Love conquers all

Behind the scenes of Rage of the Heart

by Bill Rodriguez

What a huge effort! Never mind getting an original play into production -- Enrico Garzilli is going for nothing less than mounting an original "pop opera" musical. The world premiere of Rage of the Heart will be staged at Veterans Memorial Auditorium April 24-27, 20 years after its Rhode Island creator first put pen to paper with his notion of a musical about the Renaissance lovers Abelard and Heloise.

The eight singers in main roles will be backed by a 24-piece orchestra and a supporting cast of more than 30 in the opulent hall, with its excellent acoustics.

Garzilli already has gotten bonus points for sincerity of effort, having turned down the offer of a well-financed London production because he didn't think that the director would do a good job.

Based on the actual historical romance, the story takes place in 12th-century France. Peter Abelard was a theologian and philosopher and the foremost scholar of his day. He is credited with founding the University of Paris, where his charismatic brilliance brought students flocking. One student attracted to him was the intelligent and beautiful Heloise. Pretending that his main desire was to tutor the 17-year-old girl, he came to live with Heloise at the home of her uncle, Canon Fulbert, where he easily seduced her. She was 17 and he was in his late 30s. Heloise became pregnant but at first refused to marry him, not wanting to weaken his career as such a prominent Church intellectual. Eventually they were married in secret, although Abelard sent her off to a convent. Her uncle, still outraged, sent men to have him emasculated (not castrated, as is sometimes said). He became a monk, continuing his scholarly work, and she became abbess of a convent.

It's no wonder that Garzilli is fascinated with the Renaissance churchman/scholar, considering the Providence native's elaborate background. Now in his 50s, he has studied theology in Rome, and with an undergraduate degree in English, a master's in philosophy and a doctorate from Brown University in comparative literature, he has taught English, drama and music at Providence College and elsewhere. A pianist and organist, he was a soloist at the premiere of Dave Brubeck's Concert Mass. A book of his literary criticism, Circles Without Center, was published by Harvard University Press.

His musical Smart Set, set in the Roaring '20s and about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, had a successful run off-off-Broadway last year at the 13th Street Theater. He was commissioned to write another libretto, for a six-part German television series about actors rehearsing a production. That musical, Magic, was about the fall of the Berlin wall.

In Europe, a CD recording of Rage of the Heart was issued in London last year, with David Cullen conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Abelard sung by Michael Ball, who created the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.

Wearing a black wool sweater and black sports jacket, Garzilli spoke recently at Veterans, sitting in front of an empty stage that will soon be filled with the most ambitious work of his lifetime.

Q: A classic love story seems a natural bet for an opera or musical. But what in the relationship of Abelard and Heloise especially intrigued you?

A: Abelard was not only a philosopher in fact, the greatest living philosopher of his time and a poet, but he was also a songwriter. A pop writer. So it was like he's the Bruce Springsteen of the age. His songs were sung by the students, by everyone. Heloise wrote to him many years later and said, My name was on everyone's lips because of the songs that you wrote to me. I thought, well this is magnificent. To put them in a musical where it's sung through is not a leap.

The other thing that turned me on to their relationship as something worthy of writing about: it was a triumph over the impossible odds that surrounded them. Their love triumphed. They had tremendous tragedy in their life.

There is a gap between Abelard, who was this intellectual giant, and Heloise, who is not only intellectually unique for her age and for a woman in that period, but also that she was more emotionally mature than he was, even though she was many years younger.

Q: It certainly was an unusual relationship all along, but for romantic tale of expected happy endings it has unusual turns their being parted, her uncle sending thugs to emasculate him. How did you handle those real elements in terms of story expectations and formulating something that would be successful as a musical?

A: Well, I'm pretty faithful to their story. I have to fuse dramatically certain characters. There were two Williams who were adversaries of Abelard, for instance. When it comes to the climax of the play, which is that act of physical assault, it's handled very realistically, it's not handled off-stage. All of those moments in the play are, I think, very important, because there is no triumph without paying the price for that triumph. It doesn't come easy, and redemption and epiphany come through some kind of exacting demands. That was something both of them experiences.

Q: What major changes have occurred since the first draft?

Writing is always rewriting and rewriting. One of the most important decisions was making sure the libretto had evolved to a point where I was really happy with it. And the very first drafts which go way, way back, to when I was quite young are more chronologically historical. As opposed to the psychological journey that now happens. And also, stylistically I arrived at what I really wanted to do. Not only in terms of its musical language but also the linguistic idiom. In that case, I used the plain chant the medieval music not only to set the time and the place but also as a springboard to a modern kind of setting, a retelling of the story.

Q: What were the main production obstacles you had to get around before the show could reach this point?

A: I suppose it's the epic nature of the story itself. I didn't think that I'd like to see it with just a synthesized kind of accompaniment. I wanted to do it in a more symphonic way, and that demands resources. And it demands a caliber of performance in the leads that are also a challenge. I think that we have two extraordinary leads in Abelard and Heloise with Brad Logan and Katie Stone.

Q: So what's the next step for Rage of the Heart?

A: The reason I worked so hard on it is that I wanted this work to be performed not only now but in 50 years from now, 100 years from now. So I would love it to be successful enough to move on to other places. Perhaps to London and eventually to Broadway.