Elmer Gantry: A New American Opera

We rehearsed in a big space in Brentwood, south of town. A pretty unassuming location in what could uncharitably be called a strip mall. But once we got inside, we forgot about the surroundings. It's hard to describe just how electric the atmosphere was in that rehearsal space. The cast is phenomenal; the OCTET (one of the hardest pieces in the show) rocked!; the chorus came in and blew everyone away; John Hoomes, the director, and Bill Boggs, the conductor were juiced and keeping everything zooming towards the premiere. Nobody had ever heard the whole piece sung before, not even Bob and me. We were seated at the front of the room, facing 10 chairs occupied by our cast; behind these stood the chorus of 36. One vivid memory I have is how the chorus would look at each other incredulously as they listened to the principals, and then the principals would trade incredulous looks as they listened to the chorus. Bob and I were more or less stunned the whole time.
Here's something that moved me. I noticed that the members of the chorus were wearing nametags with their own names, written small and another name written large. These larger names were their personas for the show, which each had designated for him or herself. Many of them used the names of ancestors who would have been alive in 1905, when the opera begins. Many of these were one-of-a-kind surnames such as one often finds in the South (for example, Bob Aldridge's father is named Blan Aldridge). During the break, I spoke to several choristers who told me that they had been taken to tent revivals as children, or heard stories about them from their parents. I wrote down the names from their nametags. Here are some: Audraine Roark / Doshe Keely / Dellar Keely / Bernadine (Bunny) Moberley / Alden Leash
To me, these names bespeak an enormous personal involvement in the opera, and a real tie to the milieu and themes of the piece, such as we could never have when we worked on ELMER in Boston. Very exciting!