The newish opera “Lili Elbe” made its American premiere at Santa Fe Opera on August 1. It tells the story of the eponymous Danish painter, one of the first people to undergo experimental gender assignment surgery. Elbe died in 1931 after an attempted uterine transplant. “The Danish Girl,” a movie based on the same story, starred Eddie Redmayne as Lili, and was released in 2015.
“Lili Elbe” the opera, by composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman, debuted in 2023 at Theater St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The new work won “Best World Premiere of 2023” at the Oper! Awards in Amsterdam. “An evening full of nightmares and hopes,” wrote Egbert Tholl, in “Süddeutsche Zeitung.” The opera was written specifically to feature the heldenbaritone singer Lucia Lucas in the leading role. A writer from “Die Welt” wrote that Lucas “not only makes Lili’s fate her own but allows her own fate to shine through.”
“I’m interested in illuminating the soul,” said Stollman. “In my work, I explore the questions, ‘What is a person?’ “What is a soul?’ Stollman is a neuroradiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City when he is not writing novels, short stories, and opera librettos. He hopes to help audience members see trans people as real people. “I have a different take than some people,” he said. “You and I both have 85 or 90 billion brain cells. They’re all arrayed in the same way. So any two human beings are more alike in millions of ways than they’re different. You know, we tend to make people different than us…Of course, we’re all different, but the ways we’re the same are a trillion-fold. Really, it’s a trillion-fold. I don’t think people think about that or know about that.”
Lucia Lucas, who spent two summers in Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice starting in 2008, married contralto Ariana Lucas in 2009, and worked in Turin, Italy, Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany (taking on baritone roles in “Don Giovanni,” “Das Rheingold,” “La bohéme,” “Falstaff “and “Carmen”) before signing with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe where she spent five years in a demanding German repertory system, singing both standard Italian roles and heavier German parts, like Varlaam in “Boris Godunov, Kother in “Die Meistersinger von Nürber,” and Figaro in “Le nozze di Figaro.” She came out as transgender at a holiday costume gala in 2014, which her wife attended dressed as Marlene Dietrich, in a men’s suit, and Lucia appeared in a ball gown and full makeup. Shortly thereafter, Lucia’s name was changed in the program, but she continued singing the same baritone roles, dressed as a man.
One of Lucas’ colleagues asked her, “What are you going to do now?” She assumed that changing genders without changing vocal parts was a career-ending decision, although women had been singing “pants roles” as men since Mozart, and Lucas didn’t have a personal problem continuing to play baritone parts. “I tell directors, ‘you can glue a beard on me, I just want to work,’” she said.
Picker, who has written seven operas and is at work on the eighth, premiered “Emmeline” at Santa Fe Opera in 1996. Heidi Waleson, writing for the “Wall Street Journal,” called it “one of the best operas written in the past 25 years…continuously gripping, without a wasted note or word.” His operas also include “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Thérèse Raquin,” “An American Tragedy,” “Dolores Claiborne,” “Awakenings,” based on the book by Oliver Sacks, and “Lili Elbe.” He has written a collection of works tethered to the American experience, to popular culture, and, always, to social awareness. “All my operas are about strong women,” he said.
At the Tulsa Opera, where Picker was artistic director from 2016-22, he cast Lucas, who had already transitioned, to play the lead role in “Don Giovanni.” “It was well received,” he said. A documentary called “The Sound of Identity” featured a cameraperson following Lucas during that time, as she prepared to make her debut as the first trangender woman singing a lead role in a standard work with a professional American opera company.
On a walk to work one day, he asked Lucas if she would be interested in playing the role of Lili Elbe, if he wrote an opera about her. “I said, that sounds cool, but I have to have some power. I need to have a say. I don’t want to have a trans person being the butt of jokes, and I do want to have a director ask me if something is offensive. I hope the trans community can trust the fact that I have been sensitive to them.”
Stollman and Picker asked Lucas to serve as dramaturg for the opera. Many hours and many dinners were spent together in many locations. “I finished the opera in 2023. Biden was president. I thought trans politics was becoming normalized.” Little did he know. “Fortunately, in Santa Fe, we have the full support of the board of directors and management.”
“Lucia was so helpful as dramaturg. She helped us understand what the experience of transitioning is like–what she felt, what she endured, what she thought, what it was like making such a major decision,” said Stollman. “I chose to set the piece in the context of the Orpheus myth” he said. In Greek mythology, Orpheus, famous as a musician, descends into the underworld to bring back his wife, Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite. His music is so beautiful that it moves the gods of the dead. They allow Eurydice to follow her husband out of the underworld on one condition–that he not turn around. “The difference,” said Stollman,
“is that Orpheus looks back, and all is lost. Lili always goes forward.”
Picker described the music he created for “Lili Elbe:” “Much like an actor, I channel characters to envision the music. I call my music “tonally adjacent” (versus the difficult atonal compositions favored in academia but not, generally, with audiences). “Somehow, I think everyone who hears the opera will be changed on some level…it’s a very emotional piece.”
Some might ask the cis-gendered Picker (and Stollman) what gave them the right to tell a famous trans figure’s story. “In my own experience, having Tourette’s syndrome has caused me to feel disconnected from my body for my whole life.” He mentioned after working with Oliver Sacks on “Awakenings,” the author was able to help him with his Tourette’s. “ Also, being Jewish and queer means I’ve been “othered” on many levels. I can relate to Lili, her bravery and her unhappiness. She desperately wanted to realize her true identity.”
Lucas said the collaboration the composer and librettist as dramaturg was refreshing. “It was nice to be on the other side of the table. It helps me not question a lot of things in the writing…
“There are so many parallels between Lili’s life and mine,” she said. “Tobias wrote this opera for me. He knows my voice and my story. He told me, ‘I want to make a great opera and you are the right person to do it with me.’”
