Girls of the Golden West

Girls of the Golden West
Name	Girls of the Golden West
Composer	John Adams
Librettist	Peter Sellars
Language	English
Premiere location	War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
Premiere date	2017

Girls of the Golden West is an opera by John Adams with a libretto by Peter Sellars that dramatizes episodes from the California Gold Rush era through a collage of historical documents and imagined voices. The work premiered in San Francisco and has been staged by major institutions drawing on archival materials, oral histories, and literary sources to create a portrait of migration, law, and conflict in mid-19th century California.

Background and composition

Adams, noted for operas such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and The Death of Klinghoffer, collaborated with stage director Sellars, whose earlier work includes productions for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, La Scala, and the Metropolitan Opera. The duo drew inspiration from primary sources collected in archives associated with the Bancroft Library, the California Historical Society, the National Archives and Records Administration, and private collections linked to figures like James Marshall and John Sutter. Commissioned by the San Francisco Opera with co-commissions from the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Dutch National Opera, Adams composed a score that blends minimalism from his work on Short Ride in a Fast Machine with lyrical passages recalling El Niño and orchestral color akin to his pieces for Barenboim and Simon Rattle. The creative team consulted historians from institutions including Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California State Library.

Libretto and source material

Sellars constructed the libretto using documents from newspapers such as the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Alta California, trial transcripts from the San Francisco County Superior Court, letters by migrants like L. Hornbeck and Sam Brannan, and archival material related to indigenous leaders such as Ohlone and Miwok figures. Literary influences include passages from Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and eyewitness accounts by Peter H. Burnett and William Tecumseh Sherman's West Coast correspondence. Political texts referenced in the opera derive from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo period and legislative records in the California State Legislature. Sellars interwove speeches by miners, settlers, entrepreneurs like John C. Frémont, and officials such as Governor John Bigler to create contrapuntal ensembles that juxtapose voices from Colma cemeteries to riverboat manifestos.

Premiere and performance history

The premiere at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco Opera's 2017 season featured stage direction by Sellars and conducting by Patrick Summers, with principal singers drawn from the San Francisco Opera Ensemble and guest artists associated with the Metropolitan Opera. Subsequent productions have been mounted by the Dutch National Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and concert performances at venues like Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center. Tours included collaborations with the San Francisco Symphony and smaller productions by companies such as Minnesota Opera and Portland Opera. Critical responses were published in outlets including the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, and the San Francisco Chronicle; academic engagement followed in journals from Oxford University Press and university symposia at Yale University and University of California, Los Angeles.

Roles and instrumentation

Principal roles were cast to represent archetypal figures rather than strict historical one-to-one portrayals, involving parts sung by artists associated with institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, and La Scala. The cast list includes tenor, baritone, mezzo-soprano, and soprano roles performed by singers who have sung with the Vienna State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Instrumentation employs a full orchestra similar to ensembles used in Adams's scores for performances with conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Semyon Bychkov, featuring winds, brass, strings, percussion, piano, and keyboard samplers to evoke period sounds and theatrical effects. Choruses draw on community singers and choristers from organizations like the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and university choirs affiliated with University of California, Berkeley.

Synopsis

The opera unfolds as episodic tableaux that shift between scenes of mining camps, courtrooms, boardinghouses, and indigenous villages across locations like Coloma, Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and San Francisco Bay. Characters echo historical personages such as James Marshall, John Sutter, and entrepreneurs like Samuel Brannan, juxtaposed with anonymous miners, immigrants from China, Mexico, Chile, and Europe, and Native American speakers representing Miwok and Yokuts perspectives. Key scenes dramatize mining claims, vigilante justice, the enforcement of foreign miner tax statutes, and confrontations tied to the legacy of the Mexican–American War and the implementation of state laws under governors like Peter Burnett. The libretto culminates in choruses that reflect on displacement, ambition, and contested sovereignty as the Gold Rush reshapes communities along routes like the Sutter's Mill trails and the El Camino Real.

Reception and recordings

Reviews ranged across publications such as the New York Times, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and BBC Music Magazine with debates about historical representation and staging choices discussed at conferences hosted by the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music. Commercial recordings were released on labels linked to the Nonesuch Records catalog that has issued many Adams works, with live performance broadcasts on networks including PBS and radio features on BBC Radio 3 and NPR. Academic critiques appeared in periodicals from Cambridge University Press and Routledge and were referenced in dissertations at institutions like Columbia University and University of Chicago.

Themes and cultural context

The opera engages themes of migration, racial and legal exclusion, indigenous dispossession, and the commodification of landscape during the era of the California Gold Rush, linking to debates around the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Chinese Exclusion Act precursors, and state statutes enacted in the 1850s. It intersects with scholarship on figures such as John C. Frémont, Lassen, and Peter H. Burnett and cultural critiques by historians from Berkshire Museum-affiliated projects to academic centers at Stanford and UCLA. Productions provoked conversations involving curators from the Autry Museum of the American West, community groups representing Native American nations, Chinese American heritage organizations like the Chinese Historical Society of America, and legal historians specializing in the Gold Rush era, situating the opera within ongoing public history and museum exhibitions.

Category:Operas by John Adams Category:2017 operas