Music and drama come together to tell the story of a courageous group of women in “Las Madres de la Plaza,” a new opera being staged at Elizabethtown College Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. Two Elizabethtown faculty members created the piece: John Rohrkemper, associate professor of English, wrote the original drama and the libretto, and James Haines, professor of music, wrote the music. “Las Madres” are the mothers of the disappeared,” thousands of Argentine citizens detained incognito by the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. They found each other while searching for their children and, in defiance of the silence that surrounded the disappearances, gathered to protest in Buenos Aires, wearing white scarves to symbolize peace. The heroism of the mothers inspired Rohrkemper to write a play in 2005.
When a grant for an interdisciplinary project became available, Rohrkemper and Haines decided to get together on a project. ”Las Madres” immediately interested Haines, who had written large-scale works for vocal soloists and choir, but not an opera. (”It took me a few years to be brave enough to try to write one,” said Haines, who studied with, among many others, Domenick Argento, “an opera writer of great success.”)
“The topic … has all the characteristics of a good opera. There’s tragedy, there’s deep emotion — it’s a heart-wrenching story,” Haines said. The pair began working on the opera last April. They met every week to craft the documentary-like play into a more lyrical libretto and listening to the music as it was written.
It’s a big work, involving a 13-member orchestra (three violins, cello, bass, flute, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, French horn, piano and percussion) and about 25 singers (some in the chorus, some in principal roles) and lasting about two and a half hours. Participants in the project include faculty, staff, students, an alum and people from the community. Haines described the music as ultimately tonal. “I hope people will find it melodic and accessible, although it’s challenging in the sense that it’s not always pleasant,” Haines commented. (But given the topic, how could it be otherwise?)
Haines, who wrote the voice part first for most of the piece, keeps his focus on melody. ”Music is an art that unfolds over time, and we experience that time as musical line,” Haines pointed out. “The emphasis on line is very important to me as a composer.” The harmony comes from the interaction of melodic lines, not dropped-in block chords. ”The rhythm comes from the meter and emphasis of the language,” Haines added. While there are some touches of tango, “there’s no effort to make this Argentinian in nature.”
“This has been as collaborative a project as I’ve ever worked on,” Haines said. “And that’s been great … and time-consuming, and at times frustrating. But I think it’s been a wonderful lesson for the students, faculty and staff that have been involved.”
In addition to the weekend performances, Elizabethtown College will present a “virtual 
exhibition” by Laurel Reuter, “The Disappeared,” on Wednesday, March 12. Reuter, founder and director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, put together an exhibit of Latin American art that deals with the various “dirty wars” of the 1970s-1980s. The actual exhibit was shown in New York City in 2007 and is currently on display in Chile. The free presentation begins at 11 a.m. in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. (Shown at right is a work by Luis Gonzales Palma.)
