World Premiere: This program features the World Premiere of this work.
Instrumentation: 3 flutes with third flute doubling on piccolo, 2 oboes with second oboe doubling on English horn, 2 clarinets with second clarinet doubling on bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, side drum, tam-tam, tubular bell, vibraphone, tambourine, woodblock, claves, whipcrack, vibraslap, metal woodchimes, suspend cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, xylophone, harp, and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass
Duration: 25'

Stonewall ’69: A Symphonic Suite (2019, 2022)
WORLD PREMIERE
COMMISSIONED BY THE HARTFORD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

London-born Iain Bell has established himself among his generation’s leading composers of opera and vocal music. His first opera, A Harlot’s Progress, to a libretto by British author Peter Ackroyd based on Hogarth’s etchings, was premiered in 2013 at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien by a cast headed by celebrated German soprano Diana Damrau, with whom Bell has developed a continuing association. Bell’s A Christmas Carol, a one-man version for tenor and chamber orchestra of Charles Dickens’ timeless tale, was premiered at Houston Grand Opera in December 2014 by Jay Hunter Morris in a production by noted British actor and director Simon Callow. In Parentheses, Bell’s critically acclaimed third opera, was based on David Jones’ 1937 epic poem recounting his experiences in World War One and premiered by Welsh National Opera in May 2016 with further performances at the Royal Opera House, London that summer. In 2019, Bell premiered two operas — Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel opened at English National Opera with a cast including Josephine Barstow, Susan Bullock, Lesley Garrett and Alan Opie, and Stonewall was premiered at New York City Opera to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising; Stonewall was shortlisted as one of the best new operas of the year at the Annual Excellence in Opera Awards and was cited as one of New York radio station WQXR’s Best Classical Concerts of 2019. Bell has also written works for orchestra and chamber ensembles, as well as other significant vocal compositions including: These Motley Fools (2014, a setting extracts of Shakespeare’s fools premiered by the American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo); of you (2017, a Carnegie Hall commission to poems by e.e. cummings for American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton); Aurora, a Concerto for Coloratura Soprano (2018, BBC Proms with soloist Adela Zaharia); the orchestral song cycle The Hidden Place (2019, Diana Damrau); We Two (2020, a cycle of Walt Whitman poetry commissioned by the Salzburg Mozarteum for bass-baritone Douglas Williams); and Amore Immortale (2022, cycle of Dante poetry premiered at the LIFE Victoria Festival Barcelona by baritone Mattia Olivieri).

Iain Bell’s opera Stonewall was commissioned by New York City Opera for their “Pride Initiative,” the company’s project to present an L.G.B.T.-themed production every year during Pride month to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the spontaneous protests at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village by members of the gay community in response to a police raid on June 28, 1969 that has come to signify the birth of the gay rights movement. Bell’s work was preceded in City Opera’s series by Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain and Peter Eotvos’ Angels in America. Stonewall, with a libretto by Pulitzer- and Grammy-winner Mark Campbell based on those protests, was premiered at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on June 19, 2019, the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, directed by Leonard Foglia and conducted by Carolyn Kuan.

Of the symphonic suite drawn from the opera, Bell wrote, “Stonewall, in all its varied forms, has proven to be an unexpected source of joy in my career. I was commissioned to compose the opera completely out of the blue. Being midway through orchestrating my fourth opera, Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel, I would only have five months to compose and fully orchestrate the work. NYCO was nonetheless adamant that I was the man for the job, so I got down to it, and enjoyed every second, feeling so honored to be asked. I was overwhelmed by the warmth of response to the piece, and equally delighted when requests began to be made by choirs and musical directors asking me to arrange various moments for concert performance. 

“The icing on the cake was being approached by Carolyn Kuan, the opera’s inaugural conductor, to compose an orchestral suite based on highlights of the score for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. This was an absolute dream come true. Not only would I get the chance to work with Carolyn again — undoubtedly the most gifted conductor I’ve ever had the good fortune to collaborate with — but I would have the chance to revisit a score that has been such a gift to me, and explode it open for the concert stage. Without the constraints of vocal balance, text-led structure, and the previous orchestra size of forty players, I would be able to let melodies rise and climb beyond the limits of the human voice, whilst adding more detail to the orchestral texture. An example of the latter: in the opening minute of both the opera and the suite, I convey a subway train on its tracks — with all these instruments now at my disposal, I was able to add a cheeky staccato dialogue between the French horns and bassoons, thereby intensifying the propulsive surge forward. Having 25+ violins enabled me to bring a further sheen to the orchestral color, with an enlarged percussion section adding yet another level of shimmer and thrust.

“I decided that the suite would follow the same three-movement structure as the opera. The first movement (Downtown, tonight) charts the journey of various characters from the opera on their way to the Stonewall Inn that fateful Friday night. The second (No … just NO!) is a distillation of the defiance and violent eruption of the riot itself. The third and final movement (The Light of Day) takes us to the ‘morning after the night before,’ embodying the sense of hope so key to both the opera and the Pride movement. 

“In the first act of the opera, each of the principals has an aria illustrating their journey downtown to the bar. It was incumbent on me to decide which of my ‘babies’ to cherry-pick for the suite’s first movement. The music had to be representational of highlights from the score — with all the characters’ varied personalities — whilst maintaining a sense of propulsion and anticipation. It opens with an explosion of Maggie’s defiant subway train monologue, transitioning into Andy’s starving lament to a slice of pizza. In the case of Renata, a drag queen, and Jessica, an escaped conversion therapy patient, I had the greatest of fun splicing their musical motifs together, fashioning a hybrid of both, retaining the groove in the baseline with its subtle wink to Motown riffs of the past. 

“The excitement of the first movement moves to a depiction of the violence of the uprising itself in the second, opening with whispers of what will later be heard as chants of resistance. This is swiftly followed by a rendering of Maggie’s anthem No … just No! — her response to further harassment from the police, rendered even more forceful by the enlarged orchestra. This movement comes to a head as we hear the music of the riot ‘proper.’ The woodwinds voice various choirs of protest, with the un-pitched percussion section adding jerks, punches and blows throughout. The protest moves between various families of the orchestra until they all sound together, climbing to their inescapable climax as the movement reaches its brutal conclusion.

“The final movement starts with the inky darkness of pre-dawn, the low strings sounding beneath a polyphonic choir of night birds in imitation woodwinds, quoting the main Downtown, tonight theme. The strings then take the lead, in something of an early morning chorale or Requiem to the savagery of the night before. Chinks of light then pierce through in the pitched percussion, melting into the choral finale, embodying both a sense of hope and emboldened responsibility to effect a change.

“It was both a joy and honor to compose this suite for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, I am delighted to attend its world premiere with you all.”

©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda