It looks like I've been enlisted again. I play Dexter and Dex in Heart of a Soldier this season, an experience that has woven a lot of events and people together causing me to reflect on the nature of heroism and love. I served as a US Marine from 1991 to 1997, achieving the grand rank of Sergeant. During that time I was lucky enough to be employed with the air wing as an air traffic controller, and later as a computer programmer with Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico.
Posted: 10/01/2011 by
Daniel Snyder (Dexter & Dex, Heart of a Soldier)
As I teach libretto writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, I’ve been asked what lessons I would draw for my own students from "Heart of a Soldier".
Since my approach to writing has always been structural, I chose three moments in the first act as formal examples of how to adapt and make dramatic a work of journalism, as well as the very structure of the act and the reaction to the opera as a whole.
Posted: 09/30/2011 by
Donna Di Novelli (Librettist, Heart of a Soldier)
Karl Eikenberry is a retired United States Army Lieutenant General and former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan. At the invitation of San Francisco Opera Board Chairman, John Gunn, he and his wife attended a recent performance of Heart of a Soldier. Now a distinguished fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, Eikenberry felt compelled to write down his thoughts after the performance.
Posted: 09/28/2011 by
Karl Eikenberry
One of the hardest things to do in an opera is to be able to translate a basic question, or set of questions, into something visual which brings them to life in a dramatic context.
“How do you remember the fallen?” was one of the important questions which Donna and I felt threaded the opera and this was answered in many through the main protagonist, Rick Rescorla. [Left: Thomas Hampson, who sings the role of Rick Rescorla in the opera, with Christopher Theofanidis.]
Posted: 09/16/2011 by
Christopher Theofanidis (Composer, Heart of a Soldier)
Besides reading and re-reading the book
Heart of a Soldier by James B. Stewart, I took inspiration from a variety of other sources. Here are just some of the additional works that lent their weight as I wrote the libretto.
Posted: 09/12/2011 by
Donna Di Novelli (Librettist, Heart of a Soldier)