Julia Bullock Uploads History’s Persistent Voice
The recent premiere of the new contemporary opera “Upload,” by Michel van der Aa at the Park Avenue Armory confronted the audience with the idea of imbedding and keeping fresh, forever, the recollection of a loved one — memory transplantation.
Roderick Williams (father) and Julia Bullock (daughter) star in this opera. They are joined by an ensemble of actors who are contained in a video which is sporadically displayed throughout the course of the opera. The video assists in weaving a tale of a futuristic technology that captures and uploads a donor’s memory bank and experiences on to the memory bank of a willing or unwilling recipient. The consequence of it all, the donor lives on, not the least, in digital form. The drama unfolds as we, the audience, realize that Williams, the father, has begun this process without the knowledge or consent of his daughter.
In the staging, Bullock and Williams perform opposite each other unconventionally. The daughter interacts with a “digital dad”. He is ever present on a large billboard sized screen. She’s left, like her character, playing in a bit of a vacuum. Only we, the audience, get to live in-between these two worlds as if we were bouncing to and fro in a Zoom meeting.
ROUTES caught up with Julia as she was preparing for an upcoming original musical evening entitled “History’s Persistent Voice“. She’s curating it in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony.
ROUTES: You’ve been extremely busy lately. We’re fortunate to be able to interview you while you’re in transit. First of all, let’s talk about how your role in “Upload” came about?
Bullock: Well, in 2017 Michel (van der Aa) came to see the Dutch National Opera’s production The Rake’s Progress which I was appearing in. Afterwards he invited me out for a cup of coffee. At the time, I didn’t know his work, but subsequently, I looked at some of his clips online. I really liked his aesthetic and design. His work is not just about the music but, also , about the whole experience.
ROUTES: Though the opera is a technical marvel, there is a deep moral and metaphysical conversation going on that is very much a part of the experience.
Bullock: I do think that the production value of the show is high. But from the start, Michel said that the human element of the story was the focus, not just the spectacle.
ROUTES: At the opera’s very core is this very human condition of loss and suffering. Is this what drew you to the role?
Julia reflected on her earliest conversations with Michel. In them, she had shared her own experience of losing a father at age 9. She also spoke of how his memory lived on in her: his early influences in music, particularly the songs of the civil rights movement. She goes on to share how this, in essence, informed the opera’s central theme.
Bullock: If grief and loss are not a part of your existence, what does that do to the human psyche? Michel took note, as he too had lost his father.
We discussed how in the opera, the father has acquiesced to this transitional process of an upload in order to escape some trauma in his life — it is never exactly explained. He is attempting to escape the suffering and loss and spare his daughter the same experience of losing him forever. But the idea seems flawed from the start.
Bullock: How do you process the trauma when there is no physical space in which to do this? From what I understand about trauma, it realizes itself, at some point, in the body . If it is not processed and released, then it will become either psychosomatic or a physical manifestation. The father is looking for the release, but he is doing this after his body is gone. It seems like the body is needed, in order to recover.
ROUTES: it seems that his plan also causes further stress in your character’s life.
Bullock: The father made so many assumptions. I kept going back through the libretto to check them He never asks his daughter about what she thinks. Instead she is left with all these questions that she is constantly asking. And, her anger, never knowing where to place it. She alludes to her deep depression, as does he, but they never really talk about either.
She draws a deeper comparison to suicide and I mention PTSD and PTSS.
Bullock: What do you do when a loved one takes such an action? It’s very difficult. It results in the open endedness of these questions.
Our conversation has gotten profound quickly. It was like two longtime friends chatting over a cup of coffee and cakes near the Isar in Munich — Bullock’s home-base with husband conductor Christian Reif.
ROUTES: In so many ways, the opera references experiences many of us have lived through during the pandemic. Did it influence or inform your process?
Bullock: From the start of the work we had to keep our distance because we were dealing with one another during a major lock down. Roddy was without his family and isolated. I was alone. Maybe we had two hugs during this time frame. Not being able to connect and build this together, the way one normally would, was really frustrating. I would work on my own [while] walking up and down the stage while practicing my part. Roddy was enveloped in the tech build out designing on the spot. We were not practicing our stagecraft by which we’d be getting to know each other as human beings. And here I was struggling to get to understand the complex character of the dad. It was definitely frustrating and very different. So different than anything I had ever done.
ROUTES: And yet, here again, it was so indicative of what the daughter felt in the opera, no?
Bullock: Yes, it became about channeling the frustration. Dealing with her anger and not knowing where to place it. One thing they asked me to develop in the piece is the trope of male intellect. Then there is the trope of the female, prioritizing her body or the body form. She is left with this digital version of her father only. The imposing quality of him. And, she is asking him questions constantly about the presumptuousness of his actions. In scene 7, she screams at him. That really fierce rage. He (Michel) didn’t write that into the score, but we ended up going there. And, I think it is a good balance.
ROUTES: What was the creative process like working with Mr. van der Aa?
Bullock: It was a slow process but quite cool though. From day one, the set was there and we had the playback track.
ROUTES: You were also mic’d, which is extremely rare in an opera. How did that factor into the process?
Bullock: Being mic’d early on … this was different, too. Part of finding your role as a singer is finding how you play with the voice. How you hold a note or allow it to resonate. Michel was always looking for what is the most simple and pure delivery to begin with. When you work with a mic you need clear vowels and clear consonants. If you overwhelm the voice with much obstruction or complexity it doesn’t resonate on the mic. It’s kind of blocked because of the sonic interference. So vocally it was a great exercise.
ROUTES: Aside from all of the technology within the opera, the work casts the spotlight on something equally significant of our day — the changing times for African-American classical singers. It was only about halfway through the piece that I realized that there was nothing within the libretto that spoke to race or the requisite to cast African-American singers. How did Mr. van der Aa casting choice come about?
Bullock: It was very organic. Roddy has been in every one of Michel’s operas. The only thing the script describes is this relationship of father and daughter, so there’s that. In terms of my own singing, he had heard me sing in another opera as he was coming to realize his piece and realized that it would help articulate what he was going for. I think ultimately we sought each other out.
ROUTES: Do you think opportunities are expanding for African-Americans in opera?
Bullock: When I look at the word ‘opera’ itself, it is a Latin word that means ‘work’. So how do I define ‘work’ in my role in opera. The work is between individuals trying to relate and practice more consciousness — respectively engaging with one another. Any opera that does not engage in this practice, then that is not the ‘work’ of ‘opera’. Even in classical music … how does something become classic? ‘A classic’ is something you return to multiple times. You want to revisit it to better understand and learn. So when I think of identifying classics in that way, one transcends it being rooted in Western European culture. All the other aspects of artifice around these art forms are false boundaries and are simply not true. Anyone that tries to assert otherwise… I want no part in.
ROUTES: Certainly so much of the work you curate, produce and perform brings forth African-American culture into the classical realm. Your work at the Metropolitan Opera House “A Dream Deferred” puts the poems of Langston Hughes to song. Your piece on Josephine Baker, “Mediation for Josephine,” uses songs she made famous to weave together songs that connect to the Civil Right Movement.
Bullock: Yes, there have been a lot of projects that are part of my arts practice of commissioning work, creating arrangements in a variety of contexts and places.
ROUTES: But moreover, each new work seems to contain a common core or furthering a continuing conversation. One that you are leading and through which you actively expand perspective.
Bullock: Sometimes, I know I have been tapped for my own cultural currency. Other times, I have also been asked to step away from it. Black people have represented themselves and we have been represented in film, theater and concerts. But how have we been represented? Has it been in and through the complexity of who we are or where we have been? Have we been part of this process and on a level to insure a payment that’s on par with the contribution of work or personal story? That is happening in major opera houses. I haven’t called them out yet, I don’t want to sully the terms for others who are getting their chance. But who is left suffering at the end of it? Who is left picking up the pieces of themselves after they have been exploited?
ROUTES: Well then I have to ask what’s next and how does this theme carry forth?
Bullock: “History’s Persistence Voice” is next. It started during my residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was based on Bryan Stevenson Equal Justice Initiative. They have been effective in eradicating supreme court federal law that could give children who commit non fatal violent crimes a life sentence. In Stenson’s book, he tracks how the cycle of violence, enslavement, convict leasing, Jim Crow and mass incarnation are all connected. The book got me thinking about the songs of enslavement today. Who are the songwriters and what are the songs? I’ve commissioned several women composers to create works that address these cycles of violence, oppression, and demoralization, all of which are ongoing. So the work is ever evolving.
Our conversation had, perhaps, gone deeper than either of us had expected. Julia shared her goal for the upcoming multimedia performance she is presenting in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony.
Bullock: It offers forms of human expression that can facilitate some manifestation of liberation and freedom.
ROUTES: Well, that seems ever timely. It also seems that your quest here is similar to many of your other characters, including “Upload,” which ultimately represents a journey of self identity?
Bullock: Arts is all about practices and if we are not continuing to explore and develop those processes then the arts and the experiences are a waste. Integrate into the process, so many of us have really fantastic ideas and stories to tell but no place to land them. So I am interested in seeing us develop a stronger, more integrated place on the administrative and production side of things. I want to help do that and that’s where I am focusing a lot of my energy these days as well.
ROUTES: Well then, thanks to you Julia, the future looks lyrical and bright!
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