Tarik O'Regan

Grammy nominated composer Tarik O'Regan is currently at work on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic British novella Heart of Darkness. Here, Mr. O'Regan discusses his use of chorus in the opera.

A Chorus of Darkness

One of the questions one faces in writing a chamber opera, with all the personnel limits that the genre imposes, is: “how to realistically include a chorus in the work?”

Heart of Darkness requires only eight solo singers, yet Tom Phillips’ libretto calls for several moments in which a chorus is clearly required. As I watch the financial world implode, I’m not keen to add a separate chorus to the cast, thus increasing significantly the cost of putting the opera on. Furthermore, musically speaking, adding a large chorus would not balance well with the small orchestra of thirteen instruments. This leaves only one answer (assuming one does not use pre-recorded choruses, as did Harrison Birtwistle in The Last Supper, for example): the chorus is made up from whichever solo singers are not ‘in character’ at any one point. In principal, at least, this makes sense: two people in a duet on-stage, for example, would leave six people to form a chorus if needed. And, so, the score has been completed in this way.

However, in all the AOP workshops of Heart of Darkness, it has been the choruses which have caused the most problems, both musically and dramatically. One of the issues has been where to put the chorus when they sing. By default I’ve always marked them offstage in the score. This has created problems with diction and a peculiar sense that the characters are very present on stage one minute, then rather falsely disappearing somewhere offstage, only to be heard very clearly. This oddity is born of a second problem: with a cast of only eight singers, the particular qualities of each voice become very apparent to the audience very quickly. Basically, even if placed offstage, the audience can still hear the voice of the character they’ve just seen on the stage.

Well, it’s taken neither another composer, nor librettist to fix the problems, but rather a stage director, Edward Dick. He’d worked on the opera in August 2008 at the Royal Opera House when a semi-staged reading was presented in a collaborative venture between AOP and the Royal Opera House’s development program, OperaGenesis. His rather eloquent answer to the initial question was to have all the singers on stage all the time. Dramatically, this is fascinating as it brings Conrad’s meta-narrative to the fore. We see all the characters as a permanent fixture in Marlow’s mind; some he interacts with in reminiscence, others are in the background, ready to be plucked into his story. Musically it works very well, because the balance is maintained, the diction is clear and there is no muddying of the on-stage/off-stage characterization issue.

So a solution, in this case, at least, has presented itself. Of course the genuine answer as to how to realistically include a chorus in a chamber opera is “workshop the piece until it’s dramatically and musically viable.”

Tarik O’Regan
Cambridge, UK
December, 2008

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Tarik O'Regan
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Tarik O'Regan's opera Heart of Darkness is currently in development at American Opera Projects and was most recently performed at a concert workshop at the Royal Opera House in London in partnership with OperaGenesis. AOP has also commissioned Mr. O'Regan's second opera The Wanton Sublime based on the book of poetry by Darkling scribe Anna Rabinowitz.