CD: What initially attracted you to this particular group of women?
Ruth Margraff:
The winter rolled into Minneapolis when I was doing a Jerome fellowship. I had cracked my window because the apartment was overheated. And there were icicles in my eyelashes when I went outdoors! Kristin Marting at Here Arts Center had commissioned me to write these six courtesans for moments of tableaux vivant. So, I got a stack of books and these courtesans came haunting me over the window sill. And I haven't gotten rid of them since!
CD: Why are we still so fascinated with the lives of courtesans? Is it because there are so few stories of women in the past who wielded personal agency within the nexus of beauty, money and power?
Ruth Margraff:
Well, I've always suspected that I come from another century so I am drawn to antique women and design. I like how Ionesco said, "Every time needs something out of time to be introduced into something that is of the time." But I've come to think of these courtesans as early feminists. They didn't have access to education, really, or careers. So, they inspired the men around them who were running countries, making famous art and writing their stories into operas. You can see them as homewreckers, but some had children and families of their own. I've given them stealth, depth, stature which might be far-fetched, but why not? I think they are more like less visible women who dare to not fit in and secretly inspire other women to resist. I realized working on this reading that courtesans were muses in the 1850s and yet they are also muses for me still. They inspire me to daydream in a scale that is larger than life-sized which is what opera does to me as well.
CD: How has this work developed/changed since you conceived it? Was it always an opera? How has music shaped the script?
Ruth Margraff: Originally the arias were spoken by actors in still moments between waltzes and quadrilles. I liked them, so I broke them out of the devised larger piece and staged them as "Locket Arias" for a Mac Wellman festival. Years later I mentioned them in passing to composer Phil Fried at a McKnight alumni event and he asked me to send them to him. He composed them in this Rossini opera buffa way almost instantly. We have been trying to finish and record them now for use as audition material or for singers to develop and expand their vocal arts.
CD: What are the questions you're hoping to address through the Saturday Series reading? What are you particularly excited for the audience to experience?
Ruth Margraff: I hope to bring up these very questions, so you have read my mind! But also, to look at the arc of each courtesan in terms of cost and labor. What does "passion" do to her health, reputation and estate? I'm especially focused on La Paiva who did not die in arrears of rent, avoided the coughing and cholera, and seems to end up in a paradise of triumphs.
