LucyJohn Glover, composer & Kelley Rourke, librettist

As unlikely as it may seem, the true story of Lucy, a chimpanzee “adopted” at birth in 1964 by a human family and raised for 11 years in suburbia as a daughter, turns out to be the backbone of a compelling opera.

Composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke have crafted “Lucy,” which premiered in Milwaukee in 2014, skillfully — Rourke by sidestepping the question of the moral obliviousness of the undertaking and offering a mix of objectivity, emotion and humor, and Glover by managing to flesh out the single role of Maurice Temerlin, Lucy’s “father,” with musical incarnations of the growing chimp and the physical and emotional pleasure and chaos she leaves in her trail.

“Lucy,” a presentation of the always-interesting UrbanArias, opened for a four-performance run at H Street’s Atlas Performing Arts Center on Saturday with baritone Andrew Wilkowske as Temerlin, and Wilkowske nailed it, mostly because he is as nuanced an actor as he is a singer. The score doesn’t call for vocal acrobatics or for a particularly big range and only occasionally for bursts of passion. What it needs, and what it got from Wilkowske, is subtle shades of wistfulness, impatience and wonder, all bolstered by the endurance it takes to be alone onstage for an hour.

As the opera opens, it is several decades after it became necessary for Temerlin to send Lucy away to a chimpanzee refuge in Gambia, and he opens a letter telling him that her body has been found. Through the rest of the opera, he reminisces — about her playfulness and destructiveness, her attachment to the family and to a pet kitten, their companionable drinking together and difficulties with visitors — reminiscences by turns rueful, funny and proud.

The opera is structured in episodes, each introduced by the taped voice of an objective reporter who narrates pieces of the experiment’s history. And the accompanying score, for violin, cello, bass clarinet, piano and toy piano (an instrument that appears in other Glover endeavors), is determinedly lighthearted even in moments of pandemonium. When Temerlin despairs of Lucy’s delight in defecating wherever she pleases and pleads that he is a man who loves order, the quintet breaks into a graceful waltz, and the playfulness that accompanies moments of maximum disorder is more a reflection of Lucy’s mind than of Temerlin’s. The toy piano lent a tinkly, fey, percussive voice to the ensemble, perfect for those moments when I couldn’t resist wondering what Temerlin could have been thinking when he took this on.

— Joan Reinthaler, Washington Post, 4.2.2017

Though it's not uncommon for opera to take as its subject matter romantic tragedy, Lucy is anything but common, though it is a love story, and one of Shakespearean proportions. It's a cautionary tale, too, that encourages one to reflect on animal rights issues and consider the damage that can be done to our animal brethren in the name of research, even when intentions are honourable. Lucy, you see, is the name of a real-life chimpanzee who was raised by Maurice and Jane Temerlin in suburban Oklahoma during the ‘60s as part of a long-term study about human-and-primate interactions. What makes the story even more remarkable is that Lucy lived with the Temerlins for more than a decade, whereas most such “cross-fostering” arrangements tended to last but a year.

The story's tragic dimension derives not only from the unnatural life Lucy was forced to experience as a participant in the experiment but from its end: years after being moved from the Temerlin home to a sanctuary facility in Gambia, Lucy's body was found in 1987 with her hands and skin removed, the implication being that she was easy prey for poachers when her immediate response to a human after having lived with the family for so many years would have been to approach rather than flee. That Lucy is ultimately a love story more than anything else is evident throughout but becomes especially clear during “Completely at home” when baritone Andrew Wilkowske as Maurice Temerlin lovingly describes Lucy as a “sight of great beauty”; implied throughout the work is the idea that he genuinely came to regard her as his “daughter.”

Using modest vocal and instrumental resources, composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke have fashioned a remarkable treatment of the saga in song cycle form. Wilkowske delivers an emotionally stirring performance in the sole singing part and receives sensitive support on this 2014 Milwaukee Opera Theatre live recording from pianist Christopher Zemliauskas and Red Shift Ensemble members Andie Springer (violin), Jeff Anderle (clarinet), Rose Bellini (cello), and Kate Campbell (toy piano); though all of the instrumentalists acquit themselves splendidly, Campbell's toy piano produces a striking tonal colour that complements the subject matter perfectly. And don't be surprised if “Lucy,” a two-note motif sung with heartfelt longing by Wilkowske, remains with you long after the recording's over.

Impressive also is the work's narrative form. It begins with Maurice in his study playing a tape that reports on the 1987 death of Lucy, which he then interrupts to replace with another tape that begins in 1966 when the chimpanzee joined the Temerlins. As the opera advances, mini-arias alternate with timeline reports delivered dispassionately by Sarah Sokolovic in the role of researcher; the device proves effective in the way it advances the story towards its tragic end and brings clarity to the study's progress. For the episodes recalled in the songs, Rourke used Maurice's 1975 book Lucy: Growing Up Human and the incidents recalled therein as a key resource. At the risk of oversimplifying, the musical character takes its cue from the libretto with a particularly raucous or poignant incident mirrored in corresponding manner by Glover. The reminiscences are by turns touching, impassioned, agitated, and even hilarious. A particularly memorable instance of the latter occurs during “An Organized World” when Wilkowske sings in his most snootily indignant voice “I prefer an organized world in which feces are deposited in the proper place,” even going so far as to ornament his delivery with a baroque-like trill.

Mention also should be made of New Focus Recordings' physical presentation of the work. In addition to bios and historical background on both the opera and originating study, the booklet contains the libretto, and the recording supplements the opera proper with two bonus tracks, the first an interview with Robert Ingersol, a primatologist who knew Lucy, and the second a collection of interview snippets about the opera's creation by the principal players.

In having the contours of two heads snugly align and in showing the sinews beneath their respective skins to be similar, Jenny Kampmeier's cover illustration suggests that the divide separating humans and chimpanzees is smaller than generally thought. Yet Lucy sends a dramatically different message in asserting that no matter how much we might think a chimpanzee has in common with a human, it's ultimately a unique creature whose integrity is violated when the attempt is made to alter its natural self. That Lucy should have acted like some delinquent teen and attempted to tear the Temerlins' furniture apart or attack a visitor's cat is only natural, and the expectation that she should have acted otherwise seems misguided.

As if designed to illustrate the point, “Using her signs” recounts an incident that involved Lucy, having torn every leaf from the family's banana tree and scattering its soil across the floor, responding to Maurice's raised hand with a smile and a signed “I'm Lucy” (at this stage in her development, she had learned ASL), the implication being that for her such behaviour wasn't maliciously motivated but the most natural thing in the world. Given such incongruities, it gradually became obvious to all concerned that her real home could never be the Oklahoma suburbs, but by then it was, in a sense, too late, even though considerable efforts were made to acclimatize her to the Gambian environment. That such an unusual story should end up being so moving is a compliment to everyone involved but perhaps Glover, Rourke, and Wilkowske most of all.

— Ron Schepper, textura, 5.2017

In 1964, Maurice and Jane Temerlin “adopted” the just-born Lucy as part of a series of crossfostering experiments in which chimpanzees were raised as if they were human, with mostly tragic outcomes for the chimps. Lucy lived with them until 1977, when they could no longer deal with her. She was finally set free in The Gambia, where her mutilated body was found in 1987. Kelley Rourke’s libretto (included in the booklet) imagines Maurice Temerlin learning of Lucy’s death and recalling episodes from their years together, drawn from his memoir, Lucy: Growing Up Human. John Glover’s hour-long opera (2014) features baritone Andrew Wilkowske (Temerlin), speaker Sarah Sokolovic (Researcher), pianist Christopher Zemliauskas and the four-member REDSHIFT Ensemble, with Glover conducting.

The hearty-voiced Wilkowske sings with energy and expression, but his music is less engrossing than his words, recounting many humorous, sometimes frightening, scenes of his “daughter” Lucy running around with unrolled toilet paper, getting drunk, carrying a kitten on her back, learning American Sign Language, dialling a telephone, attacking and biting a visitor. Most of Lucy’s musical pleasures are provided by the varied colours and bubbling rhythms of the instrumental accompaniment. Bonus tracks include comments by Glover, Rourke, Wilkowske, stage director Erik Pearson and, most eloquently, Robert Ingersoll, who worked on the cross-fostering project but now advocates for chimps to be treated as chimps. “We stole their lives from them,” he laments. Lucy helps explain Ingersoll’s anguish.

— Michael Schulman, The Whole Note, 6.1.2017

Lucy is a one-act opera for baritone, with occasional spoken narration. The tale is true but Kelley Rourke’s libretto is fiction, like an historical novel. It recreates one man’s (and, by report, his wife’s) responses to raising a chimpanzee, at home from birth to age 11 and for years thereafter in the wilderness. The story is fascinating, but what sort of an opera does it make? That depends on the music. Composer John Glover’s vocal line is a continuous parlando that never rises to dramatic or lyrical heights. The accompaniment, for piano, violin, clarinet, cello, and toy piano, sparkles. But much of the vocalism is unaccompanied, so the sparkle shows up mostly in the many brief interludes. One interesting conclusion from the man/chimp relationship is that chimps have a finely developed sense of humor. Among other evidence, Lucy locked Maurice out of the house while he was doing yoga in the nude on the porch. Another is that the animals are gentle; chimpanzees are from five to seven times stronger than humans, yet Lucy harmed someone only once, when it appeared that the person was attacking Maurice. Lucy runs just under an hour; the final 19 minutes are devoted to discussions among its creators. Wilkowske’s every word is intelligible; the narrator speaks too fast and mumbles a bit. The recorded sound is clear and pleasing—the REDSHIFT Ensemble sounds lovely. The booklet includes not only a complete libretto but a detailed timeline of the studies of man’s closest relative, from 1930 to 1987. (Lucy was born and adopted by the Temerlins in 1962; she died in 1987.) The opera’s title character does not appear on the disc; a few pictures in the booklet show a chimpanzee projected on the backdrop of the live performance. That looks promising: I suspect a video would deliver more drama, and more musical interest, than this audio-only recording. The opera may very well be a success; this CD is not. James North, © 2017 Fanfare

STARTING IN THE 1930s, primate researchers, behaviorists and psychologists began a series of experiments designed to compare and contrast the behavior of chimpanzees and humans, particularly in experiments in which baby chimps were separated from their mothers and brought to live in human families. Perhaps the most extraordinary of these experiments involved a chimp named Lucy, who in 1970, on the second day of her life, was taken to live in Oklahoma in the home of Maurice and Jane Temerlin and their young son, Steve.

Whereas most such cohabitations lasted less than a year, Lucy lived with the Temerlins for more than a decade. During this time, and to the best of their abilities, the Temerlins treated Lucy as a daughter—a full member of their family. Because adult chimpanzees weigh about 100 pounds and have five to seven times the physical strength of adult humans, it became too dangerous for the Temerlins to continue living with Lucy. She was sent to an island forest preserve in Gambia, where, after seven years of attempted adaptation to the life of a wild-born ape, Lucy was left to fend for herself. She never fully adjusted to life among other chimps and in the wild. Her dead body was eventually found, missing its skin and hands. It’s not known if Lucy’s barbarous death was brought about by another chimp or an unknown human.

All of this was reported in a broadcast of the popular public-radio program Radiolab, which included interviews with the Temerlins. Composer John Glover was deeply moved by the broadcast, which became the inspiration for this hour-long chamber opera. This release features a live performance of the opera performed in Milwaukee, in 2014.

Lucy is a work for baritone and a chamber ensemble featuring clarinet, violin, cello, toy piano and piano. The singer portrays Maurice Temerlin as he reminisces about his life with Lucy and tries to come to terms with what happened to her. We learn much, positive and negative, about living with a chimp: Lucy’s endless playfulness and occasional fits of aggressiveness and hostility, about how difficult it was for friends and family of the Temerlins to deal with Lucy and the family’s dogmatic insistence that Lucy was to be regarded as a daughter, not an experiment or pet.

Lucy became versed in American Sign Language, and the opera cleverly includes an aria detailing words Lucy had learned to sign, performed silently by an ASL signer with light instrumental accompaniment. There’s a sentimental waltz in the style of late nineteenth-century parlor music, explaining Maurice’s frustration with Lucy’s penchant for leaving her feces around the house, in places other than in the toilet. There’s the somewhat disturbing aria about Maurice’s delight in having Lucy get drunk with him, and two songs about her violence towards cats. And there is a beautiful aria describing Lucy’s delight in visiting forests on the family’s get-away ranch. A portrait emerges of a rather eccentric human family and of an animal that’s a mixed blessing in their suburban home life.

Glover’s music is well crafted, varied and entertaining, and the libretto by Kelley Rourke is plainspoken and objective. The work is written in a largely tonal milieu, with vibrant rhythms and modernistic gymnastics in the instrumentation. At times the work seems a bit heavy-handed and obvious in expression, but its lack of subtlety seems well suited to the subject. Baritone Andrew Wilkowske is compelling as Maurice, and manages the diversity of challenges in his music with skill and finesse. Pianist Christopher Zemliauskas and the REDSHIFT Ensemble are confident, solid musical partners here.

The recording concludes with an interview of Robert Ingersoll by stage director Erik Pearson. Ingersoll was very involved in primate research during Lucy’s lifetime, and in fact had one encounter with Lucy and the Temerlins. He makes the very necessary point that had we understood in the 1960s and ’70s just how emotionally and socially damaging this research was to its animal subjects, the studies would have been terminated much sooner. (Another bonus track features Glover, Rourke and Wilkowske sharing observations about the opera.) Lucy is a poignant and thought-provoking work, one well worth hearing.

-- Arlo McKinnon, 9.15.2017 © Opera News

Though it's not uncommon for opera to take as its subject matter romantic tragedy, Lucy is anything but common, though it is a love story, and one of Shakespearean proportions. Lucy, you see, is the name of a real-life chimpanzee who was raised by Maurice and Jane Temerlin in suburban Oklahoma during the ‘60s as part of a long-term study about human-and-primate interactions. Using modest vocal and instrumental resources, composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke have fashioned a remarkable treatment of the saga in song cycle form.