Professor Anne Bogart To Direct 'Song of the Earth' at Boston Lyric Opera with Assistance from Theatre Student Talia Feldberg
Professor of Theatre and head of the Directing Concentration Anne Bogart will direct Gustav Mahler’s Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde) at Boston Lyric Opera this March. Bogart will be assisted on this production, which runs March 20-29, by Directing student Talia Feldberg.
Song of the Earth is a story of longing, loss, and grief. Created in the wake of personal tragedy, the piece is one of Mahler’s last works. The opera takes place in a singular room inhabited by three characters and time periods. The occupants include a Poet right before his death, a woman called The Lover who is mourning the loss of the Poet called, and a Mother grieving the loss of her child. For this production, Bogart will rely on projection, as well as additional spoken text, to create a sensory and immersive experience for audience members.
On working with Bogart, Feldberg says, “I think Anne’s really hit on what’s magical about Das Lied. Mahler wrote a heartbreaking piece about mortality and grief that’s also full of joy and sensuality and humor. This production channels this while also insisting on some other coexistences—of time periods, of performance forms, of Mahler’s exploration and ours. It’s not a reinvention—it’s a palimpsest. This ethos is also telling of our collaborative process, which Anne leads (alongside her longtime comrade David Angus, BLO’s Music Director) with her quintessential curiosity and care.”
Anne Bogart is a theater and opera director and author. She was the Co-Artistic Director and founder of SITI (Saratoga International Theater Institute) Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tradashi Suzuki in 1992. Her productions with SITI Company include Going Going Gone (1995), a play that combined Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with concepts from quantum physics, Adjunct AssistantProfessor Chuck Mee’s adaptation of Eurypides’ Orestes (1998), and a radio play version of Macbeth titled Radio Macbeth (2007) co-directed with her longtime lighting designer Darron West. The SITI Company, known for its multi-genre approach to theater, collaborated with other artists like the Martha Graham Dance Company, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Elizabeth Streb’s dance company STREB. Bogart is the author of six books including The Director Prepares and the seminal text The Viewpoints Book co-written with theater director Tina Landau. Bogart’s most recent book is titled The Art of Resonance. Bogart is the recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artists Award, the Richard B. Fisher Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2016, Bogart received the Alfred Drake Award from Brooklyn College in 2016, and is the recipient of four honorary doctorates from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Skidmore College, her alma mater Bard College, and Cornish College.
Talia Feldberg is a director, working across theater and opera, from New York City. Feldberg’s approach to directing combines a rigorous, detail-oriented attention to text producing works equal parts intellectually rigorous and moving. Feldberg has worked for many theaters in New York including Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Tank, La Mama, Bedlam, Signature Theatre, and Long Wharf Theatre. Feldberg is a member of the Krymove Lab NYC and is an associate member of SDC. For her second-year materials project, Feldberg adapted American poet and essayist Mary Ruefle’s lecture On Secrets, and directed Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire this past September as her thesis.
Tickets for Song of The Earth can be purchased here.