Greek tragedy meets American ingenuity in Iphigenia, the long-awaited opera by Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding. A mythical work in progress for the last several years, it has now reached a developmental stage foreign to most other operatic productions: a crowdfunding campaign.
On Monday, an Indiegogo post was published with the stated intention of raising $75,000 to carry the opera one last lap to the finish line. The campaign is the work of Real Magic, a company that Spalding and executive producer Jeff Tang created to produce Iphigenia independently, with producer Cath Brittan and Octopus Theatricals.
Shorter — revered saxophonist, Newark native, NEA Jazz Master — composed Iphigenia in close collaboration with Spalding, the bassist and vocalist who never met a high concept she couldn't personalize. As the title implies, inspiration for Spalding's libretto comes from the final play by Euripides, which describes how divine intervention spared the princess Iphigenia from a sacrificial death at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. Goethe's 18th-century interpretation of this myth, which picks up after that climactic moment, first gave Shorter the idea for his opera.
Over the last several years, Spalding has shared tantalizing hints of the opera's progress on social media and elsewhere. In a video posted in 2019, she explained how pianist Danilo Pérez and bassist John Pattitucci, longtime members of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, had input in the music's ultimate form.
"The orchestra is centered around Danilo and John, who are using the score as the foundation, but they're improvising with the musical content," she said, adding: "It only becomes what it is in the space where all of us are imbuing it with our life experience."
A separate video, titled Iphigenia: Behind the Scenes, captures Shorter at his composer's desk, and rehearsals both at his house and in a black box theater.
"Iphigenia is not an adaptation of the Greek myth as much as it is an intervention into myth-making itself," reads an explanation on the Indiegogo page. "Led by award-winning director Lileana Blain-Cruz, and abetted by luminary architect and scenic designer Frank Gehry, the entire creative process has led us to understand how stories have been traditionally told, and how we must disrupt existing systems and create our own alternative structures and stories."
Part of that disruption involves a feminist engagement with the Iphigenia myth, a framework that Spalding was eager to explore.
But it also extends to the way that she and Shorter have chosen to generate this project — separate from the usual commissioning bodies, and effectively on their own terms.
The Indiegogo campaign for Iphigenia closes on April 30.