Opera Parallèle will present the West Coast premiere of Doubt at the Presidio Theater from May 29-31. The opera about a nun who interrogates her faith has a libretto by playwright John Patrick Shanley and a score for chamber orchestra by composer and Bay Area native Douglas J. Cuomo.
The parable-like show will involve a four-person cast and a 14-piece orchestra: five string players, a trumpet player, two French horn players, four woodwind players (flute, clarinet, oboe, and bassoon), a pianist, and a percussionist. The violist is assigned to play alone at specific points, to convey the inner voice of the protagonist, Sister Aloysius.
Based on Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, Doubt is set at St. Nicholas, a Catholic school in the Bronx, in 1964. Sister Aloysius (soprano Rhoslyn Jones) suspects Father Flynn (baritone Matthew Worth) of sexually abusing a young male student named Donald Miller, who is the first Black student at the school. The other characters in the production are Sister James, a teacher at the school (mezzo-soprano Naomi Steele) and Mrs. Miller, the mother of the student (mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel).
For Cuomo, the hardest part of composing the score was ensuring the music would not sway the audience one way or the other.
“People have different opinions as to whether Father Flynn is guilty. But the story isn’t about that. The story is about whether people can be comfortable with uncertainty,” said Cuomo, who added that his score allows the audience to form either interpretation of Flynn — damned or absolved.
Brian Staufenbiel, the creative director for Opera Parallèle, is the director and concept designer for this production. In Staufenbiel’s staging, the audience becomes the church congregation.
“Father Flynn comes right up to the edge of the stage and speaks to us. We use projections to make it feel as if we are in the church, with texture and architectural details,” Staufenbiel said. Visual effects are also employed, like blurring parts of the background, to suggest the blurring of the truth.
Cuomo, Staufenbiel, and conductor Nicole Paiement worked together long-distance for over a year before meeting in San Francisco to rehearse.
“When we finally got together, I’ve been amazed at how deep we’ve gone into the nuances of this story. Every time, we go farther than I ever imagined,” said Staufenbiel.
