had done he would, of course, be entitled to express his opinion, albeit not in the kind of ad hominum terms he employs in his article. But to have written a piece for the sole purpose of attacking Lehrman personally is scandalous. One notes with almost equal alarm Mr. Honig's vicious, satirical descriptions of Brenda Lewis and Professor Robert Palmer. Shame on Opera News for having published such a thing.

Worse yet, Mr. Honig has his facts substantially wrong. Had he taken the trouble to consult the "Sacco" score, he would have noted that the sources of the music are minutely described, down to the last measure - what is Blitzstein's, where it came from, and what is Lehrman's. This information appears printed at the head of each act and is precise even down to changes in text for purposes of musical scansion. Mr. Honig's accusation that Dr. Lehrman is trying to pass off his own work as Blitzstein's is absurd.

But the question really is not the percentage of Blitzstein's material that is incorporated and worked out in "Sacco" but whether the opera is a good piece of musical theatre or not. If it is, then does it matter whether the work is 80% Blitzstein and 20 % Lehrman or the other way around? I think not, any more than the degree of Cooke's contributions to the Mahler Tenth, or Mahler's to "Die Drei Pintos" is relevant. Surely the effectiveness of the opera itself is the only important matter.

Dr. Lehrman's completion of Blitzstein's "Idiots First" and its performance by the Bel Canto Opera years ago was hugely successful and a work of discriminating scholarship and scrupulous loyalty to Blitzstein's memory and art. I have known Dr. Lehrman for many years and despite our occassional differences I have nothing but respect for his musical ability.