Student adapts bestselling book into new opera about empowering Iranian women

Empowering women, a rare theme in opera where the main focus is usually on their vulnerability, has become the subject of a new opera presented at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center last month.

Reading Lolita in Tehran,” a bestselling book by Dr. Azar Nafisi on Iranian women during the rise of fundamentalism, was adapted into an opera by doctoral student Elisabeth Mehl Greene. A reading of the adaptation was presented Feb. 18 at CSPAC, followed by a discussion with Greene, Nafisi and the opera director Leon Major.

Nafisi’s “Reading” is about the seven female students in her book club who read classic Western novels during the crackdown on Western culture before she left Iran in 1997. The opera draws from popular and folk Iranian music traditions and the literature the women read to tell the story of the women’s fight for reading, thought, education and identity as freedoms that have no boundaries.

Greene, a 27-year-old from Oregon seeking a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, started writing the opera in the spring of 2008. Leon Major, the director who also serves as the artistic director of the Maryland Opera Studio, said he was looking for new work; the best opera pitch he received would be developed into an opera reading through the studio.

When Greene told Major about her idea for the opera, he said he was excited by its focus on empowering women, which set it apart from most operas, and helped her with the adaptation. Major had years of directing experience, while Greene had never written an opera.

“She has a very lively talent for the medium,” Major said.

She teamed up with Mitra Motlagh, an old college friend who also studied literature as an undergraduate at the same university. Motlagh had a background in theater, acting and dialogue that Greene lacked, and together they wrote the libretto, while Greene composed the music.

Greene’s musical background extends back to growing up hearing her mother play the piano. Before college, she played the flute and saxophone, and at George Fox University, she studied music and literature. Although she was inexperienced in writing an opera, Greene said she had begun composing music from a young age.

“I like creating, making something I had thought of,” she said. “Besides the inspiration there’s a real craft that goes into it that I’ve been able to refine.”

Her work has been played nationally and internationally, including here. The University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra played her second orchestral work “At Sea,” and some of her song cycles have debuted at the university and an Italian music festival.

For “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” she started with the words before doing anything musical.

Instead of imposing a musical structure on the libretto, Greene preferred to “fit music to words” and give each student a musical motif.

Greene and Motlagh both said they faced several challenges with the adaptation. Greene grappled with the multiple musical, plot and dialogue elements. They also worked together almost entirely through e-mail and phone calls because of the distance between them. Both agreed on the difficulty of conveying which parts of the story were from the past and present, a task which they said is much easier to do through a book than through live theater.

A reading is only a step towards a full production. Greene said she could refine and develop it further. She is inspired with new opera ideas and hopes to do similar work in the future.