BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE, EDITOR
Trigger warning: This story features discussion of cyberbullying and suicide including reference to real events. If you or someone you know has been affected by suicide, or is in need of mental health support or formal advice, please contact your GP, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or visit headspace.org.au.
As an arts practitioner, I feel there is a growing awareness of topics surrounding mental health in our industry. Relatively new research is sparking dialogue about the unique challenges of working in the arts, with areas including physical and mental health, income, and job stability widely explored.
Fellow arts workers are brave when sharing their stories about performance anxiety, impostor syndrome, and burnout. Useful resources are generated to help artists understand how to support each other, and themselves, while working and touring.
However, despite this positive progress we may see popping up in our newsfeeds, there still exists a darker side to artists’ online activity. And it’s a side we rarely hear about.
Composer Michael Roth has produced The Web Opera for this reason. It’s a production that builds awareness about the little-explored area of cyberbullying and abuse among those in the arts industry.
Through a series of short episodes, the opera draws its narrative from the true and publicly reported story of an American music student who tragically took his own life a spate of vicious online bullying.
The production is largely self-funded by Michael and was recorded in his own modest studio. Its first three episodes, which are complete and live, present a disturbingly real picture of the way bullying can damage the lives of all involved. Each episode incorporates Michael’s music with a conversational libretto from Kate Gale. Visually, we as viewers become the computer screen itself, into which a number of young singers look, browse, and type (seemingly) private online correspondence to each other. The videos cleverly position us as voyeurs in a story that aims to shed light on the dangers of invading the privacy of others.
You can watch a trailer for the web series below, and you can also watch all three episodes on The Web Opera‘s website for free.
In the following largely unedited interview, we chat with Michael in-depth about the story he shares through this production, the process of working with its young musicians and a mental health adviser, and how — as viewers and arts practitioners — we can be kinder to each other in our own lives.
Far above (featured image): Adam Von Almen in The Web Opera.
Michael brings to the opera his experience as a composer, conductor, and lecturer in sound design at the University of California — among other roles. He has worked for Disney and PBS; has collaborated with big-name artists such as Randy Newman (who says Michael’s new project is “a great 21st Century opera”), Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, and Peter Sellars; and has been involved in more than 250 theatre productions in the United States.
Michael was given a Santa Monica Arts Commission Grant to assist in the production of The Web Opera.
Watch the trailer below.
Michael, what moved you so powerfully that you chose to produce The Web Opera?
Two things, really. First, aesthetic and somewhat practical: whenever I’ve met a writer over the past 10 years or so who’s wanted to collaborate on an opera or music theatre piece — anything like that, even if the idea is a good one — I’ve always felt obliged to state what’s almost obvious: it’s hard, once you get going, to know if it will ever really exist as a fully produced thing. It’s a lot of work and takes a lot of money, and you don’t know where you might be heading and if you will ever have it onstage fully realised and
— sometimes just as important — get more than one performance.
That’s not a reason to not do something, just an assessment. But I’ve suggested as an alternative that making a film, especially nowadays, is very much possible. The means of production, so to speak, are well within reach; the amount of musical creation you can do digitally is pretty great; and an enormous new music/opera house does exist that’s accessible to all: the internet.
No matter what happens, the result can be posted online, sounding as one wishes it to sound, looking like what you might want it to be — to exist as we wish it to exist. And it’s not a show that closes on Sunday afternoon. There might not be any ‘box office’ to speak of, but the work will be posted as long as one cares to have it there.
If creating the work is paramount, you can create it — as I tried with The Web Opera — and have it exist for all to see. And that is something.
Second, and more important, as it clearly did powerfully move me to compose and produce it, was [the real musician’s] story and the tragic circumstances of his death — the subject of your next question.
With sensitivity, can you tell us a little bit about the true story this opera is based on?
Trigger warning: This response discusses the real suicide upon which the opera’s narrative has been formulated. Please skip this question if this will be sensitive for you.
Editor’s note: The Web Opera is influenced by real and publicly reported events. The opera’s production team has corresponded with the family about this work. But, like the opera, CutCommon has chosen not to publish names and explicit detail, out of sensitivity to the family and others who may be affected by suicide. For this reason, the following response has been edited.
I’ll summarise briefly: […] a young violinist, in his first few weeks at school, had just come out to his parents, and arranged to meet a date in his dorm room.
Very much as dramatised in the opera, he informed his roommate that he needed the room for a few hours. [The roommate set up a webcam and that evening, from a friend’s room, he and his friend briefly livestreamed the violinist and his date together without their consent.]
Later on that evening, he posted a tweet very much like the one you see posted in Episode 3. [The violinist saw this tweet, which revealed further online encouragement to invade his private life. A few days later, after a second incident, the violinist subsequently took his own life.]
Our opera is very much derived from these tragic events.
We alter some things here and there, and don’t mention anyone’s name. We only use [made-up] email addresses. We have three complete episodes. We intend to have episodes 4 and 5 in the next year or so, and we’re seeking support to make that happen.
I hope we’ve captured the essence of [the violinist’s] story with sensitivity, and lead one to experience what it is like to, among other things, discover that you’ve not only had your privacy violated, but you’ve been looked at as well.
You worked with Eduardo Vega, an advisor who works in the area of suicide prevention and mental health in the arts. What was the nature of your collaboration and how did this inform the work?
Eduardo, truth to tell, came to our project later, once it was filmed. A friend who came to my studio and watched The Web Opera immediately thought Eduardo should see it, given the work he does with his organisation Humannovations. We met a few weeks later, and since then he’s been indispensable leading us to smartly make our social mission more and more prominent and activist, and the website more proactive.
Our launch event in January featured a discussion organised and led by Eduardo with three young people, two of whom had attempted suicide, two of whom had quit all social media. This led to a talk in the room that was really powerful and moving.
Honestly, my feeling after that was — having self-produced The Web Opera predominantly with my own funds, not knowing what might happen — I truly believed that if nothing else happened but that very discussion that day, I’d done what I wanted to: to engender discussion, and make viewers more aware of how precarious a world dominated by social media can be.
Since then, we’re in the process of arranging more screening events, and hopefully each will include a similar panel discussion led by Eduardo. And he has been helpful as we begin work on getting support to complete the opera with episodes 4 and 5.
The composition itself is quite remarkable: your opera so successfully combines music with a conversational libretto, and engrossing and digitally accessible visuals. Why did you choose to share the opera from this medium and perspective? Also, what was the process when it came to creating this multifaceted work?
Though I don’t remember the exact timing, when Kate Gale and I first talked about collaborating, we became aware of [the violinist’s] tragedy. As we discussed it, it became very clear to me that, were we to consider dramatising the tragedy, it shouldn’t be a stage piece; that the action in fact happens online — the tweet, akin to a gunshot so to speak, was silent; it was just digital information spreading out into a universe along with every other equivalent bit of digital information, yet lethal in its consequence.
It became apparent that best would be a film. And, as we thought about it and I discussed it with a few young directors, the idea of filming from the point of view of the computer or iPad or iPhone — thus creating a situation where whoever views it is, in fact, violating the privacy of the character who is, in turn violating the privacy of someone else — seemed right.
Because, over time it became clear this was not to be performed live, it opened up the musical palette to whatever seemed apropos for each moment. So I composed it all in Finale, using a fairly wide template (not a piano/vocal), making contrapuntal choices in Finale for instruments, gestures, and then transferring it all as midi files into Pro Tools. I then ran the midi files through various soft synths, adding prepared pianos and toy pianos, a lot of esoteric digital instruments and percussion, and finally live instruments — guitars, strings, percussion, and a lot of background singers (I love, as you might sense, background singers).
I’ll mention one small thing that musicians might find interesting, perhaps unique to the way I composed this. I recorded a very fine percussionist playing hi-hat along with the beat as it moved around in Episode 3, accenting as composed, etc. Because I liked the sound and timbre so much, I took the hi-hat file and inserted it into Episode 1, adjusting the tempo digitally. Of course, none of the accents per se lined up, but that to my ears sounded even better than if they had been ‘correct’. It’s a subtle thing in the end, how it finally accents slightly off, but I really like it, and I don’t know, if I composed it more traditionally, if something like that ‘mistake’ would have occurred to me. If that encourages anyone to think slightly out of the box, great.
As for the visuals, I knew from the beginning the motion graphics were going to play an enormous role. I’ll just say I learnt a lot, and the three artists — Lisa, Yiyi, and Chris — were very creative in establishing the unique visual language of each episode. Chris Gaal especially knew that he had to make the tweet happen, the climax of the episode, the ‘event’ — while no one was talking about it or singing — his was the primary action in that moment. It was great that he knew just how serious a task that was.
Chris, who also interviewed us for This Way Out, his LGBT Podcast, was essential in pointing out, as he put it, the cavalier homophobia of the characters. Akin to that, you mention the conversational libretto — absolutely true. It took a lot of work to get it there, frankly. Kate Jopson, the director, was great at reinforcing this. Unlike most opera, it doesn’t seem ‘performed’. I remember at some point Stephanie and Reuben, the principals in Episode 3, watched a film of a rehearsal, and it kind of knocked them out just how normal, behavioral, or, as I put it, quotidian it looked.
You have worked with a number of young singers in this opera. What sort of feedback did you receive from them? Did you find they resonated with the themes they were singing about?
None of the singers found the work problematic or hard to understand, per se; they all understood the situation they were playing and appreciated, as I say, that they were really ‘playing’ in a very moment-to-moment and quotidian way — and so they appreciated that they weren’t having to play an attitude; that they were just characters going about their business.
So, yes, they certainly resonated with the themes, but they also respected that all of us are flawed, and all of us behave privately in ways we would likely never reveal. And the opera shows predominantly private behaviour, not demonstrable or theatrical behavior.
Also, the characters were a few years younger and sometimes more immature than the actors.
Finally, they all spent a lot of time mastering how to show multitasking: they all knew what a great part of how it all happened multitasking was.
The episodes are ongoing, of course. And while it certainly sheds light on the pressures and, quite honestly, the meanness that we can find in the music industry, The Web Opera could really be applied to all those who maintain a digital presence. How would you like to see The Web Opera help to fight cyber abuse more broadly in the world?
Bertolt Brecht said, ‘Change the world, it needs it’. Though I’m not the first person to talk about this, I am acutely aware of how fragile we are in a world where anyone can post anything, and how that has created a universe where our behavior is more narcissistic and more passive aggressive all at the same time.
There are many reasons why I think what happened to [the violinist] is important, but perhaps most relevant here is nothing of what is so easy to do now was possible even 10 years before, let alone when I was a student. Posting something in my 20s meant bringing a piece of paper and tape to a board and posting it someplace. So you tended to need a good reason to make an effort.
That posting anything is effortless has created a universe where abusive behavior, conscious or unconscious, is easy — and easy to be thoughtless, to be casually cruel, and not really care.
Anecdotally, I’ll add one thing. I composed a score for a public TV documentary a few years ago, Jews and Baseball — interesting small film, essentially showing Jewish assimilation into American society using baseball as a framework, from early 20th Century anti-semitism to how we are now. There’s a short section about Henry Ford, who was horribly anti-semitic. I posted it on my YouTube page, mainly because it’s an interesting section and I was happy with how the music worked, all with Dustin Hoffman narrating.
The clip is posted here. As you scroll down the page, the virulent anti-semitic comments will, I suspect, explode at you. I was shocked, frankly. Among other things, why bother posting a thought like that? What good does it do at all? And I fear the reason is because you can, and it feels good, and likely no real harm can come your way if you’re hateful online.
It’s a precarious situation amplified to an awful place, as I for one can certainly draw a direct line from the very early cyber abuse moment of tragedy with [the violinist] to the persistent cyber abuse of our president who tweets. He tweets and posts so often to make himself feel good — that is the behavior of a narcissist, and not uncommon among many we all know. He, of course, has genuine power, and how (and if) we recover from this is an unsettling mystery.
I wrote and produced The Web Opera to let people know that I think our times are troubling and we keep feeding the beast. We really have to think about the world we’re creating and building on, and how we communicate within it. If not getting a ‘like’ on Facebook causes so much upset that you might think less of yourself when it happens, we really do need to change the world, bit by bit; daunting as that prospect might be. And if the conversation that happened as a result of the [opera’s] first screening and launch event helped make anyone think about how we treat each other, then perhaps I’ve done something worthwhile.
What final words of advice would you give to young artists today to remind them to be kind to one another?
Wow, what a remarkable question, and how almost pre-eminent it is. Remind musicians to value kindness; remind everyone to value kindness; remind yourself to value kindness. Especially in a world where direct verbal communication is seemingly discouraged in favour of the quick-to-the-point of pithy and cold communication with little warmth or, among many other things, eloquence, irony, humor, ambiguity[…].
I guess I can only say what I’ve said to young artists now and again, which is in fact to be kind; to be open to how others might experience or express themselves; and to be considerate.
Being an artist — a composer or musician — to think that, on some level, what you might think about or wish to create as a result is worth looking at, or listening to, is opening yourself up to many flames and arrows when you’re most vulnerable. And all of us are in the same boat. So treat each other well, and realise — now more than ever, perhaps, as the opera shows — just how vulnerable we are.
I hope that suffices; it’s, in a way, the most difficult question you’ve asked!
You can now watch the first three episodes of The Web Opera online.
Keep up to date on the opera’s website on how to help, and to also find further international resources that may assist you if you or someone you know needs help. In Australia, you can find out more about suicide prevention at Beyond Blue or the resources provided.
What does this story mean to you?
If you like, you can shout our writer Steph a coffee to say thanks for volunteering her time for arts journalism. No amount too much or little.
Images supplied, courtesy The Web Opera. Stephanie captured by Graziano di Martino.
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