'Proving Up' puts Opera Kansas on new music’s frontier
Missy Mazzoli’s haunting chamber opera arrives at Old Cowtown Museum in March.
Contemporary horror stories often begin by severing characters from the outside world: phones destroyed, batteries drained, power lines cut. Opera Kansas needs no such contrivance in its new production of "Proving Up." The 75-minute chamber opera is set on a homestead in 1860s Nebraska, where the nearest neighbor is a half-day’s ride away.
The Zegner family was lured to the high plains by the government's promise of free land. Now they find themselves grappling not just with a drought, but also with a bureaucratic puzzle that tests the limit of their hope. Opera Kansas brings the Zegners’ dark, dreamlike story to Old Cowtown Museum at 8 p.m. March 1 and 2. Originally scheduled for January 31 and February 1, the production was rescheduled on the eve of the first performance due to illness, the company said in an email to ticket holders.
“Proving Up” premiered in 2018 and has since been mounted 30 times, making it one of the most popular new operas of the last decade. Its creators, composer Mizzy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, have been on an enviable hot streak. “Breaking the Waves,” based on the Lars von Trier film, was rapturously received by critics upon its premiere in 2016 and has had productions every year since then. The team’s newest opera, “The Listeners,” went up at Lyric Opera of Chicago last year after selling out its U.S. premiere run in Philadelphia. And next year, Mazzoli and Vavrek will get their biggest spotlight yet, premiering “Lincoln in the Bardo” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
By tackling “Proving Up,” Opera Kansas is putting itself on the same contemporary-opera map as those major hubs — and it’s doing so using primarily Wichita- and Kansas-based talents, including music director Russell Adrian, stage director Jesse Koza, collaborative pianist Bridget Hille, and singers Georgeanne Yehling, Heather Redondo, Logan Tarwater, and Marial Isaac.
Tim Bostwick rehearses the role of Johannes “Pa” Zegner. “He works really hard, but he is hurting,” Bostwick said of his character. “He’s experienced the loss of two children already. He’s a person who is broken but still trying to create a legacy he can hand off to his children.” Photos by Sam Jack for the SHOUT.
It has been a challenge. Mazzoli writes in a fundamentally tonal idiom, but she makes free and expressive use of atonality, polyrhythms, shifting meters, and extended techniques for both instrumentalists and vocalists.
"I think it just speaks to the incredible ability of the singers we have in Wichita and in this region," Koza said. "Any singer will tell you, this music is incredibly difficult. Nobody has it ready to go. It’s not like your ‘Bohèmes,’ where everybody’s got Mimi in their back pocket. Being tasked to learn this music, then come in and create the show within two weeks, is a huge lift, and to have this cast doing it, I feel very blessed.”
Tim Bostwick, who plays Johannes “Pa” Zegner, likened the process of learning his part to “banging my head against a wall, and then, you know, getting some sleep — and then banging my head against a wall again.”
"I jest, but this is a piece where you’re constantly learning the score. It’s tricky, it is very tricky," he said.
During a staging rehearsal I observed last Friday, Koza challenged the singers to be bigger and looser with their dramatic choices, avoiding excessive preoccupation with the technical demands of the score (while still singing accurately, of course).
"With the staging, I view it as my job to give them a skeleton, then empower them to find their characters within that skeleton," Koza said. "They’re not being forced to make large decisions, but they get to make the moment-to-moment decisions that really bring out a character. It’s been wonderful to see them find a moment in Scene 3, then go back to Scene 1 and draw on that moment that they found. These things get fleshed out over time through iteration."
Once Opera Kansas decided to produce “Proving Up,” Cowtown immediately went to the top of the list of possible locations, according to Koza, who also serves on the company’s board. After considering a few different sites within the 23-acre living history museum, they settled on the Great Room of the museum’s visitor center, which features an open timber roof and a large stone fireplace.
Tenor Zach Reinert plays Miles Zegner, a young boy who seems to be the only person who can see the ghosts of his two dead sisters. Photos by Sam Jack for the SHOUT.
"The space that we’re in is acoustically strong for the show, and having this very imposing fireplace behind us adds almost a sense of dread, because it’s so much larger than you’d expect it to be, and we’re utilizing it in interesting ways," Koza said.
The opera’s unusual instrumental forces add interest and drama, not only aurally, but visually. Mazzoli calls for seven acoustic guitars to be hung from a frame, tuned to her specifications, and played as percussion instruments.
“The music does a good job of portraying a kind of sound landscape,” said Adrian, the music director. “The violinists are sometimes sliding up their strings. The orchestra also plays harmonicas in three different keys, all at the same time, which depicts hardships that the actors are going through. You’re going to hear a lot of almost sound effects coming from the orchestra. The singers do that, too, in the way they color their tone. The Sodbuster (Tarwater) and Pa are using falsetto in some sections. The two sisters (Redondo and Isaac) are sometimes operatic, but sometimes use less vibrato to create an eerie sound."
The relatively small venue will create a visceral encounter with historical hardships of the sort that happened right here in Kansas, just a century and a half ago, Adrian said.
“The last few weeks, it’s been so cold in Kansas, and I think about what it would be like to live here in a sod house — how difficult that was. We sometimes romanticize the idea of the settlers, but if we really think about how difficult life was for them, then this show starts to make a lot of sense.”
The Details
Opera Kansas presents “Proving Up”
8 p.m. Saturday, March 1, and 3 p.m. Sunday, March 2, 2025, at Old Cowtown Museum, 1865 Museum Blvd. in Wichita
General admission tickets are $38, including fees; seniors $28; students $12
This story was updated at 11:23 a.m. on January 30 to reflect that the performance of "Proving Up" was rescheduled due to illness.
Sam Jack is a poet, a classical tenor, and the adult services librarian at Newton Public Library. He performs with several local groups, including Wichita Chamber Chorale, Wichita Grand Opera, and Opera Kansas. He received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Montana.
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