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Thea Musgrave is one of a handful of living composers fortunate enough to see her operas performed regularly in the U.S. Her first large-scale opera, The Voice of Ariadne, was commissioned by the Royal Opera House and premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1974; it debuted in the U.S. at New York City Opera in 1977. Mary Queen of Scots, commissioned by Scottish Opera and premiered in 1977
at the Edinburgh International Festival, received its U.S. premiere a year
later by the Virginia Opera, which also recorded the work.

Subsequent large-scale operas all premiered at Virginia Opera, including A Christmas Carol (1981), Harriet, the Woman Called Moses (1985), and Simón Bolivar (1993).

In October 2003, New Orleans Opera Association with present the premiere of Musgrave's tenth opera, Pontalba, based on the life of the 19th century New Orleans architect, Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba. We caught up to Ms. Musgrave in California and spoke with her about her life and work so far and about the new opera.

Thea Musgrave was born in 1928 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and lived there until her early twenties. Her family left only briefly during WWII, "because we thought the German bombers would come over and bomb Edinburgh; in fact, they bombed Glasgow; but we were saved." She studied the piano as a young girl and although music was important in her family, she recalls, "I never thought I'd be a musician. In fact, I went into medical school for a brief period; but I realized quickly that music was my real love."

When did you first think about composing?

"During my teens I attempted to write a little, but it was scribbling and it was not really serious. As I got more and more interested in music, I realized I was a not performer. I was too far behind to be a solo pianist-that has to happen early on. I always loved to make things though. Had I been a doctor, I would have done research rather than be a general practitioner. I had studied music theory and I learned the Beethoven symphonies by playing them as a piano duet with my teacher. She would point out the different instruments and say things like, 'Oh, that's a cello theme; you have to play it more expressively.' In a way, I learned the music from the inside. So, when I went to University I had a good background and that's when I started to compose. Then when I went to study with [Nadia] Boulanger it became serious."

What were your early pieces like?

"Very traditional. You know, you have to learn some sort of traditional technique. I knew very little contemporary music before I went to Paris-Debussy and Ravel were about as far as I got at University and that was pretty old fashioned by the '50s. It was only when I went to Paris that I got to know the basic contemporary classics of Bartok and Stravinsky (who was a good friend of Boulanger) and the great serial composers (whom she didn't really approve of). I think everybody of my generation has had a little flirtation with serial music. Some stayed with it and some did not. I stayed with it very briefly, but it was interesting in the development of a harmonic language and in thinking horizontally as well as vertically."

You have spoken of your exploration of "dramatic-abstract forms." Could you elaborate on this?

"Abstract simply means that in many of my works there is no program. On the other hand, in many other of my works there is a program. I was trying to draw a distinction between what I call dramatic-abstract and dramatic-programmatic. In both there is an inherent drama, but in dramatic-abstract there's no program. A concerto, for example, is essentially a dramatic form because of a soloist or a single person versus a crowd-the orchestra. The last twenty or thirty years most of my pieces are what I would call dramatic, including the orchestral and chamber pieces. Opera, obviously, is dramatic."

Where does this dramatic or theatrical bent come from?

"I don't know where the desire to dramatize came from-it was just there. I always liked the idea of storytelling. Growing up during the war there was not much chance to see opera. In America, you had the wonderful Saturday broadcasts from the Met. I didn't grow up with that. But I was in Edinburgh in the early days of the Edinburgh International Festival and that was quite exciting, even though it was right after the war and things were very gray and grim and there was still rationing. Rufolf Bing, whom you know later went to the Met, brought opera from the Glyndeborne Festival to Edinburgh. I remember seeing [Carlo Maria] Giulini conduct Otello and that was an eye-opener. It wasn't the first opera I saw, but it was the first one that really stands out in my memory."

After studying in Paris, you returned to London in the mid-50s. Tell us about the British music scene at that time?

"It was very vibrant and exciting in London in the '50s. [Benjamin] Britten was on the scene, of course. He had returned from America after the war. One of my very favorite pieces is [Britten's] Les Illuminations, which was written back in the late '30s. [Michael] Tippett was not as well known at that point. William Glock was very influential in the contemporary music scene. He was head of the Third Program at the BBC and it was because of his influence that I got to know many of the British composers, but more importantly Charles Ives. He was a forgotten composer-well, he was an insurance agent, right? It was only in the '50s that he became know in America and then later in Britain.

"One of my oldest friends is Richard Rodney Bennett, who is perhaps better known here for his movie music. Iain Hamilton was a good friend in those days too. There was a movement in a way out at Manchester because [Peter] Maxwell Davies and Harry [Harrison] Birtwistle were there; although I don't think they think of themselves as a unit now and I don't think they did for very long then. One knew all the composers because Britain is a small country, unlike in America where there is East Coast and West Coast and the Midwest and the different composer groups are spread all over and it's difficult to know everybody."

Did you have a natural affinity for writing for the voice?

"The first works I recognize are my songs to the poems of Ezra Pound (Two Songs, 1951). I didn't know at the time I had an affinity, but now I realize I must have done. First, my love of writing for the voice comes from my love of words. I studied the Elizabethans-Dowland and Purcell-and the way they set words was wonderful. They didn't necessarily do the obvious thing. Ben [Britten] was like that too and he set words wonderfully. Of course, singers carry some responsibility for making words audible, but it's a big responsibility for the composer to set the right words for the right part of the voice. That's chiefly why I write my own librettos. There are many writers who write far better than I do; but I can change my own words to fit onto a musical line, so the right vowel sound is on the right note and in the right tessitura at the right moment. That's not so easy to do. There's always a struggle between the musical line and comprehensibility.

"English is a wonderful language to set to music, but you can't set it as you would Italian. Most of vowels in English are diphthongs; they're not the pure Italian vowels. When I was teaching, the students would bring vocal music to me, knowing I was an opera composer, and I would spend a lot of time with them considering setting the English properly and concentrating on comprehensibility, particularly the 'e' vowels and especially for the soprano voice-men seem to have it easier. So if you really want a particular line or note, you might have to find a different word; or conversely if you want the word, then you have to find a different note.

"I've set some songs in Scot and that has a totally different sound than English. It's English, but it has a different accent, like a southern accent in this country as opposed to a New York accent. American is a very rich language. English and American are really two different languages but of course we use the same words. What is it that [Oscar] Wilde said, 'divided by a common language.'

"One of the most interesting things I have done was to set Simón Bolívar in English and Spanish. Now, I don't speak Spanish and I didn't know very much Spanish when I started. So I wrote the libretto in English and then I worked very closely with Lillian Groag who is originally from Argentina. We would come upon phrases in English and she would tell me they didn't translate, that the metaphor didn't exist in Spanish. I would tell her it didn't matter so long as the meaning was roughly the same. That was a very interesting process working in the two languages simultaneously. I wasn't interested in how just a single word would sound but in how the entire sentence sounded. I would have her repeat the sentence over and over so I would hear the flow in Spanish. I'm told the Spanish was quite comprehensible when it was sung."

The Pontalbas of New Orleans

Micaela Almonester de Pontalba was born in New Orleans in 1795 into a wealthy and influential family. Her father, Andres Almonester, was a local politician, philanthropist and architect. Her life was one of great tragedy; yet she was a survivor and she achieved fame from the Hôtel Pontalba in Paris, which serves as residence of the American Ambassador to France, and the Pontalba Buildings in Jackson Square in New Orleans.

How did the commission to write an opera based on Baroness de Pontalba's life come about?

"Robert Lyall, general director in New Orleans, called me up one day and told me about a commission to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase. I knew a little about it but I remember saying quickly, 'let's not write a history lesson.' I thought there was a way to use that powerfully, but to find some other story that would fit into it. He had just read, Intimate Enemies, by Christina Vella, which is the story of Micaela de Pontalba. Micaela's story is truly operatic, not only in the very dramatic events of her life, but above all the story of her creative spirit overcoming all obstacles and forging something of beauty and permanence. When I learned in my research about the personal struggle that went into the creation of the Pontalba buildings I knew that here was my story.

"Historically, her story takes place a little later than the Louisiana Purchase, so I cheated a bit in the dates. The story of unfolds against the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the making of America. America was growing and becoming unified. But my idea-and it's not stated obviously, but in my mind it's the undercurrent to the opera-is that the various administrators and presidents of countries can arrange things like the Louisiana Purchase. It's not really for an ordinary citizen to do those things; it's for the people in charge. But without what the individual can bring to a country in terms of invention, creativity, imagination and the arts, a country can never be great. To my mind, that's what Micaela did. She is one of the individuals who brought something of true beauty and imagination to the city of her birth.

You also a personal coincidence…

"When I was a student in Paris I was very poor and the mother of a friend was a doctor who told me I could work in her waiting room where there was a piano if I would answer the phone and take her appointments for the day. I spoke good French in those days (I've forgotten most of it now), so I did it. Their apartment was on the Faubourg St. Honoré and I used to admire a beautiful building standing right opposite. I only recently learned that it was built by Micaela. I walked past that building every day for a couple of years!

You have written most of your own librettos. Could you talk about the process of writing both the words and the music?

"I write the scenario first and while doing that, I'm thinking of who the characters are and what their voices will be. Eventually you have to boil it down. First of all, it has to be practical. It has to sit on a proscenium stage and be reasonable with regard to the sets and that kind of thing. I live in an opera company-you know my husband [Peter Mark] runs the Virginia Opera-so I've been around a lot of operas and a lot of different directors and that's been a fascinating experience, watching all the different directors doing La Traviata and Carmen and Turandot and so forth. I think it's more difficult for composers and librettists without experience inside an opera house to know what the practicalities need to be.

"Writing the libretto is an organic process. It comes after a lot of thought, but in the end you have to have a scene in which something fairly straightforward happens. I don't think you can do complicated things on an opera stage. Discussions about things, if they are too long, do not really work. There have to be confrontations and actions-those are what make a scene work. And it needs to be concise because words when they are set to music expand enormously. The words of a libretto sometimes look strangely naked and they need to be because the music brings in the adjectives and adverbs and the color. Of course, when you actually write the libretto, comprehensibility and other things come into play. I change the libretto constantly and I drive people crazy because the libretto is not finished for me until the opera is finished. Opera is always a battle between the music and the drama."

You have taught composition for many years. What makes a good composition teacher?

"I try to help them achieve what their idea is and, above all, to teach them to be practical. Especially with an orchestra piece, there's always a limited time for rehearsal. Young composers often write things that are very difficult, partly because they compose on a computer and have no concept of how much time it will take to put the piece together. I always encourage them to find a way to put the idea down on paper in a practical way for the orchestra and the conductor and not to claim their idea. And there are usually ways to do that."

Is it still unique to be a woman composer?

"Oh surely it's not a novelty now. I mean I studied with Boulanger whose sister was a composer who died in the '20s, so we go back. In London, Elizabeth Lutyens and Priaulx Rainier were of my mother's generation. Then of my generation there is Nicola Lefanu and of the younger generation Judith Weir and so forth. I think perhaps in France and Britain we were a little bit ahead of the U.S. Not that there weren't women composers here-of course there were-Louise Talma and many other people. But I think we had better recognition in Britain.

"Today, it's difficult for every composer to get his or her works performed and that doesn't seem to get easier. Now that money is tighter than ever and the press doesn't give us (classical music) much space, it is difficult for everybody. I've been lucky as far as getting my operas performed. Mary, Queen of Scots has had seven productions and Christmas Carol has gotten several productions, in the U.S. and Britain as well as in Germany and Australia. Harriett - the big production-was done only once, but the chamber version has been done several times. But you can't worry about that. You have a lot to worry about writing a good opera, rather than worrying about what's going happen to it afterward. You just have to be true to yourself and true to the work."