On October 22, San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater Master of Fine Arts Program will present the world-premiere staging of Marc Blitzstein's No For An Answer. Blitzstein's second musical stage work was given five professional concert performances during his lifetime and has not been heard since. No For An Answer tells the story of Greek and Jewish immigrant workers at an Eastern summer resort who during the bleak months of winter attempt to organize a union. Blitzstein described the piece as "concerned with the chances of youth in the modern world." As with Cradle Will Rock, Blitzstein's first full-length musical drama, its genesis was closely connected to its times (the period between the Depression and World War II) and to Blitzstein's political beliefs and activities. USOperaWeb asked Carey Perloff, A.C.T. Artistic Director and director of the production, how the Company had decided to produce this work and how she thought it would play to audiences in 2001.

"I first learned about No For An Answer from [San Francisco Music Director] Michael Tilson Thomas. I had directed a lot of Brecht, and knew Marc Blitzstein from his translation of Three Penny Opera [by Herr Brecht and Kurt Weill]. I had also seen and done some work on Cradle Will Rock, and was very interested in that period. When MTT told me there was a piece he loved very much he had never had a chance to work on, I was intrigued. I had never heard of No For An Answer, to tell you the truth, except I knew vaguely that it had been Carol Channing's Broadway debut. MTT gave me the only extant recording, which consisted of eight songs. Listening to it, I thought it was so potent, and I was very excited about doing it. It seemed like a great opportunity for young people to sing something that would matter to them.

"Unfortunately, there was no published score nor even a performing edition. We had to do everything ourselves. It was a real archeological process to come up with something we could produce. We had the original typed script with Leonard Bernstein's notes and Blitzstein's cross-outs and rewrites - it was really a mess. The music was mostly there, but sometimes it was in pieces or it didn't always match the words. So there was quite a lot of cutting and shaping and reordering of scenes. Our musical director, Peter Maleitzke, collaborated with MTT, and together they created a complete score.

"Blitzstein's music is difficult. Rhythmically it's very complex and it has been a real challenge to learn. He uses many different styles: there is Russian Jewish folk music, Broadway, blues, vaudeville; it's very classical in places, and some of it is very 'Cole Porter.' To me, the greatest thing about it is the wonderful choral music. That is what Blitzstein was very interested in - the collective voice - and it is something we've lost in the American musical. Blitzstein listened to protest songs and folk songs of the period, and created a choral voice that is very distinctive. This piece is really about the chorus.

"The other thing about our production that will be very interesting for people who live in San Francisco is that our designs are based on the incredible WPA [Works Progress Administration] murals we have in the City. San Francisco is home to some of the most gorgeous WPA murals, particularly at Coit Tower and Rincon Plaza, which were painted at the very same time as the opera was composed [1936-1940]. They are so apropos to this piece."

Will the piece resonate for audiences today? "When we did it a year ago in workshop, I had thought that young people in their mid-20s would find it very remote doing a piece about collective action. That is something that is not part of this generation's experience. But, on the contrary, they were incredibly drawn to the notion of collective behavior - what it means to actually act together - and that was very moving to me. The opera is about union organizing, and they were extremely passionate about the whole notion of collective action and having a political consciousness, which really surprised me.

"When we started working on it again this year, in the wake of the recent terrorist attack, it was so powerful, and so very different, as obviously everything is very different now than it was before September 11. No For An Answer takes place at the height of the depression, in the wake of a disaster, which is that a union leader is murdered. How does a group of people keep going after that? How do you find a voice? What role does an individual have in a collective disaster and how does a group move forward together? What role does music play? What role do the arts play? I think those questions are in the forefront of everyone's mind now.

"No For An Answer doesn't preach to anyone about anything. It isn't didactic in any sense, and it isn't a piece that points the finger to the evil capitalist and says 'look at our nobility.' It is a piece about young people struggling to find meaning and direction in their lives. It's a character-based piece. Blitzstein wanted it to be like a Russian novel in which every character has his or her own anxieties and dreams and fears and wishes and loves. It is a rich array of individuals coming together as a group. It is very moving emotionally."

Does No For An Answer stand up to reexamination? "Most people don't have much knowledge of Blitzstein. They might know Cradle Will Rock or his translation for Three Penny Opera. The sad thing is that he was a major American artist who was an enormous influence on Copland and Bernstein and others, and who is really an unknown today. Eric Gordon's biography [Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein] went a long way toward changing that, but I think very little is known about Blitzstein still. I hope this production makes a contribution to knowing this man's music and world-view better. I don't think one has to make any greater claim for doing this piece than that. Is it the great American musical? No. But it is a surprising and engaging and an unusual piece of music theater."

During the 20 years prior to the composition of No For An Answer, Americans had lived through World War I and the Depression. Recovery was slow, and in the mid-1930s, the political (and economic) right felt its power threatened, the mainstream feared the influences of communism and socialism, and the left embraced revolution. The U.S. Government actively attempted to censor nonconformist expression, yet many artists persevered undaunted. Blitzstein's earlier musical, Cradle Will Rock, was censored and denied a performance space. The second concert presentation of No For An Answer was also threatened. Few American artists working today have ever dealt with circumstances such as those. Is it possible to recapture the fervor of the period when No For An Answer was created and, more importantly, does the piece need that to be relevant today? "Doing a piece of theater like this, in this period, is a whole different thing. The need we have found in the last few weeks for people to come together as a community in the dialogue of live theater is very potent. These are young, extraordinary performers in the middle of their training. They are not jaded. There is an incredible awareness of how it touches their own lives, and there is a kind of youthful need and passion and anxiety involved in it that is probably in many ways very close to the original spirit of Blitzstein. This piece will offer a wonderful opportunity for people to come together and celebrate something and think about ideas that are powerful and unique, and represent some of what we are going through right now. I think theater is mattering more the past few weeks than it probably has in a long time."

Background on No For An Answer

Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) began work on No For An Answer in 1937, shortly after the premiere of his first full-length musical drama Cradle Will Rock. Blitzstein had passed part of the winter of 1936 with his sister Jo in Ventnor, New Jersey, where they had spent time with off-season workers who were trying to better their condition. Jo describes Marc's inspiration: "When Marc got back to New York and began to work on this idea, one of the things that must have struck him forcibly was the rather pathetic role people like us (middle-class intellectuals) played in the lives of these people. In the end they were of more use to us than we to them." In a 1937 application for a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Blitzstein described No For An Answer, saying, "the form will range between satire and realism, and will comprise both burlesque and tragedy. Difficult as all **** to do, but worth it if successful."

Work on No For An Answer continued over the next three years. Blitzstein interrupted himself to work on other compositions, to participate in revivals of Cradle Will Rock, and to continue his political activities. Finally in the summer of 1939, he headed off to Yaddo, an artist retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York, with composer David Diamond. But he and Diamond were distracted too easily by the local men, mostly farmers and blue collar workers. Blitzstein and Diamond danced together at some of the local black bars (where the patrons apparently were accepting of it), engaged in detailed, public conversations about their sexual exploits, and hugged and kissed openly in public. When Aaron Copland and his boyfriend came up for a visit, the more-closeted Copland scolded him, "Boys, stop that!" Blitzstein found it easier to concentrate on No For An Answer after Diamond had left.

Stalin and Hitler signed a pact in September 1939, causing dissention among members of the Communist Party, especially Jews. Blitzstein was uncertain what position to take and engaged in heated political arguments with other artists at Yaddo, and for a few days even returned to New York to meet with fellow Party members. He also took time out to apply again for a Guggenheim Foundation grant, writing that he wished to embark on "an extended study of all forms of musical theatre from earliest to most recent times," and that No For An Answer would reflect that study. He also wrote that it was to be "a musical-dramatic work in which there is a pervading and primary relation between the music and the stage-action."

In December 1939, Blitzstein wrote in a letter to Jo that he had finished the opera. The same month, the title song was given a preview at a benefit for Spanish refugees at the Mecca Temple in New York. The first of several public performances given by Blitzstein himself (playing and singing all the roles) took place on February 7, 1940, another benefit. On March 27, he received a $2,000 Guggenheim Fellowship and continued to refine the piece. But later in the year, Blitzstein interrupted No For An Answer to complete a film score for Valley Town, directed by William Van Dyke and shot in Lancaster and Newcastle, Pennsylvania. Newcastle had been badly affected by automation in the steel industry; two-thirds of the town was out of work. Van Dyke's film aimed to portray the joblessness that resulted from the introduction of new technologies. Blitzstein's work on the score continued until early 1941.

Blitzstein had worked on No For An Answer for three-and-a-half years. He claimed to have composed more than six hours of music, although some of that work served as sketches and was never intended for inclusion in the final version. Gordon sums up the process: "Eventually, like an overdue baby, No For An Answer had to come out…. he had worked on it in St. Thomas, Saranac Lake, Ventnor, Yaddo, Ashfield, Philadelphia and New York. The composer could tinker with it until doomsday, giving benefit previews for dozens more good causes, but sooner or later he had to declare it ready to be seen." Blitzstein signed an agreement with Random to publish the script, and a production group was formed that included Bennett Cerf, Lincoln Kirstein and Lillian Hellman.

But times had changed since Blitzstein had begun the work, and the opera's subject matter proved problematic to both Party members and more centrist potential backers. With the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, the U.S. Communist Party's ranks were dissipated and circulation nearly died for its publications. Several would-be Broadway producers liked the music but couldn't warm up to the book and did not see a full-scale production as a profitable venture. Blitzstein watched his support base erode.

Eventually, however, $1,500 was raised to pay for three concert performances. On January 5, 1941, Blitzstein wrote in The New York Times that No For An Answer had been "written and rewritten, brooded over, bathed in sweat, alternately smoothed and slapped." That evening, with the composer at the piano, No For An Answer was given its premiere at the Mecca Temple by a cast that included Olive Deering, Lloyd Gough, Robert Simon, and Martin Wolfson, and the 20-year-old Carol Channing in her New York debut. Brooks Atkinson, writing for the Times, commented, "In recent years, the dramatic stage has had no better example of the power of music to create men and women through song…. No labor union ever had a better concertmaster." Virgil Thomson wrote, in his typical passive-aggressive style, in the Herald Tribune, "no matter what happens to the present work in the way of commercial success or failure, it is a serious work on a noble subject by a major musical author…. [Blitzstein] can draw laughter and tears as few composers can." (Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark also opened on Broadway that week.)

In an echo of the events leading up to the premiere of Cradle Will Rock (documented memorably in Tim Robbins' 1999 film of the same name), the second performance of No For An Answer was threatened by New York City License Commissioner Paul Moss, who attempted to ban further performances on the grounds that the Mecca Temple lacked a proper theater license. He warned that any attempt to present a performance would be interrupted. Blitzstein and company cried censorship. A group of influential backers met with Mayor La Guardia, a temporary permit was issued, and the second and third performances went on without further drama. But, the incident had provided No For An Answer with better publicity than Blitzstein could have wished for. A ticket could not be had for the two final performances; the backers got back their investment and there was money in the bank to be spent on a fully staged production.

No For An Answer, Inc. produced promotional materials that featured statements from Copland, Lawrence Tibbett and Paul Robeson. (Robeson included Blitzstein's songs on his recitals throughout his career. On March 17, 1941, he sang "The Purest Kind of Guy," Blitzstein's ode to the slain union leader character in No For An Answer, at a sixtieth-birthday gathering for Communist Party General Secretary William Z. Foster. 18,000 Party members attended the event held at Madison Square Garden. Robeson recorded the song on his "Songs of Free Men" disk for Columbia Records.) Gordon describes the effort to raise money: "By the first week of March, six thousand dollars had been pledged in one-hundred-dollar loans…. Later that month, Keynote put out the original cast recording of No For An Answer - only the second musical in history to be recorded (Cradle was first, and Oklahoma! would follow two years later). Originally, [British-based recording company] Decca was to have recorded and pressed the album, but its officials were concerned by the final 'Hymn of Hate' chorus, in which the workers sing 'They have killed our Joe.' Decca concluded that the workers were singing about Joe Stalin. 'But Stalin is alive!' Blitzstein objected. 'Nevertheless, we want no part of that Red stuff,' answered Decca. 'This isn't the Kremlin, you know.' In the end, RCA in Camden, New Jersey, made the pressings and Keynote released the set."

In 1941, Blitzstein applied for a renewal of his Guggenheim Foundation grant and flew to Los Angeles in June to press the Hollywood community for funds to mount a production of No For An Answer. All the while, the FBI was tracking his moves, in New York, Philadelphia, and even following him to the West Coast. Blitzstein wrote to Diamond from Los Angeles, "Very relaxing trip. Very enthusiastic welcome. It looks good. Hollywood seems to be a bit more of everything than I had imagined. More reality, and more fake." On June 22, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and countries that formerly had maintained a neutral position were pulled into the war. Blitzstein pressed on for ten days in Los Angeles, conducting a series of one-man auditions for potential backers. Upon his return home he wrote again to Diamond, "Hollywood was a critical smash, and financially over the top, I think - the returns are still coming in. It became fashionable to discuss No, and no one dared say he disliked it…. The tide of the war and the world is so gigantically absorbing that nothing can happen to me personally right now that matters a damn. What a moment! The real fight at last - and just as I was beginning to despair of ever being alive to see it!"

But by October momentum had slowed. The fundraising had taken much longer than planned and was still short of the necessary $20,000 needed to guarantee a production. The producing committee decided to drop its plans for a staged production. On October 19, 1941, Blitzstein wrote in the Times that in fact the money already gathered plus ticket guarantees would have been sufficient to guarantee a production. He cited other reasons for canceling the effort: "If we have decided not to do the opera in New York at present, it is clearly due to no lack of response or support. It is because we feel the red-hot urgency of today's war news has relegated all other social themes to a comparatively secondary role. During this emergency we believe the stress should be on plays reflecting the growing unity of all anti-Fascist forces; and particularly we feel that the energies of the people should be concentrated on such plays. But No For An Answer is presumably a work of art, not a pamphlet; and the validity of its content holds, if not its immediacy." On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. officially entered the war.

No For An Answer waited until 1960 for another outing. The New York-based Composers' Showcase presented two semistaged, concert performances on April 18 and 25 at Circle in the Square. Blitzstein was at the piano again; the cast included Joan Copeland (Arthur Miller's sister), Raymond Murcell, Sophie Ginn, Nancy Dussault, Philip Bruns, Elaine Bonazzi (who had played Regina in Santa Fe), Felice Orlandi (Alice Ghostley's husband) and Dino Narizzano. Martin Wolfson from the original cast repeated his performance as Nick; Bernard Gersten from the American Shakespeare Festival directed. Critical response was mixed. The Herald Tribune called the story touching and courageous and reported that the opera contained "a lot of sincere fetching music and a book which, to these ears, seemed not to be dated at all." The Times wrote that No had "the vitality of a clean hit…. [but that] it bogs down in a swamp of proletarian clichés." The Village Voice was less impressed, saying the work was not a "credit to Blitzstein's talents." No For An Answer has received no professional productions since.

Eric A. Gordon's book, Mark the Music, The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein was the primary source for the above material. It is the definitive biography of Blitzstein and would be indispensable for anyone with an interest in its subject. First-printing copies of the book may be obtained directly from Eric by contacting him at ericarthur@aol.com.

Marc Blitzstein summarizes the plot of No For An Answer

To learn more about Marc Blitzstein, check out
    marcblitzstein.com
    Federal Theater Project - College of William and Mary Staff Web Pages

More about Three Penny Opera
    Weill Works
    musicalheaven.com

More on the WPA murals

World War II timelines
    World War II timeline - University of San Diego History Department
    U.S. Timeline - U.S. Department of State