Spotlight on Composer Bruce Brinkley and his Sacred Theatrical Works
by Ruth Dobson
Visit Bruce’s website Words and Music for access to scores and recordings. This site and his catalogue pay homage to the power, precision and centrality of words in vocal, choral and operatic works.
What inspired you to become a composer as you began your musical journey?
Like many young musicians, I was greatly inspired by several brilliant high school choral directors, both in West Virginia and then in California. In 7th grade I was accompanist for Sybil Keesee while I was studying piano with Russell Falt - who had studied in New York City with the world famous Robert Goldsand; Mr. Falt first put into my mind the desire to go to New York to study with Goldsand.
In 11th grade at Narbonne High School in Los Angeles I still remember Alice Sturdy admonishing her madrigal choir to better diction by saying “In the beginning was the Word.” Miss Sturdy gave me my first experience in musical theatre when I was cast as Mr. Lunday in Brigadoon as well as serving as rehearsal and pit pianist. She had studied at Teachers College Columbia and inspired me to apply to the same great university.
At Columbia I had the great good fortune to study with both Jack Beeson, best-known for his opera Lizzie Borden, and Otto Luening, not at all known for his opera Evangeline. I had written some smaller choral and vocal works. but when I was chosen to compose the music for the Columbia Varsity Show in 1965 I found my true calling. Michael Feingold, a fellow Columbia student who would later become the chief drama critic for The Village Voice, had written the book and lyrics of the student show, both inspired by John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. Our show, The Bawd’s Opera, won the prestigious BMI Award for best student musical in the country. Part of the award was membership in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop run by Lehman Engel. I followed the Bawd’s Opera by composing a contemporary musical comedy, Feathertop, based on the Hawthorne short story, with lyrics by classmate John Litvack (who himself would go on to fame in television as the producer of Hill Street Blues.)
My composition teacher Otto Luening had together with Jack Beeson been the director of the Columbia University Opera Workshop in the middle of the 20th Century. They gave the premieres of many new operas, most notably Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden’s Paul Bunyan (1941), Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Medium (1946) and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All (1947). Because of their experience in this seminal producing workshop, these teachers gave their composition students an appreciation of the challenges and the thrill in writing and producing new theatre works.
I am also proud to say that I am a “grand-student” of Béla Bartók since Beeson was able to work with Bartók as a composer. v, a piano instructor, never taught composition except for his work with Beeson. I like to think that some of Bartók’s stage sense, most evident in his opera Bluebeard’s Castle was passed on by Beeson to his own students. (Every production I had ever seen of Bartók’s opera has been compromised by inadequate stage solutions to those 7 doors, until I saw the Seattle Symphony production with the doors realized by very powerful Dale Chihuly glass sculptures.)
Among other influences I cite the choral and operatic works of Samuel Barber - especially Antony and Cleopatra, written for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s new (and present) home at Lincoln Center. Finally, the choral and theatre works of Benjamin Britten inspired me. I have been deeply influenced by his commitment to audiences as cited in his acceptance speech for the Aspen Humanities Award. He wrote music for people to perform and for people to listen to. And he insisted that the words were central to his art.
After receiving a master’s degree in composition at Columbia and two years working on a doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College, I had a peripatetic freelance career in New York as an accompanist, music director and jack of all musical trades. My summers were spent at a resort hotel in the Adirondacks, where I started as rehearsal accompanist and worked my way up to producer. Green Mansions in the 1920s and 30s had been a summer retreat for both the Group Theatre and the Doris Humphrey Dance Company. During my tenure at Green Mansion the retreat’s patrons typically stayed for a week and expected for their entertainment the resident performing arts company of singers, actors and comedians to present a different show each evening - lounge reviews, solo acts, and tab versions of Broadway musicals. Many Broadway performers and composers got their start at such resorts as Tamiment in the Poconos and theatres in the Catskills. My theatre experiences at Columbia, in New York City and then the Adirondacks were excellent training and preparation for my later career as composer, conductor and producer: my Verdian “years in the galleys.”
In 1970 I accepted a faculty position at Penn State. My duties were to direct the Penn State Glee Club, conduct the musicals for Penn State Centre Stage, and teach composition, conducting, and eventually orchestration and opera literature. All of these experiences were great background and preparation for a career in opera composition. Conducting the full pit orchestra for the summer musicals at Penn State was a great training ground for this future theatre composer, especially when the shows included Harnick and Bock’s She Loves Me, Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Jerome Moross’ classic The Golden Apple, Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, Bernstein’s Candide, and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, as well as Gilbert and Sullivan’s H. M. S. Pinafore.
Susan Boardman - well-known to veteran NOA members, a great colleague, soprano, voice teacher and opera director at Penn State, had sung several works of mine, and asked Jason and me to compose an opera for her opera workshop singers. Jason came up with the idea for Eve’s Odds, a retelling of the Eden story, and Susan did a brilliant job of producing the work in our theatre-in-the round Pavilion Theatre with the orchestra on one side of the upper level and the chorus on the other. After the very successful premiere, Susan urged Jason and me to submit the opera to the NOA Chamber Opera Competition, and to our delight, it won the competition in 1997. It was given a very stylish and brilliant production directed by Nick Mangano (now opera director at SUNY-Stony Brook) to open the brand new black box performance space at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. The conductor of that production was Scotsman Bernie MacDonald who went on to the Merola Program at SFO, became Choral Master at Glyndebourne, and now director of opera at Florida State University. Eve’s Odds was quickly embraced by companies around the country, with the very first being directed by NOA’s own JoElyn Wakefield-Wright at Syracuse University.
Eve’s Odds has enjoyed productions around the country, most recently by Carl Ratner at Western Michigan University. Kurt-Alexander Zeller will be bringing some Clayton State University students to perform selections from Eve’s Odds at the SIO session at the NOA Convention in Savannah in January 2025.
Eve’s Odds set the mold for the sort of music-dramas/opera Jason and I would create. Contemporary works appropriate for the young actor-singer in college and university opera programs. Works that would challenge them musically but in which young voices could achieve performance success. We understood the budget limitations of college productions, and so did not require massive sets or herds of elephants.
The success of Eve’s Odds prompted Jason to make it the first of a trilogy entitled Ever Since Eden, each part focusing on a woman whose choice changed world history. The second work in the trilogy, Golden Apple, depicts Virgil’s writing of the Aeneid. Our Dido is not seduced by Aeneas, nor does she kill herself. A strong ruler on the world stage, Queen Dido rejects Aeneas and sadly, though not suicidally, bids him depart. The final work in the trilogy, Cleo, dramatizes perhaps the greatest love story of the twentieth century: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the movie epic Cleopatra.
This trilogy was followed by a veritable explosion of dramatic and comedic works, many commissioned by our friends and colleagues in NOA. All are appropriate and easily performable by both undergrad and graduate college opera workshop singer-actors. I invite you to explore them at my website.
Eve’s Odds cast list:
Eve, soprano
Snake, baritone
Adam, high baritone/tenor
Lilith, mezzo-soprano or contralto
Bad Angel, mezzo-soprano or alto
Guardian Angel, coloratura soprano
Angel Chorus, solo trio, double trio or triple trio or 3-part treble chorus
Accompaniment: Piano or chamber orchestra
Duration: 45 minutes
Tell us about your partnership with your librettist, Jason Charnesky.
I have been very fortunate to work with Jason Charnesky. Jason has provided the engaging and innovative plots as well as the texts for all of my music-theatre works (except for some college juvenilia). He knows what texts and images will get me started and what kinds of plots will keep me going. I am a most lucky composer to have found my Metastasio, Da Ponte, Hart and Hammerstein all rolled into one!
How many operas in total have you written and how many of those do you consider sacred? Please tell us a bit about your sacred operas, what drew you to the stories and texts.
Jason and I have written twelve operas; one sacred drama; and six smaller chamber operas and monodramas. After Eve’s Odds our works on sacred or religious subjects comprise the following:
Christmas for King Midas - addresses the dangers of encroaching materialism in the celebration of Christmas, but in a light-hearted yet potent manner. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Jacksonville Opera Theatre of Jacksonville State University, directed by Nathan Wight. Nathan is another of NOA’s brilliant directors with roots and abilities in both music theatre and opera. The work has a cast of six, and may be performed with piano or with chamber orchestra - well within the abilities of a pickup college orchestra.
Christmas for King Midas cast list:
Nan/Angel, high soprano
Kathy/Princess Dividend, soprano
Miss Philomena Pettigrew, soprano or mezzo-soprano
Sissy/King Midas, mezzo-soprano or soprano
Rose/Rosebush, mezzo-soprano or contralto
Dan/Prince Vague, high baritone or tenor
Accompaniment: Piano or chamber orchestra
Duration: 45 minutes
St. Thomas the Carpenter - a comprehensive music theatre work based on ancient legends of the Apostle’s journey to and evangelization of India. The opera works as an alternative to or as a companion piece with Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. In shaping the libretto for our “church opera,” Jason includes three hymns for the congregation (audience) to sing at key moments in the story. St. Thomas the Carpenter is almost infinitely expandable. It can be performed by a small to medium size music program including the chancel choir of adults and with roles for the talented soloists in the congregation, with simple keyboard accompaniment. But it can also be performed with multiple choirs: children, youth, high school as well as the adult choir. There is also the option of performing the work with chamber orchestra. But the crucial element is that the congregation should be prepared to participate - perhaps by scheduling the three hymns for services several times in the months leading up to the performance. The opera is intended to both entertain and instruct. It serves as a theatrical entertainment while presenting a lesson in the meaning of true service and humility.
The premiere of the opera took place in the beautiful sanctuary of Travis Park Methodist Church at the 2011 NOA Convention in San Antonio. We were fortunate to have soloists from the University of Texas at San Antonio - many of whom were apprentices with San Antonio Opera. But the grandest moment was when the congregation rose and became the most heavenly choir on this side of heaven. The work was beautifully staged by our own Sam Mungo, who deftly demonstrated his abilities to work with children as well as professional opera singers. The performance was conducted by Dr. Gary Mabry who pulled together the many disparate elements into a powerful theatrical and liturgical experience. Most recently, Saint Thomas was revived in a production in a glorious space by Dr. Ann Marie Daehn at Missouri State University.
St. Thomas the Carpenter cast list:
1st Lady, soprano
2nd Lady, mezzo-soprano
Empress, mezzo-soprano or alto
Saint Thomas the Carpenter, tenor
Presider, high baritone or second tenor
Abbanes, baritone
Emperor, bass-baritone
Children’s Chorus (unison, Fishes and Dolphins)
Adult Choir
Accompaniment: keyboard or chamber ensemble, handbells, organ
Duration: 40 minutes
Paradise Reneged, a monodrama for soprano or mezzo with piano and optional string bass. This single scene opera seems to be sung by a contemporary farmer’s wife. We come to realize that this is actually Eve, long after the Fall. She relates her lifetime spent with Adam and revisits her encounter with the serpent. A powerful character study, Paradise Reneged moves from quiet soul searching to whimsy to a final acceptance of God’s unknowable plans.
Your sacred choral works include Mass of Pentecost, Missa Santa Rosalia, and Two Invocations: Kyrie and Agnus Dei. Can you give us a brief description of these works, including the forces needed to present them? I see that the Missa Santa Rosalia is based on the painting of "Santa Rosalia" by Fernando Bolero in the Palmer Museum. I think that the inspiration for your sacred operas and choral works would be of interest to our SIO readers.
Mass of Pentecost was commissioned by a church choir director friend who had developed a Pentecost text for a complete musical setting of the mass. It is written for an able and versatile, but not large, church choir with several soloists and keyboard - organ or piano. Very tuneful with a vivid presentation of the Pentecost story and meditations.
One of my favorite paintings in Penn State’s Museum of Art is Fernando Botero’s "Santa Rosalia." Botero may be best known for his iconic painting of a rather rotund Mozart for the Lincoln Center festival in NYC decades ago. His version of the saint, the patroness of Palermo, Sicily, is a large nun in a habit who, despite her size, seems to float in the Sicilian countryside. The historical Rosalia is the patron saint of Sicily whose heavenly intervention is credited with stopping the bubonic plague from ravaging Palermo in the 16th Century.
I own a book about Botero that opens with an interview with the artist. Ever the ironist, when asked why he painted “fat” figures, he responded: “I don’t paint ‘fat’ figures; they look rather slender to me.” His art, he explained, is an exploration of volumes, not depictions of obesity.
I wanted to assemble a short vocal that would include some of Botero’s aesthetic and some legends about the saint. I soon found that I needed help writing the words and shaping a work which needed to somehow relate Saint Rosalia’s story and connect it to a very contemporary artist and his work. I asked Jason’s help and this actually became the very first of our musical collaborations. After extensive research into the life and times of Saint Rosalia, Jason and I traveled to New York City to interview Botero himself. In that same ironic manner he seemed to have developed to deal with all his interviews, the artist listened patiently to us as we explained the history we had uncovered. Botero then simply said that he just painted a picture, not bothering about what it represented. And only when it was finished did he attach the name Santa Rosalia almost at random.
I think Botero had some quiet glee as he let Jason and me know that all of our research and preparation was for nought. But then Jason’s extraordinary knowledge, craft, and craftiness turned Botero’s statement into part of the libretto. The work not only examines the painting Santa Rosalia, it teases out the tricky process of art itself which creates such a painting. The cantata in 12 movements alternates between telling the legends and history of the saint while four “art critics” proceed to dissect and interpret the painting until one of them - transformed into Botero himself - interposes and proceeds to present his artistic philosophy and credo. The work concludes with “The Plague Prayer” invoking Santa Rosalia to intercede in the AIDS crisis of the time - and extending to the COVID plague of recent times.
Santa Rosalia Cantata for Vocal Quartet, Woodwind Quintet and Harpsichord based on the painting by Fernando Botero has been presented several times at Penn State as well as in Bogota, Colombia (in Spanish) for the 40th Anniversary of the Museo Botero. It has been filmed for PBS and both the score and the video are available on my website.
Spinoffs from the cantata include Missa Santa Rosalia for choir and keyboard, based on themes in the cantata, and one choral work, Two Invocations: Kyrie and Agnus Dei, for choir and keyboard or string orchestra. Two Invocations was performed in Lviv, Ukraine, and is dedicated to the brilliant musicians in Ukraine in their long struggle. The performance is one of the treasures embedded in my website. Please be sure to watch the video from the magnificent baroque church in Lviv, Ukraine.
Song cycles with sacred texts include Come Thou Font of Every Blessing, In the Beginning, and Two Spirituals. Could you tell us about some of your sacred choral pieces and song cycles?
Our other major sacred work is a commissioned cycle of eight songs for voice and piano entitled A Communion of Saints, lasting approximately fifteen minutes. Jason describes the work as “a universal celebration with reverence and humor to saints of all stripes.” Suzanne Roy, soprano, and Steven Smith, piano, commissioned and premiered the work. The titles of the songs aptly describe the alternating humor and reverence accorded these saints. We are happy for singers to program single songs or excerpts. The audience/congregation will be moved and delighted.
1. Saints
2. The Shepherd's Tale
3. Mary Magdalene Remembers Ascension Sunday
4. Francis of Assisi Relates a Strange Tale
5. A Couple of Saints
6. Saint Jerome Considers His Decorum
7. Saint Teresa Recites a Litany for the Feast of the Assumption
8. Saint Agatha's Last Prayer
The texts are challenging but the vocal lines are rooted in lyricism, frequently chromatic but always tuneful. Again the songs are devotional but with wonderful humorous underpinnings which the church audience will greatly enjoy.
I have written two extended sacred choral works that were commissioned by Federal City Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Take Joy is a setting of the well-known Christmas text by Fra Giovanni that concludes with:
And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you,
now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
These Things Shall Be is a setting of the inspirational text by John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) calling for a future of mankind living together in peace, a text especially relevant to the present with the many conflicts being inflicted on innocent populations throughout the world.
I have been commissioned by churches of various denominations and community groups celebrating anniversaries. These works are celebratory in nature but also appropriate for other choirs seeking new and rewarding repertory. Psalm 121 was commissioned and premiered by St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, TX to celebrate their 60th Anniversary. Jason wrote the text for our Psalm of Faith and Love for the 125th Anniversary of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Millheim, PA. My catalogue also includes several African-American spirituals arranged for various voicings (SSA, SATB and TTB) but all of which are accessible to the amateur church choir. Many of the spirituals have been published by Augsburg, Hinshaw, Boosey and Hawkes and Oxford.
I invite church choir directors to visit the “Choral Sacred” page on my website for scores and recordings of other sacred compositions, many of which are awaiting discovery and performance by adventurous conductors and choristers. The texts are all well-chosen and the music accessible to congregations.
May I close with a lyric from a choral invocation of mine, A Prayer for a Safe Journey Home SAB chorus and keyboard. Text from St. David’s Cathedral, Wales.
Be present with us as we travel from this place; guard us in every danger;
make us aware that you are with us and bring us safe and well to our homes.
Bruce Trinkley
Professor Emeritus, Penn State School of Music
Member of NOA since 1997
Ruth Dobson
Ruth Dobson received the Governor’s Arts Award from the state of Oregon in 2007 for her distinguished work in the field of opera. After retiring as Professor of Music at Portland State University, where she taught voice, opera workshop, and song literature, she joined the adjunct voice faculty at the University of Oregon. Ms. Dobson was the director of the PSU Opera Theater, which she began in 1977. She was Co-Founder of both the Astoria Music Festival and Portland SummerFest Opera in the Park. She holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Montana, and a Master's Degree in Performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she held a graduate fellowship as an opera coach. Her students are singing professionally throughout the United States and Europe, including Audrey Luna, Kelley Nassief, Clayton Brainerd, Siena Licht Miller, and many others. As a soprano, she has enjoyed frequent performances throughout the Northwest and the US.