New opera ‘Prospero’s Island’ debuts in S.F., singing penguins and all

Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” has inspired a new opera — one that features a chorus of singing penguins.

“Prospero’s Island,” written by composer Allen Shearer and librettist Claudia Stevens, makes its world premiere March 25 at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Directed by Philip Lowery and conducted by Nathaniel Berman, the chamber opera features Andrew Dwan (Prospero), Shawnette Sulker (Ariel), Bradley Kynard (Caliban), and Amy Foote (Miranda/Mandi). The penguin chorus is sung by members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

Set on the Falkland Islands in the 1950s, the chamber opera makes Prospero — the exiled Duke of Milan, and the central character of Shakespeare’s play — an escaped war criminal from the Nazi regime.

For Oakland-based Shearer and Stevens, who are husband and wife, writing the opera was an opportunity to address long-held questions about this powerful, enigmatic character.

“I was very interested in re-creating a past for him,” Stevens said in a recent interview, explaining that “The Tempest” always left her wondering about Prospero. “In the play, he hints that there are things he feels guilty about — and, at the end, he apologizes for crimes that he doesn’t really delineate.”

In the new opera, she adds, “He’s raised his daughter in ignorance. And his two servants, Ariel and Caliban, are the results of experiments he made as a scientist.”

Stevens says she imagined that Prospero, who sailed from Milan, was initially destined for Paraguay. But a shipwreck stranded him on a remote island — “where, to his great delight,” she said, “there are many penguins.” By the time we meet them, Prospero has taught them to sing.

Like “The Tempest,” “Prospero’s Island” alludes to a secret past, and Stevens says that her questions about events before the story begins have always stayed with her.

“The whole question of the secret past, which is never really revealed by Shakespeare, was very important,” she said. “We know that Prospero was exiled from Milan, and that he was involved in wizardry and the secret books. But in several places in the play, he suggests that there is a dark past.

“I was very interested in the operatic potential of a daughter finding out about her father’s past, because that was my own experience. I didn’t have a war criminal as a father – but I had, in fact, two parents who were Holocaust survivors. I knew nothing about that, until I was 19, and that was heavy.”

Stevens and Shearer have co-written 10 operas, including 2015’s “Middlemarch in Spring,” and 2019’s “Howards End,” both of which premiered in San Francisco.

They work closely together on each new project, says Shearer; Stevens will give him her first draft of her libretto, and they go from there. “The word is always the starting point in my work,” notes the composer, who works in his backyard studio. “We take small chunks at a time. I’ll compose something, and she’ll comment. She’s very good at finding the weak spots — something that lags a little bit, needs to be stretched out or compressed.”

For Shearer, the new opera’s allusions to the Holocaust were essential, but he says the finished product, like Shakespeare’s play, balances its heavier themes with lightness. “There are many elements that come into the music,” he said. “There’s some imported material, some popular music, a lusty country-style song. There’s a more serious style, too, in the music that opens the opera and ends it.

“It’s eclectic. I don’t worry too much about making everything match up in opera, because you have to use broader brush strokes to allow whatever’s appropriate to come into the music.”

Bringing in the penguins, who serve as a kind of Greek chorus, was one decision that they didn’t question, Shearer adds.

“Just the idea of having singing penguins in our opera — that in itself kept the project alive. I just loved the idea, and we were not mistaken to do that, because we have the San Francisco Girls Chorus providing the penguins’ voices, and they’re wonderful.”

Contact Georgia Rowe at [email protected]

‘PROSPERO’S ISLAND’

By Allen Shearer and Claudia Stevens, presented by Ninth Planet

When: 7:30 March 25

Where: Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco

Tickets: $25-$45; www.Cityboxoffice.com, www.prosperosislandopera.com