 How did you get interested in Louise Cloud? Well, I got interested. I was doing my masters at University of San Francisco masters in writing. And one of the sections was on using primary sources. And at that point, I had no idea what a primary source was. It is original writing in its original form. And so that was my project. And I decided that my character, everybody was, oh, I'm going to do so-and-so and this kind of thing. And I decided, as a new California resident, that I would want, first of all, I would choose a writer, because that was my path. I would choose a writer, a woman, because I would be able to identify well with a woman. And because we were new in California, I thought the way to begin to grasp state history would be with the gold rush. So I need a woman in the gold rush who wrote. I must have put it out there, because. But then I learned about the gold rush that for every 90 men, there might be 110 women, sorry, in the beginning. So I just was going online and looking everywhere and going to libraries and that kind of thing. I went to the Livermore Public Library. We were living in Pleasanton at the time. And just going through the gold rush books and that sort of thing. And then I went to the reference desk. And I told the reference librarian what I was doing. And she kind of thought for a while. And then she said, well, there was that Shirley woman, that Shirley woman I'm thinking. She said, yeah, there was that woman who wrote those letters. That's how it began. I think I checked out my first book from that library. And then reading the letters. So I felt that I had it, because I've got the letters. It's the gold rush. I've got Dame Shirley. And so I began reading. And what interested me was her descriptions of the Feather River Canyon. She was awed by the beauty, by the magnificence, by the wild grandeur, as she called it. And I was a little suspicious. Hadn't been very many exciting places in California's amazing landforms. And I thought the way to begin this is to see if she's got it right with her descriptions of the Feather River Canyon. So we loaded our two sons in the car and we went up to the canyon. And as we came in from north of Chico, it just was dramatic. It was amazing. And I realized she had it right. She was telling the truth. And so I felt that I could trust her version of her descriptions of what she saw. And for me, that was it. That was the good housekeeping seal that I was looking for. I remember she describes the very perilous journey on a mule down these precipitous trails where you could easily fall off. Or the mule could as you're going down into the canyon. Yes. Hair-raising. Yeah, that was a five mile ride on muleback into the canyon and it was steep. We've been out there two or three times from the, seeing where it is from the top and then at the bottom you can look up. It's still marked because that was the trail that was in and out for everyone. And it was incredibly steep. Five miles to get down to the river and they did that in an afternoon. It took them, I think, four hours and they got down to Rich Bar by evening, early evening. And she said the miners were astounded and she said, how did she put that about herself? I myself am very vain of my having made this feat and so she was very proud of herself that she did that. And there she was. Where did the pen name Dame Shirley come from? That probably came from a couple of places. The California State Library has the letters that were found after her death by a historian who did one of the first publications. Not the one that Kip showed you but the next one that really became the classic edition that gets passed around and you can still find it. She, so those letters in the State Library are from friends and family, her mother and her girlfriends and that kind of thing. And one of them was from her mother and it was Dear Shirley. And so I learned that that was a nickname which is very likely. Nicknames were very popular as now. And then Dame, I think, was her conscious choice of giving herself a title that would make her sound legitimate, that she was authoritative, that she was educated, she was very well educated. And so I think she put those two together and that's how she came up with Dame Shirley. She was writing ostensibly to her sister Mary back in the East but she surely, it's so literate, so eloquent, so articulate, she must have had publication in mind, don't you think? I do think that. In her early life, she lost both of her parents before she was 18. So that was a very difficult thing and she was the oldest of seven children. So as the oldest, she was sort of a mother figure, especially to the younger ones. She happened to meet a very prominent American diplomat, man of letters, they called him, on a stagecoach ride coming back from her aunt and uncle in Vermont. It was a two-day stagecoach ride and he was impressed by her knowledge of things and of course she was impressed by what he knew. He recited some poetry and they got along splendidly and then he looked her up in Amherst and they began a correspondence that lasted seven years and until his death in fact. And he encouraged her, first of all, to write as a source of comfort during times of distress and then as their correspondence continued, he suggested who she should read, including the European women, Madame de Savignier, the French woman who was at the court of Louis XIV. I've learned a lot of history along the way myself and also Madame de Stahl and others. And he said several times. In fact, he'd done some essays on these women and he sent Louise's things. He sent her copies of his poetry. He sent her an essay that he wrote about Madame de Stahl and so forth. So I think that she took it all to heart and she clearly wanted to write. So I believe that she probably followed the structure. I have not yet read the letters of Madame de Stahl. I've got about three books on my desk right now for that. But I think that that was both her inspiration and possibly even the guidance for the structure. Now the epistolary style which she wrote in Dear Mary and you know I'm a little fissile seed in my wandering and you remember how I wasn't good at art and all those things, they give us a window. They tell us about Louise while she is writing to her sister describing what she is seeing. So you have that two way disclosure and that of course is another remarkable thing so that we do get to know Louise as we go along. Before we hear more about the real Louise, I'd love to get your impression, show you about her. When you first encountered her you were called up by your agent I presume and say hey, San Francisco wants you for this world premiere. What were your thoughts about that? Well as you said I didn't know anything about Louise Clap. Peter Sellers though gave me some of the excerpts that he had extracted from her letters that he was considering for the libretto and we were in rehearsals for a piece on Simon Veil actually. And yeah I just read them in the evening and I said well she's very bright, she's very funny, she's very open and receptive to every individual that she's encountered and also the environment that she entered. And so I was super curious how Peter was going to flesh out the rest of the story given that she was already such a rich character. You touched on something that's interesting to me that she's very open, she's not judgmental terribly but she's extremely observant. She was critical though. I mean I don't think she shied away from really criticizing things that she didn't agree with or simply didn't understand from the minors themselves to the mob mentality to the Indians that the Native Americans that she was encountering. I mean she's coming out of this Victorian era of wearing a lot of clothing and then being exposed to people who wore nothing at all. I mean that was very shocking. I think I don't know if it's distressing to her but she was disapproving and shared it and shared it. I mean that, yeah. She was also, it seems to me very self-deprecating. Although her language is eloquent, she's not grand herself. No, it was sort of a alter ego I guess that she took on but and she did admit, I loved in the early letters she admitted, I'm not a great artist so I have to describe, I'm just paraphrasing, I have to describe this all with my words because I don't know how to draw. Oh, if only I knew how to draw. You know, I wouldn't have to waste words trying to describe it to you and anyway, how lucky are we, right? Would you talk about her relationship with her husband, Marlene, can you talk a little bit about that Fayette? What was that relationship like? Yeah, I will. So when this mentor of hers, he passed away in 1847 and she married a year later, she married a young man from, I think he was from Northampton which is near Amherst. He had had a, what do I wanna say, worked with his uncle who was a doctor and internship I'm looking for. So he had an internship and no doubt medical school such as it was in that time and so he was ready to be a doctor. They probably met at Amherst, he had friends who went there and so they got married in September of 1848 and then somewhere along the line it was December of 1848 when President Polk announced that the gold talk in California was real, that there was gold there and people were getting it. So I kind of assumed that maybe they decided they would go. I have the feeling that in the back of Louise's mind this would be the event that she could write about since it was just now getting started and so I also wonder because of the things she wrote about her husband having a hard time making money or keeping money I think and so she put him down a few times. So I have a feeling that for her to get to California it would be good to have an escort, it would be good to have a husband and then that would sort of make everything easier for her and so they married and when they came to California they came with two of her three younger sisters and someone in Fayette's family. So it was kind of a family group, they came on a merchant ship, so they paid passage and they left in about September of 1849 and arrived in San Francisco in January of 1850. And then- A long trip. Yeah, a long trip, a long trip. Sadly- Around the horn, they came around the horn. Yeah, they came around the horn which means that she had to have stopped maybe in Santiago and other places and I wish we had some record of that because Louise could have done an amazing job of describing South American cities to us. So they were in San Francisco for one year. Fayette was practicing medicine but he didn't like the climate in San Francisco. It was either too cold or too windy or not warm and sunny enough. And of course, if you're a man who's just arrived in San Francisco don't you want to get to the gold mines and don't you want to get rich? Which was the dream. So he did persuade Louise that he should go up and see if it would be a safe environment for her. His friends told him go to Rich Bar because it's barely been discovered and there's only one doctor there right now. So that is how that played out. And they separated, he went first. So she met him in Marysville and then was going to meet up again at Bidwells Bar which is now under the Orville Dam. And that's she, so her first letter describes that springless, horrific wagon that they bounced their way through the rocky Northern California Valley and got to Bidwells Bar and then they met up and got on mule back in a way they went. And that's where we meet Ned Peters, this former slave who is driving this wagon. Can you talk a little bit about their relationship and then I want to get Julia to chime in on that as well. Yeah, so they hired him which gives you also a sense of Louise's background and what she was accustomed to or decided she was going to stay accustomed to. He became their cook at Rich Bar and I think she got to know him well. He was a good cook, she learned about his background and then of course saw the treatment that he received which finally drove him out of camp. So she was very sympathetic. He was a violinist, right as well? Pardon me? She was a violinist, she called him Ned Paganini and so she didn't say too much about how often he played, but that had to be a wonderful thing and she I think was aware of classical music and composers and that sort of thing. So she liked being able to tell that about him which was, you know, that's quite an accomplishment for anyone. And well, let's ask Julia about this first. In the production Peter has kind of given us a hint that the relationship between Ned and Shirley, there's an affection there that Fayette resents quite obviously, can you talk about that? It's an opera, I mean. Right. Can you talk a little bit about how that developed in the process of, there's nothing in the libretto that suggests this. No, I mean Peter admits he wanted to create some love dynamics and because it is an opera. So, I mean there was clearly a lot of affection that Louise had for Ned and also a respect for him. I mean she, I love that there's several men that she talks about in the letters who either were great orators or very well read and it's like she characterizes some of these individuals in the most wonderful, warm way. And Ned, I think she respected very much because of his culinary expertise and because of his beautiful, you know, his violin playing, which actually isn't in the opera. We don't, John decided he didn't want to allude to playing the violin because he didn't want to have Devon play the violin on stage. So, on the administrative side, we breathe the great sigh of relief when we found out that Ned didn't have to play the violin on stage. Right, it's hard to find anyone to play the violin well and let alone a baritone. And miming it, of course, never quite works. No, no, it's horrible, it's horrible. Anyway, so yeah, that's, you know. So there's, certainly she describes him in her letters with a great deal of admiration. I think she expressed a terrible regret when he left, but there's no hint of any kind of love triangle there that you would detect. No, there's no hint. There's no hint of any love triangle or even almost love in the Shirley letters. So we're left to wonder about that. Before we go on, I've got a little one minute video clip of Julia's first scene, so let's watch that. I have not seen, and I hope I don't get mad at you for playing it. Oh, it's great. I can't, I can't. God, I'm already closing my ears, okay. Into my sword of style, of the rich most men in this country, I'm in the hammock, rubbing the foam gold. Some say that I ought to be put into a straight jacket. Some say I was undoubtedly a man of such a name. There's a little tantalization for you there. We have several performances left if you want to. Seeing the elephant, I had not known that expression before, reading it in Dame Shirley, but I guess it was a fairly common one during her time. Yes, when I was Associate Editor of California History, of course it came up in so many things, and finally I thought, I need to know what that means. And as a good editor, you should know what you're at. And so during the 19th century, people were beginning to travel to Europe and in more exotic places. You know, there was kind of a sort of a metaphysical draw for many Europeans to go to India, in fact, and other places. And seeing the elephant, you would see elephants in India, Southeast Asia, and so forth. And then when circus became kind of a mainstream recreational thing in America, there were elephants, there were tigers. And so people would say, if they'd gone to the circus, I've seen the elephant. And it became the sort of icon for seeing something very unusual that not everybody would see. And so that's how it came into mainstream. When people talked about going to the gold rush or coming back, I have seen the elephant. In fact, I ran across a book I haven't read yet about women in the gold rush called They Saw the Elephant. So obviously, what's an expression in common use? Julia, what's it like to actually sing Dame Shirley's language to the notes of John Adams? Does it sing itself well, do you think? I mean, John demands that his singers, or at least I have found, demands that I be very concentrated and very clear. And the goal always is about communicating as directly as possible and being as articulate as possible, which is wonderful because actually I don't have time to think about how people are receiving me and my voice. There's no time. It's just a quick fire parlando. And how did you get connected with John? He, as we will attest, insisted that you be engaged to create this role. How did the two of you know each other? I met him in October of 2014, and I had a 30, 40 minute meeting with him to talk about me singing El Nino, actually. And it's his oratory about the Christmas. Yes, just one of the greatest pieces of music of all time. And yeah, I sang repertoire from Messia to Oscar Brown to some Josephine Baker tunes. And then we talked for a while. And just had a very easy exchange. I mean, I think we always understood each other. And yeah, then within the week, his managers called mine and said, would she like to record Dr. Atomic with BBC? Would she like to sing El Nino? And also, would she like to be the lead in this new opera? It all came at once. Wow. Would you like to spend the next three years with John Adams? Essentially. And all the other thing I said to my manager was, I'm going to be Adamsed out, I think. But I'm so glad that I've, over the course of these past 12 months, been able to get immersed in his repertoire and these three large pieces, which have vastly different musical languages. But I do feel are reflective of the material. And you do Kitty Oppenheimer again next summer. This would be the first time on stage when you did it. Correct, yeah. I'd be curious if, since you know that role now, having recorded it, how do these two compare? Just in terms of musically, as dramatically? Yeah. Well, they're both very bright. Louise Clap, though, I mean, she's speaking for her. These are Louise Clap's words. Peter selected poetry to represent Kitty Oppenheimer in this opera. Muriel Rekeiser. Exactly. And fantastic poet. One thing that I'll say for both Muriel and for Louise, talking about them so casually here. They don't compartmentalize or abandon any part of themselves. It's like all of their politics, their philosophy, their passion, their spirituality, that is fully incorporated into every piece. So it's not organized really neatly. And it's a very fluid, deep, rolling kind of experience. And as a singer, it's super satisfying to have that very quick metabolized material to just gnaw on. So you're just a whole person there. Absolutely, absolutely. We want to eventually give the audience a chance to ask questions of you. But before we do that, let's talk about the rest of the Dame Shirley story. What happens after she leaves the gold camps? Well, they left because it was going to be two things. It was going to be a very rough winter. It was predicted to be very snowy. If they didn't get out right away in the fall, they would be stuck there. And other miners had already left. The place was abandoned. And it was littered. And it was just what we don't like to see at a campground today. So they got back to San Francisco in, so basically January of 1853. And again, I think we have a sense that this is not a marriage that they're going to work on. And so by 1854, as the San Francisco public school system was getting organized, Louise would make a perfect teacher. So she became one of the early school teachers in San Francisco. And that was her career. Her husband Fayette, after they got a divorce. We don't know when he left for Hawaii, but he went to Hawaii. And then just shortly after that, the Civil War broke out. And he became a Civil War physician, contracted something, although he married and he had children. So again, for me, that's a clue that he wanted to be a family man, that that was his life plan. So Louise stayed in San Francisco. She became friends with a couple of her students, particularly who were writers. And then when she retired in 1878, she went to New York. Her two sisters who came to California both had a tragic end. One of them died on the ship. The youngest of the two died on the ship. The other one had one daughter in San Francisco. And giving birth to her second daughter died in childbirth. But the niece who survived was Genevieve Stebbins. And she got into an artistic movement called the DelSart Movement, which at the turn of the century was kind of an early gymnasium movement that had begun in Europe. And Genevieve was doing things in New York. I don't know what kind of theater. But so Louise and Genevieve were in New York together. And also Louise had very close friends who had been in San Francisco. She became an Episcopalian while she was here. And that friend, Ferdinand Euer and his wife, they were lifelong friends in California. She stayed with them for a while. She apparently gave some public lectures on art, architecture, and literature. There are copies of her notebooks that show that she intended to do that. And also she wrote a critical article for a woman's college in Canada. She wrote, that's a story I can't get into, but it'll come out in print one of these days. There's an article there somewhere, right? Yes, I hope to do a fuller biography, because I know so much more now. So she stayed in New York until I think she was quite elderly and not very strong, and then ended up in New Jersey where she had been born, living with the nieces of Bret Hart. And that's a side story, because in California circles, there was said to be, although I think it was a created thing, there was said to be some competitiveness between the two. He, of course, was a writer of short stories and poetry, and then he was the editor of the Overland Monthly, and she never had anything published in there, so her students who were loyal said, you know, it's because he knows that, you know, he used your stuff and he doesn't want you, he doesn't want you in the limelight anymore. He famously wrote about the gold rush. Yes, yeah, and I've looked at that and thought, did he plagiarize or didn't he? Well, the article that she wrote for the Canadian Women's Magazine, it's a discussion of plagiarism. And she did bring Bret Hart up and she said, well, you know, it's kind of the thing, can we put a trademark on language? You know, if you're describing the gold rush, if you're describing some of these scenes, they were fairly specific. If there was a woman there, you know, things, there were certain specific themes and she basically gave him a pass and just said it doesn't matter. She never said, I forgive him, but she said who knows and ideas, creative ideas come from everywhere and you know, let's let it go basically. And she did that in the, I think the early 1880s when she was back in New York. So that's how she wrapped that up. And I don't know that it was a make nice, but she ended up being taken care of by his nieces for the rest of her life. And it was in that home in the attic. She died in 1906 just before our big earthquake. And 15 years later in 1922, historian who was a mining historian went back to that house and amazingly enough in the attic was this photograph collection, were her mentors letters that she had saved, were her friends letters. That's what we have of Louise Clap. You know, those things that were saved that someone had the amazing idea to go look. And 15 years later, you know, what do we do with our attics? You know, you give everything away or you shred it or that kind of thing. So it's quite remarkable that we have what we know about her. And there's a photo that's on the cover of the program magazine, which may or may not be of her. Is that right? Yes, I think I look at that and I tried to imagine if that is Louise at the Feather River. It's certainly a woman dressed warmly. She's got a good warm cap on and a warm jacket with I think lamb's wool cuffs around it. So she's a little stylish and then a big warm skirt. We don't know for sure. That picture is in the California State Library and there's no one wrote on the back who it is and when it was taken. Always label your photographs I used to nag on. That's right, that's right. But we could trace some things back to the family. Her uncle on her mother's side was mayor of New York for one term I think. And so his sketch shows up in biographical dictionaries. And also her niece, there are pictures of her niece, the actress, the dancer. And you can see familiar characteristics. I do anyway, I'm not a forensic person, but you can look at the thick eyebrows that the uncle had and this young woman at the river had and the niece. And also the full lips and straight nose. So you look at those things and I think if we ever have an opportunity, if I have more time or anybody does to let's look farther into photo collections, I do think we will know when we find her. I get goosebumps just thinking about it because I think I will know. She kept copies of her letters which is how they got published. What's happened to them, do we know? Those letters are also at the State Library. Oh really, the original. Her handwriting. None of her letters. In her handwriting we have her art lectures, her literature lectures and that kind of thing. So we know her handwriting. And the letters that we have are her collection of Alexander Hill Everett's letters to her which are filled with amazing literature and history of just a fabulous thing. This is this mentor of hers. Yeah, the mentor of hers. And then the photographs. So we don't have anything Louise has written. So we don't know if we could go to Amherst. We might dig around and find things. There was a man I contacted, James Smith, interestingly enough. Like me, he wasn't the Smith relative of Louise's but he did Amherst genealogy. So he's pulled the family together and went as far as he could with it. So there are ways of continuing this story. It's a matter of having time. Who knows what the future may bring. Maybe this opera will sort of spur more investigation. Let me ask the same two questions of both of you which are what's your favorite letter of the 23? And if we could talk to Louise, like we could Skype her in right now, what would you want to ask her? I'll go first. Well, because nature is what brought me to believe in the Shirley letters and following that sense of her wonder at nature. It just thrills me that she described it the way she does. Her last letter when she knew that they were hurrying to leave and she said it would be madness to linger longer. She did a ritual closing thing. And I don't know whether this was an intentional literary device or quite what. But the last letter, she writes that she went out and stood in the moonlight and said farewell to the river and described this place where I have been so contented. Here, you writing to her sister, you think it was such a crude, amazing place to be but I have found peace here and I go from here for a troubled and uncertain future. And that was how she concluded 15 months in a gold mining camp. Julie, is there a letter that sticks in your mind or at least a passage from all these writings of hers? I mean, the last letter is truly breathtaking. I mean, there's so many sections throughout that. I mean, there's a lot of humor that Peter and John decided to set and highlight. Along with these then moments of being shaken by really stark reality. And that occurs throughout every one of her letters and kind of really surprising moments. Yeah, there's anyway. I don't know. I guess I don't have a favorite letter. She does quite vividly describe the violence and the racism that she sees. She does. And there's just so many wonderful passages. I really can't. It is hard. If you could ask her, there's a question you could ask her. Like, why did you say this or is there anything that you would love to know if you could talk to her? Yeah, she spent so much time describing everyone else. And she didn't really spend a lot of time talking about herself. And I guess I'd want to know if she just wanted to how she would like to characterize herself. Because in a way, I mean, I guess in a way, she chose this alter ego of Dame Shirley, this brilliant, brilliant observer who wasn't an activist, per se. So I'm kind of curious, actually, what was different between the Louise clap that she felt she truly was versus the woman who she wanted to project? It's fascinating to me that she uses this eloquence and this literary flair in these brutal surroundings. And part of me thinks that she did that as a way of kind of maintaining her sanity, to sort of grasping onto civilization that she had known before. What would you ask her if you could? I would ask her briefly, give us some hints about the marriage. Because I'd like to know what went wrong or not my business, of course, but I would be curious about that. But my other question would be, were you lonely? Were you lonely there? Because there weren't many other women. Of course, she had the role of writing. The express man would come once a month and take her letters away and get them mailed and that sort of thing. She kept copies, obviously. But I wonder if it was a lonely life among the men and herself. There was really no one, there were no other women, except briefly, the 4th of July scene, there were some other women. And she noted their fashions and that kind of thing. But basically, she was a solitary woman. And that may be part of the answer, that I think she sort of led a solitary life. But I would be interested in that. You have a kind of a musical moment where she goes on about that. It can help me with the language. No balls, no visiting, no calling, no dinners. No charades. And no new books. That was the other scene. No little tea drinkings, and no church, no walks, no strolling about town, that kind of thing. Because it was also unsafe for her to be out a lot on her own. It was just a reality. Probably unsafe in general, but especially to be alone. All right, I think we need to let our audience ask some questions here. I'll try to repeat it just in case you can't hear it. Who has a question for either of these interesting ladies? Yes, go ahead. How long was named Shirley there in the Gold Country? She was there from August of 1851 until November of 1852, so basically about 14 months. Including one long winter? Yes, including the very long winters, long, cold winters. So it's not surprising they got out before the next winter came along. Well, Fayette had been somewhere treating a patient or doing something, and so she was worried, because the postman said, I'm leaving. Whoever's coming with me is coming with me, but I'm not waiting around. So there was that tension about leaving that winter. Anybody else? Another question? Yes, go ahead. Two parts. The first is to say thank you to both of you. I taught California literature and used, of course, your book. And I saw you performing in concert a year and a half or so ago, and so I'm a fan of both. I have a question. There's another California girl I'm really fond of. Her name is Rumona. The woman who created her is, I think, is from Amherst. She was great childhood friends with Emily Dickinson of all people. Might their paths have crossed in any way, do you think, Louise's as it may be as a young girl and Helen Hunt Jackson? That's a very interesting question. Helen Hunt Jackson, as you know, and her baby, I think her husband was still in New York. They were coming back from Italy during a storm. The ship hit the shoals or something like that, and they went down. And interestingly enough, and I think that the climate in New England or Boston, what have you, was public lectures. That's how people got their ideas, knew who to read, knew who was kind of leading ideas. And I know that Louise was interested in that. I think that's where you get the hints of transcendentalism in that last letter. In the 1922 edition that you showed of that, I believe that is where there is a poem that Louise wrote about losing Helen Hunt Jackson. She talked about that death was a theme for Louise. I've seen it in other places that are in print, so it's easy to see that. And just coming to California and getting that news, because Helen Hunt Jackson, I think it was 1848 or 1849 when she died. And then Louise lost her younger sister on that ship. And she wrote about that, just kind of the young deaths and losing you and that kind of thing. So other than that, all I could say is she might have done, she might have read and probably did read Helen Hunt Jackson and may have listened to her in talks and that sort of thing. And that's as far as we know right now. Who else? In the back there? Yes. There's a microphone coming around. Thank you, Michelle, for your microphone, Judy, here. Yes, I just have a question for the opera, because one of the scenes in the beginning of the letters is describing one of the funerals of the woman who dies. And it's a very stark scene and one of the things it gets me in that reading that letter is that her young daughter is laughing while they're over there in the house for the funeral. Do you remember that letter? Yes, that was almost as soon as Louise arrived at the camp. So that had to be startling. The woman was Nancy Bailey, and in real life, she and her husband were the proprietors of the Humboldt. And I think it seems as though she died of a ruptured appendix. I think there was peritoneus or however you say that word. And Louise was very touched. She wrote about the description of taking the casket up on the hillside, Dame Shirley. Nancy Bailey was buried on the hillside. There is a headstone there. You shouldn't go up there now, because I don't think it's safe because of gross and gold mining and that sort of thing. There is a headstone there. But afterwards, Louise was just so struck that Nancy's little girl didn't get it. And of course she didn't. She was three probably. And it wouldn't sink in for a long time. But it's clear that Louise, that took her back into her own past and probably seeing her younger sisters and so forth. Very poignant, very, very compassionate, sad. That scene is not in the opera. No. There are sort of a lot of things in the letters that there's plenty of room for another opera and all that material. Anybody else with a question? Let's go over here. A partial inspiration for Wallace Stegner in Angle of Repose. Yeah, Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, which has been turned into an opera we performed at San Francisco Opera in 1976. Is there any connection there that you don't know? I don't think there is. I've just been reading that. Someone else suggested that to me. And I think that he takes that strictly from his own family letters. It may be fictionalized or novelized family biography. He talked about the new Almond and Mines in San Jose. But they were so different from the Gold Rush. And I haven't finished it. But I so far have not seen any sense that he built a portrait around her. I recall that the novel switches back and forth from the Gold Rush era to the 1970s. There's kind of a dual-time thing going on there. Angle of Repose refers to the slant at which a rock will rest rather than sliding down the hill. Yeah, interesting. Yes, go ahead. So I was in the mob scene. Drunken nightmare in the mob scene. And there's just such a sense of outrage of what had happened. And yet, at the end, a den of may is waxing eloquently about the grandeur of the mountains, which isn't a modern sensitivity of how to deal with something so horrible and tragic. So I was wondering, did she say anything critical in her letters about what actually happened? She does describe, for example, the whipping of what she calls spaniards. That's her term for the South Americans. Expresses her shock. In fact, you have a language, a line, about who could believe that in the 19th century that men could be beaten like dogs. That's straight out of the letters. Yeah, and even the line afterwards, which is sung by Ramon, she essentially says, again paraphrasing, the effects of being violently attacked actually creates a need to retaliate and a need to kill all Americans and that indelible mark he'll have for the rest of his life. And so, and actually, I find that the last epilogue, it's just about one's ability to continue shifting perspective, even in times when, well, instead of getting stuck in a moment, you're actually able to step back, look, and gaze everywhere. So it is one way to deal with trauma. No, it's not, again, the activist way. In that way, I know it's some people who said she's disappointing, but I don't know if we could have taken, if historians can look at her writing with such respect if she had been so directly involved. That role of the observer is very critical. There's a certain amount of port of license we should point out that Louise Clapp was not a witness to the hanging of horsefaces of Ovia and probably didn't even know about it. I think she did. She might not have witnessed it. I've forgotten that detail. But all the violence, that wasn't the only hanging. There was someone else who, they advised him. I think he was accused of stealing gold. And he was advised to plead innocent. And this is the vigilante justice where the mob ruled. And he said it doesn't make any difference whether I plead innocent or guilty. I'm being hung anyway. And Louise's response through those letters and through that violence, she was shocked. As you said, she could not believe how men could treat each other. And it was horrifying to her to see all that violence. That comes through in the letters. And she said in the letters also that I promise you I would give you a true and faithful accounting of what I've seen. And I hate to do this, but this is what we see. Yeah, I'm just pulling a couple. Justice at the hands of a mob, however respectable, is at best a fearful thing. And she says, her lustrous skies gaze upon such barbarous deeds. So she does talk about it quite a lot. I mean, it's not, no, it's not in every moment, but yeah. I think trying to cling to civilization in the midst of all this brutality must have been a priority for her. Yeah, things that she had never seen before, obviously, and wouldn't go back to ever again. I saw a hand on the aisle back there. Yes, sir, go ahead. I had planned on seeing this opera. And last Thursday I saw Joshua Cosman's review in The Chronicle, and I was just surprised by it. And again, I haven't seen the opera yet. I'm sure many in the room have. But I was just wondering if you'd seen it and what your reaction to it was, if any. I always want to get a question like that. I left a quote, Sir John Pritchard, who was our music director, back in the 1980s. And I was doing an interview with him like this. He's an Englishman, of course. And I said, John, do you read reviews? And he said, oh, yes. When I was a young man, I won't try to do his accent. But he said, I would rush out early in the morning and get the newspaper. And I'd be devastated. And I learned that the thing to do was to wait a month. And if you read the review a month later, and it's, oh, isn't that funny? You get a certain perspective on it. So I would suggest maybe to wait a month and read that review again. Julie, do you ever read reviews? Do you pay any attention? I read every review. And part of it is because it lets me know where I'm most sensitive and the things I need to resolve within myself before the next performance. I guess you can perceive whatever your synthesis is of the opera or of John's music. I mean, I can't speak for Droswit Kosman. But I do feel that one thing that I was a little perturbed by is that he was discouraging of people to come see this. And I feel that there is a responsibility for those who are writing about the arts right now and particularly that whatever your feeling is of the piece, it's like just still try to get people into the hall to experience it. And then just whatever your reaction is. But there is a very violent response to this piece. He had a very violent response to the piece. And it was a very violent time. And maybe I don't know what chords that struck in him that were so disarming and infuriating for him. But it was very strong language. It really was. But he did enjoy the performance anyway. There are lots of other reviews that have been a variety of points. When I read that, I was disappointed. I was very disappointed. And I forgotten the phrase he used to describe Dame Shirley's name. And he used some, like, why would anybody write with such a corny name or something like that? And I realized then he knew nothing about 19th century literature or San Francisco. Anybody who wrote. We all recognize Mark Twain. But anybody who wrote, you know, John Rollins was yellow bird. And Stephen Massad was James Pipesville. Everybody had a name. That's just how you did. And so I thought, well, he doesn't have the full background of this. And then for myself, I thought, well, this is interesting. So when I go, we're going to go to the very final matinee performance. And I'll see what I think. Now I know what he thinks. That doesn't tell me what I have to think. It tells me I will look and kind of bounce that off and see how I respond to it. So in a way, I thought it was kind of valuable, even though it was negative. So I just turned it around. And if he'd said it was wonderful, then OK, you go. And you sit there and everything is wonderful. So that was my take. I'm kind of ignoring the side of the room. Does anybody over here that I've neglected? Sir, go ahead. Yeah, we close on December 10th, rather. And then it will eventually go to Amsterdam, the Netherlands operas, a partner in this. And then it then goes to Dallas, not I think until 2020. Pardon? Did I say something wrong? 2021, is it? And there is another potential European partner who has not been officially confirmed yet. But as with the other operas of John Adams, I'm sure that other companies will leap in. When we did Dr. Atomic, it was a single company commission. We didn't have any partners. But that's gone all over the place. So that will probably happen with this as well. Other questions? Yes, ma'am. I hope you all heard that question. Wonderful question. How do you approach learning John Adams' music? It's very organized and disciplined. So I take the rhythm and the text and learn that separately. I mean, I really kind of do this with all material, but it's particularly important for Adams. And try to get that as fluid, open, easy in my mouth as body as possible. I learned then the melodies, which are all so fantastic. I mean, John really writes great tunes. And you have to have all parts of your voice accessible to you at all times, like any moment, any moment. I mean, the range of my role is from a low F-sharp to a high D-flat, which is crazy extreme. Actually, I don't know any other role in the operatic repertoire that's that wide. So I really take my time just processing each of those things separately. And then I just kind of layer them on. I mean, my boyfriend is here. And he sees me as I'm working on these things. And I will go from phases of, oh, this is so wonderful to impossible, impossible material. And I'm just like, I hate you, John Adams. And I'm furious at you, Peter Sellers. I mean, it's really a furious, very wild go round with the material. But when you piece it all together, I've found that I've done some of my best singing with John Adams' music because I've had to really just find my voice and see how it resonates in my body and to make all the pitches easy and natural. Yeah, that's great. There's no, if you try to falsify a moment of this, it just, or put on any veil at all in the sound or in the delivery, it's just done. There's no, you can't receive, actually, what John's written. You wouldn't consider yourself a new music specialist, is there? I mean, you do a lot of it, but it's not your only thing. No, I mean, I just do what speaks to me. So you're not expecting to concentrate on new pieces exclusively going forward. Obviously, you'll get asked because you've done them so well. Is there another question before we wrap it up here? Yes, ma'am. I wonder what the language of the, wasn't all of the libretto from the book itself? All of mine is. There's also poetry. There's Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass. There's some wonderful Chilean poet that is all about this. Alfonso Estorne. So almost everything that the character Josef Zagovia says, mostly in Spanish, is the poetry of this wonderful Argentinian poet. So was that kind of language very different from the type of language you're used to singing? Still English. I mean, so much of what I sing, so much of the repertoire in general is poetic. So I mean, I think this is pretty clear narrative, actually. Yeah, not a lot of metaphors, really. There are a lot of minor songs that are the texts of the. I mean, the chorus sings, and a lot of what the character Joe Cannon sings of, from minor songs. And they're kind of earthy and kind of anti-poetic. And some ancient Chinese. Yes, the character Asing, what she sings, a lot of it is Chinese poetry from the gold rush translated into English. One more question, and we'll wrap it up. I mean, it's kind of, excuse me, I find it really helpful to work on a lot of different kinds of repertoire at one time, because it keeps, well, one, it keeps my mind activated. And it keeps my voice very facile. So I don't know what the differences are. I think it'll be interesting now. Actually, going, I just gave a masterclass today at the conservatory. And going through some Mozart recitative, and I just kept saying, closer to speech, please, closer to speech, you're just speaking on pitch. Otherwise, you get this weird removed. It's like, instead of just, it's like you're playing an opera singer, instead of just being one. That's what I found myself saying today. There's this artificiality that falseness there. When really, you just want a human expression. So I don't know if I answered that question at all, but. I would guess that the agility that's required for a like a Handel roll or a Boccata roll helps, it translates to doing modern music, which is. Interestingly, though, like the coloratura in all of the melismatic work that's in Dr. Atomic, there isn't any in this for me. But that is some of the most difficult melismatic material that I've ever worked on. And he helped me, John helped me get better at it. So that's nice. We've sort of given these ladies the amount of time that we promised them, and I think it's time to thank them very much for being here, Marlene and Julia. Thank you all for coming.