This interview was originally recorded on November 11th, 2023.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Mark Campbell, librettist/lyricist

The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning works of librettist/lyricist and educator Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary opera canon. Mark has written 41 opera librettos, lyrics for 7 musicals and text for 9 song cycles and 5 oratorios. His works include Silent Night, The Shining, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, As One, Elizabeth Cree, Sanctuary Road, Later the Same Evening, A Thousand Acres, Edward Tulane, A Nation of Others, and Songs from an Unmade Bed. Mark mentors future generations of composers and librettists through such organizations as American Opera Projects, American Lyric Theater, and the American Opera Initiative. In 2020, he created and funds the first award for opera librettists in the history of the art form: the annual Campbell Opera Librettist Prize; and in 2022 co-created the True Voice Award to help with the training of transgender singers. Mark recently received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association. markcampbellwords.com

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Mark Campbell, welcome. I am just thrilled that we have this opportunity to chat with you today. Thanks for being with us for this oral history. 

Mark Campbell: Of course, I'm honored to be here Marc, you know that.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, I'm gonna start off by asking you, as I ask everyone, who brought you to your first opera? 

Mark Campbell: That's actually a good question, because I brought myself to my first opera. I was an actor at University of Colorado, and also a dancer, and they asked me to be in a production of Marriage of Figaro. So the first opera I saw was the first opera I was in. They would bring the dancers on, and then there would be a lot of singing, and then the dancers would go off, and I thought it was the most ridiculous art form.

Marc A. Scorca: Really? 

Mark Campbell: Of course. 

Marc A. Scorca: You only had a short part, I guess probably in the third act...

Mark Campbell: It's a long time ago.

Marc A. Scorca: So you didn't like your first encounter? 

Mark Campbell: No, and also opera was something that was so foreign to the way I grew up. We had musicals. We had a recording of Sound of Music and West Side Story and everything, but my parents did not listen to opera. That was an elitist European thing. And I think my father would've viewed it as sort of un-American. 

Marc A. Scorca: So when did you go to an opera, or participate in an opera where it clicked, and you thought, "Okay, this really does work as an art form?" 

Mark Campbell: Sweeney Todd, and then also Dead Men Walking, and Ghosts of Versailles. There were like three of them where I went, "Ah". I had been working in musical theater as a lyricist when I saw Sweeney Todd. And when I saw that, and I saw how Steve (Sondheim) had put together all of these pieces and made it into, for me a great opera, and used reprises and everything like that, I thought, "This is an art form I wanna work in". I got into musical writing for musical theater because I love music, not because I love words. And I was finding a musical theater that the composer was limited in what they were able to do, because often they have to write by committee and everything like that. And so when the opportunity arose to write an opera, I grabbed it. 

Marc A. Scorca: So I'm gonna back up a little bit, 'cause you have answered a couple of questions that I had, but you surprised me here. I just assumed that words were your entry into this sphere, and that perhaps as a youngster you were known to be clever with words, good at writing poems or limericks. So, you're saying that words were not your immediate entry into the art form, but you're obviously so adept with them, so comfortable with words, how did words become a part of your creative life then? 

Mark Campbell: I wrote poetry and I wrote lyrics for musical theater before I wrote opera. And so I was developing a passion for words, and it was always inspired by Stephen Sondheim's work. You'll hear me say that over and over again. But I really got into musical theater because of Steve Sondheim's work and the complexity he was bringing to the musical. I found that as that went on, his work sort of became an anomaly, and that opera was doing even more strongly in some ways, what he intended to do. And so that's why I went into the art form, and I'm glad I did. 

Marc A. Scorca: So, when you were a junior in college, and you had to select a major, did you think then, "Well, what should I do? Because I wanna be a lyricist, librettist, so what's my major going to be?" 

Mark Campbell: No, my major was theater - acting and dance, and I was a singer. I had studied piano for like 12 years. I had six years of voice lessons. I had somewhat of a musical education. But I came to New York to be an actor, and I quickly learned that that was not gonna work out. I happened to be dating a composer, and he asked me if I would contribute lyrics to a musical he was writing. And that's how it started. The musical was about the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra, so it never really went anywhere.

Marc A. Scorca: That's an uplifting topic for a musical.  So it is Colorado to New York, seeking a career as an actor? 

Mark Campbell: No, Colorado, New Orleans and then New York. I wasn't ready to move to New York, so I lived in New Orleans for a number of years, basically to work there as an actor, but then also to get my money together before I moved to New York. 

Marc A. Scorca: Fair enough. Now, in your bio, and this is where I'm gonna pull apart some words, you talk about being both a lyricist and a librettist, and I wanted to ask what the difference is. What's the difference? 

Mark Campbell: Well, I slash them so that means that they're related. I should just merge them together. ‘Lyricistlibrettist’. When I've written for musical theater, I have written as a lyricist. When I've written for opera, I write librettos. A librettist, though, also has to be a lyricist, of course. They're the same thing. Typically in a Broadway show, you have a lyricist, you have a book writer, and you have the composer. So the lyricist does not have to be the book writer. In opera, the librettist is both lyricist and book writer. 

Marc A. Scorca: And separating that out again, lyricist for songs, as opposed to book writer who's doing dialogue. 

Mark Campbell: Yes, exactly. The non-sung parts. Yes.

Marc A. Scorca: So, they're sort of the same, but 'librettist' is more expansive, more all-encompassing. 

Mark Campbell: Yes. You get to write lyrics when you write a libretto, and you also are in control of the whole story. And I am very lucky in that, if you can write lyrics, you can write anything. It's a really difficult discipline to do well, and with a strong technique. If you learn how to write lyrics, writing librettos is using what you've learned as a lyricist, and applying it to a larger canvas. 

Marc A. Scorca: And you have also talked about musical theater and opera, another one of those pairs of words. Do they have a slash or a dash? For you, what's the difference? 

Mark Campbell: You know, I'm not sure we need to know what the difference is, but I think Steve's definition was really good, because he was always asked that question, and he would say, 'When it's performed in a Broadway theater, it's a Broadway (show); when it's performed in an opera house, it's an opera”. That's a really easy way to look at it. I think opera is musical theater, actually. It just is. There's more singing. There are more sung words in opera than in musical theater, generally. But I'm someone who thinks Les Misérables is an opera.

Marc A. Scorca: I would agree with you.

Mark Campbell: Like in terms of structure and in terms of number of words that are sung versus spoken, but then you can go to Magic Flute and there's a lot of text that's spoken. So, it really has to do with the percentage of sung words - and also who sings it.

Marc A. Scorca: And opera singers, unamplified. 

Mark Campbell: Exactly: unamplified. But then we have wonderful crossover singers like Kelli O'Hara, who can do both. 

Marc A. Scorca: I didn't plan to talk about it, but it's funny that we're here in that, of course, with amplification in a musical, you can be assured that the audience hears the words, whereas in opera, opera singing is not always compatible with getting out every single word, so the audience can understand it. So, as someone who works with the words, that must be sometimes a frustration in opera for you. 

Mark Campbell: It is, but I'm also a firm believer in supertitles. And as I get older and I lose my hearing, they become more and more necessary. I mean, I'm someone who watches Netflix with the supertitles on these days. That has a little bit to do with the style of mushmouth actors speak in often. But, it was a thing for me to get used to, when I realized that opera has supertitles and now I really endorse them. I think (of) those really huge powerful moments that only opera can do, and yet I don't want those to be hampered by, necessarily, the comprehension of the words. I want that comprehension of the words to, of course, be there, but let's just get that raw emotion out, and if there's a reference up here to help the audience, great; that's wonderful.

Marc A. Scorca: You also create words for other forms: song cycles, oratorios, operas. How do you decide which form is best for the particular work at hand? 

Mark Campbell: It's so varied. The Shining has to be an opera; it can't be a song cycle. It would be ridiculous - same with Silent Night. As One actually IS a song cycle, and the reason why I constructed that as a song cycle in three parts: that had to do with it (being) Laura's first opera. I wasn't quite sure if she knew the opera form. And I also started working with Kimberly Reed on the libretto. It just sort of drifted into that. Telling the story of Hannah in As One...we wanted to give an impression of the story, and it does have a climax. It does have all those things that opera does, but we wanted to tell it in a different way. But The Shining, that demands a classic opera narrative. 

Marc A. Scorca: Are there other defining characteristics of an opera for you? You talked about a climax; you talked about characters. What else is a necessary ingredient for the form to be an opera in your view? 

Mark Campbell: I have to have characters that I care about. I have to know that there is a reason for them to be singing. I'm finding more and more (that) a lot of new operas being created don't even think about characters. They're all like types; they're not real people. I like when an audience relates to stories that they can see themselves in, on stage. Even with like Jack Torrance and The Shining, you can see yourself in that role in a certain way. You may not like it, but I look for the heart. I look for the heart of the story and why we care; why we are here now; why we paid all this money to sit in these seats; why we had to hire a babysitter; why we didn't stay home and watch television and have popcorn in the comfort of our own homes. It's because we have to care about someone. And it really gets me. I know a lot of people view this as an old-fashioned way of looking at a story. I don't. I still think that it holds true, and I do think so much contemporary opera doesn't give us a reason to care. It's often about giving a reason to care about the composer and librettist who wrote it, instead of the story that they're telling. 

Marc A. Scorca: Yeah. One wants opera to be inspiring and provocative, but it isn't necessarily the best medium for philosophical ideas, unless they somehow are told through people. 

Mark Campbell: Like, when I teach, I say, "I respect your political views, but write a pamphlet, don't write an opera. Give me a story. Give me something I can care about. That's your job: learn how to do that. And then put your message in that”. There are lots of messages in my operas. I think people think that I just write these commercial stories, but you can look at The Shining. That is the story of child abuse and all of these issues that we talk about these days. I wrote an opera recently called The Cook-Off for Chicago Opera Theater, and I set it on a cooking show, but it is very much looking at race and legacy in our country. I don't want people to know that right away. I want them to care about the characters, and then when they're walking out of the theater go, "We should look at what they call Southern cooking”. With Silent Night, it's not so much an anti-war opera, as it is a pro-peace opera, and you feel the sadness in that opera grow. Of course, so much of that is because of Kevin's (Puts) brilliant music. But I'm not out there waving a banner or anything about war. I'm telling a story. 

Marc A. Scorca: You also said something that is a personal cause for me, (which) is that the situation does need to justify singing. Because singing at one another isn't a natural thing. So, something has to push me into singing to you. 

Mark Campbell: Yeah, there has to be an urgency in the story - of course. I really believe also when I teach, I say, "Why now? Why this story? What is in this story that this has to happen now? What changes have to happen to these characters now in their situation?" If there's no need for change, then there's no need for drama. And then there's certainly no need for singing. Because singing is just drama 10 times; it's just much more concentrated. Another thing that I teach is - and I am very much a traditionalist in this way - I really believe in opera as an art form. I believe in the big aria. I believe in the ensemble. I believe in using all of those things that operas use traditionally and have succeeded so well. We still go back to Mozart ensembles and go, "This is how they should sound". I believe in all of those, but also with modern stories, and stories that we can relate to more readily. 

Marc A. Scorca: As I was thinking about chatting with you today, I wanted to ask you what the creative difference is for you between adapting something, or creating a story that is from scratch? 

Mark Campbell: I've written like 40 operas, and I would say about 20 are original, about 20 are adaptations. The rules are still the same. Again, who do we care about? What is the story? Where is the climax of the story? Is it gonna be in two acts? And what do we do at the end of the first act to make everyone come back for the second act? How does it end? What is the message we want the audience to feel as they leave? The only difference is that when you're adapting, some of those decisions have already been made for you. The thing that makes adaptation a little bit tricky is that you always wanna preserve the spirit of the original creator of the story, and that's really crucial to me. I actually asked for the author to give me approval of the libretto, and I mean with The Shining, with Silent Night, I made great changes to the original screenplay and the novel to make it stageworthy, and to make it shorter, and to allow for music. But in both cases, both Stephen King and the author of the screenplay of Silent Night, approved right away what I had done. And they understood that it was a theater piece and had to exist on its own. But at the same time, I had kept what they had written. I was true to what they had written. 

Marc A. Scorca: It's very interesting, and of course, for the adaptation, you're probably eliminating, eliminating, eliminating material as opposed to an original piece where you're creating.

Mark Campbell: It's so much that. All opera is about distillation of story, because you have to bring a story down to its barest bones, as few words as possible. Be careful of your adjectives: choose them well. And always look at the verb. The verb is the drama in your sentence. So choose all of your words well, because music is gonna come in here, and music is gonna do what you can't do. And I'll always allow for the music. That's why it's an opera. Otherwise, write a play. 

Marc A. Scorca: When we first met, you still had a corporate job. 

Mark Campbell: I did. 

Marc A. Scorca: Did you moonlight as a lyricist and librettist? What was it like to live in that dual life in the corporate world and in the world of the arts? 

Mark Campbell: It was odd. I'm very fortunate in that I had that job. I was in advertising for 35 years, and I still do graphic design. It's something I love because I love the ease of it. There are just decisions that are so set, whereas when you're writing something, there's so many decisions you can make. So, I really liked having that job. I was fortunate, and it was freelance all the time, so to say that I worked in the corporate sector is only half true. I happened to have worked for some pretty sympathetic bosses who didn't seem to mind my opera habit. I used to work like seven to four, and my last job was out in Queens Plaza, so I'd be out there by seven, which is not an easy commute. Work until four, come home, take a short nap, and then work in the evening. There were really funny instances like, the opening night of Silent Night, this big, grand, wonderful night. And then one day later, I'm back in my little office that did not have windows in Long Island City, and making decisions about hairlines and bold or not bold, and stuff like that. But I'm very fortunate, you know?

Marc A. Scorca: I didn't realize that even at Silent Night, you were still working in the world. 

Mark Campbell: Oh, I worked until 2015. I couldn't have a career as a librettist. I wasn't making enough money, and I don't have a lavish lifestyle at all. It's just like living in New York. And also librettists don't get paid as well as composers. There's an inequality there. It was a little harrowing at first when I gave that up. And then it was about, I guess, a year into it, it seemed like the universe said, "Nope, you're gonna do this". And that's when sort of an avalanche of commissions came in. And I accepted every one.

Marc A. Scorca: That's an interesting question if you ever turned any down, but we'll come back to that. So, I'm gonna reverse the chronological clock here. I think Volpone was your first opera, with John Musto. How did that get on your desk? How did you know John? How did that happen? 

Mark Campbell: So, I was working in musical theater up until that point. And I had known a really wonderful composer and also a musical director, Joe Falcon. And Joe Falcon kept seeing me at Carnegie Hall, 'cause I would go and see some crazy new work or something. And he was just like, "What are you doing here? I thought you were musical theater". I said, "This is actually (what)I like. I like Stockhausen", or "I'm here because of the Schoenberg". And he was like, "I didn't know you were a classical music (lover)". We started to be friends, Joe and me. And at one point he contacted me and said, "Hey, my friend John Musto is getting a commission to write an opera, and he's looking for a lyricist. He wants someone who can write comedy, and he wants someone who knows what lyrics are. Would you be interested?" I said, "Yes, absolutely". And I sent John a bunch of lyrics that I'd written. One was called Nude at the Piano. John loved them, even did his own version of that song. And we started working on Volpone. He wanted a comedy. He loves Figaro, as every composer does, and he wanted a lot of people singing at once. I chose to adapt Volpone because it is a perfect play. And I eliminated a few subplots. I made the language sort of pseudo-poetic, maybe a little Richard Wilbur-y, not that I'm as good as Richard Wilbur, but I was sort of intent on that sort of style. And it was a great experience. It was my first opera. I got paid nothing for it, but I was working at Wolf Trap. I worked with Kim Pensinger Witman. I worked with the director, Leon Major, and I thought, "I'm home. I'm home". And that's when I met Laura Lee Everett, too. And it was just sort of like, "This is what I want to do". 

Marc A. Scorca: Now you have worked with so many different composers, and is one composer like another composer in terms of working with them? Or is every composer different? 

Mark Campbell: Every composer is different. And every new project you work on with the composer is different.

Marc A. Scorca: Even if it's fifth opera with that composer?

Mark Campbell: Yes, exactly. Like Paul Moravec and I are working on our fourth oratorio, and each experience is different. It's a little bit easier because you know where to be sensitive with each other, and you know how to respect what they're doing. And it's a little bit easier, but each one is different. I've been lucky in that (for) a number of composers, I've been their first opera librettist. Laura Kaminsky, that was her first opera. Kevin Puts, Mason Bates - technically, that was his first opera. There are a bunch of them. Kristin Kuster...and I guess they like to bring in the old guy and say, "Maybe he can help". I don't know. 

Marc A. Scorca: What makes a good composer/librettist partnership?

Mark Campbell: Respect. Absolutely respect for, and understanding that the person that you are collaborating with is gonna do their best work possible. And if you need something from them, do it in a way that is a respectful way. I have an instance of this, this morning. Paul and I are working on an oratorio. He's finally arrived at the last moment, and he said, "You know, I think we could do something different here". And just because it's Paul, and because he knows how to ask me…Well, of course you go, "No, no, no, it's perfect". But then you look at it. So respect and also willingness to listen. Those are two really key (qualities). But those are things that need to apply to everyone in opera. Opera is the most collaborative art form, as you know. And respect for everyone that you work with is key to making an opera work. 

Marc A. Scorca: What do you anticipate? "So, here's the libretto. I'm done". Do you expect then never to hear from the composer until the composition is done? Or do you expect to hear, "I need an extra three words here. I wanna get rid of four words here”. What do you expect as a back and forth? 

Mark Campbell: Well, it's never, "Here's a libretto, I'll see you opening night. What are you wearing?" I mean, that's when the collaboration begins. And I really love after finishing the first draft of the libretto to sit down with a composer and go over every sentence, every punctuation. And if they say, "I can't set this line; it's unsetable", I reset it. I ask questions like, "What is it? Is it hokey? Is it too many words?" "It's hokey and too many words?" And so I reset it, and usually the key is simplicity, finding a simple solution. And then I am on call. So, if I have five projects going at once, I get a text message, I get an email, I get a phone call, a message from carrier pigeon...I'm on call with these projects all the time. I remember I was on the way to the airport. Kevin and I were working on Elizabeth Cree, and there's a very violent line in the opera. And Kevin was having problems setting it. So he's texting me saying, "I can't set this line. It's just too difficult. It's just so violent." And so I just kept making jokes. But I found a way to be more specific with what he was looking for, and was able to send him back a text right away. And he said, "That's it. That's all I needed". This happens all through my day, and I love it. I really love it. The thing I don't love so much now is the administrative stuff that I have to do: that weighs me down. But rewrites and knowing that the composer and I are telling the same story, it's so much fun. It really is actually still fun for me. 

Marc A. Scorca: I hadn't thought about that concept of your being on call during the composer's creative process, and that's just a fascinating analogy. 

Mark Campbell: And on call is the right (term), because you don't wanna hold them up. There are times where you have to say, "Hey, I'm gonna have to take a day to figure this out. I'm sorry, I know you're at the piano, eagerly wanting to compose this, but I have to go back and see what this is doing with the story, and if I can make this change, and if I still need this information, so how can I do that but answer your request". I try to do it as quickly as possible. 

Marc A. Scorca: What are the qualities of the kind of opera company you wanna work with, when you're working on a new piece? 

Mark Campbell: They have a lot of money.

Marc A. Scorca: So that eliminates everybody. 

Mark Campbell: Exactly. No one's gonna work with me ever again. No, I want to know that they're going to be devoted to the new work; that they don't view the new work as they would another production of Rigoletto or Magic Flute or anything; that it is an event. The creation of a new opera is a real event and needs to be positioned that way in marketing, and every way that the opera company looks at it. It shouldn't be just part of the season. It should be the event of the season. I like it when a company does that. If you're talking about artistic director or general director or anything like that, telling me during a workshop, "This isn't working" or "That's not working", I listen to them. Of course I won't do what they say necessarily, but I believe everyone deserves to be listened to. It's just no one really knows how to talk to a composer and librettist, so it's usually my job to translate. I remember one of the operas I wrote for Minnesota Opera, Dale Johnson whispering my ear saying, "Honey, it's floaty. It's feeling floaty". And I was just like, "Floaty?" And then I realized that he meant that there was too much dialogue. There was nothing that was giving a musical or emotional ballast to the scene. And so I went back to the composer and we found basically a song to give the scene an emotional ballast. 

Marc A. Scorca: So, you do want to hear from the producer, if it doesn't mean hanging over your shoulder, at workshop?

Mark Campbell: I know this makes me a bad artist for saying that, but in the sense that we're so taught that I have to create this on my own. Well, you're not creating it on your own. The company is paying for it, and they want it to be a success. They may not have the tools, and they may not know quite the story that you're telling, so there's a lot of back and forth about that, and like I said, (when) a general director whispers my ear, I'm not necessarily gonna do that, but I will certainly listen to their ideas, and if the idea that they suggest isn't quite right, I'll find something else. And I hope something better. 

Marc A. Scorca: Workshops. You like having them having one? 10? Tell me about you and workshops. 

Mark Campbell: I love workshops. What I love about workshops is that you get the opportunity to see if there's a problem, and then you get to try to fix it. You have to analyze it, you have to work with the composer, and I just love them. I love what Minnesota Opera has done, which is three workshops for typically a two act opera or a longer opera. So you do act one and what has been done of act two, and then you do act one and act two, and then there's an orchestral workshop. So in between you make all your changes. By the orchestral workshop, there should be no more changes. But the orchestral workshop is really important for the composer. It helps them establish a relationship with the conductor. The conductor is in on the score before they go into rehearsal, so suddenly a lot of time isn't wasted on what is the intent of the music here. So yeah, three workshops are great. 

Marc A. Scorca: Now, you're associated with a number of training programs, whether it is American Lyric Theater, American Opera Project at Washington National Opera, and others. So, what do you teach? And I sometimes ask that question to composers, like what can you teach a young composer? Can you teach them how to write a melody or how to invent a melody? How do you teach libretto writing? 

Mark Campbell: Well, first of all, when I started doing this, there were no programs out there to teach libretto writing. Like I said, everything I ever learned about libretto writing, I learned by listening to Stephen Sondheim's work. I barely knew who Da Ponte was when I started writing operas. I mean, really barely. As far as teaching goes, what I like to do is say, "This is something that has worked for me as I have written these operas, and some of my operas are successful, and some of them are less successful, and some are not successful at all and should never be seen again". But I like to show some things that have worked for me. I don't wanna ever quash a librettist’s voice. My job is to encourage their voice, is to give confidence to their voice as a writer. But at the same time, I want them to learn some techniques and different ways they can approach a musical moment. And I teach about collaboration. I've actually even been a collaborative therapist before; I've been called on to do that. I teach about adaptation. A lot of times I'm called on (because of my skills as a lyricist) to teach about song form: use of rhyme. Something that I really like to encourage, that is getting more and more difficult, is learning to write in a character's voice. Learning that everyone in the universe speaks differently, and finding how that translates into music is very important. I'm finding more and more a lot of librettists are writing texts in which all the characters sound the same. They all sound like they're poetry teachers or Brown University or something. These aren't characters. And one of the great beauties of being human is that we're inarticulate and that allows us to create beautiful poetry for these characters with simple language. But I do encourage my mentees - I don't like to say students 'cause it sounds like we're on such different levels - to listen to the way people speak, and find the poetry and beauty of that, and the music in it. You know, you're on the subway here, and there's such music and the language and what you hear around you. Learn about that. Listen to that and find how that can form the text of an opera. Don't go reading some fancy poet and then try to duplicate that. Listen to the world, and you'll create an opera that is for our audience, because we need to have a better connection between what we're hearing in the text and who we are as an audience, and what we're hearing singers sing. And I also encourage them to be simple - only because you have to allow for music. Allow the music to be complex. And it will be. And also, let the music do the heavy emotional lifting. Just give enough words to get the character to the point they need to be, and let the music and the power of the voice do the rest. That's what opera does so well. I've said this so many times, I keep repeating myself. My favorite moments in my own operas are where I feel that the audience is not listening to the text anymore; that I brought them to that moment where the music and the singer and the character and the situation is providing that connection. It's not those things that are being projected up on the screen, and it's not the consonants that are being missed. It is the emotion that is being felt. That makes me very happy. 

Marc A. Scorca: I love that. It's just beautifully said, beautifully said. You've mentioned Stephen Sondheim a lot - a role model for you?

Mark Campbell: I don't know what role models are. I mean, as a person, I didn't know him really that well at all. His work is certainly (a model), sure. But there are other lyricists I loved. I mean, Sheldon Harnick - what a tremendous lyricist. Frank Loesser's lyrics: talk about being able to write lyrics in a character's voice. That's what you're really getting, Frank Loesser. I love Michael Korie's work as a lyricist and as a librettist, 'cause I don't wanna just pick the old guys. There are so many new, younger people, like Michael R. Jackson, who are writing these days who are transforming musical theater, and I like that they're kind of being folded into opera and bringing musical theater knowledge into opera. That's what opera should be doing. 

Marc A. Scorca: Let's mention some really old guys. You named Da Ponte. Do the three Mozart libretti stand out for you as real high points of the art form? 

Mark Campbell: Well, yeah. You just need to compare a Da Ponte libretto with Magic Flute to know what a good libretto is and what a crappy libretto is. I think Magic Flute is a really crappy libretto, and it's an opera with great tunes. 

Marc A. Scorca: Within the inherited repertoire, are there other pieces, perhaps even with the people in your training programs, where you say "You wanna hear what a libretto really can do, and a composer/librettist working together (can do), listen to this piece". Do you have a couple of pieces from the inherited repertoire that you point to? 

Mark Campbell: No. I'm trying to think. I'm not good at that. I'm a terrible opera historian; you know that. I mean, I saw Rigoletto for the first time a year and a half ago.

Marc A. Scorca: I didn't know that. 

Mark Campbell: Oh God. And there are so many operas I have not seen, and people are always talking about them, and I'm just terrible that way. I don't have time. I don't have the money either; that's the other consideration. I also think I do have problems with six hour operas. I just don't wanna do that. And I know I have problems with Wagner. I've tried. And I love Lucia; I've seen that, I think, three times. But no, I am still such a neophyte with traditional opera. I'm still trying to learn.

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, it's a great opportunity. I have to go to the opera with you. 

Mark Campbell: Yes, please. 

Marc A. Scorca: Now very recently, you established, and we are so honored to administer it, the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, where you wanted to really recognize the achievement of an opera librettist, and I'm really curious to hear again about your motivation for doing it; what you want to achieve through this award that you make possible for us. 

Mark Campbell: Well, first of all, when it says Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, I always just like shiver. I hate that my name is on it. And you told me that we had to put my name on it. I just want one of our prominent librettists to die quickly, so that I can name it after them, because I just hate (it). And it also really is about optics. Yeah, I created this award and I slapped my name on it. It's not like that. Let me put this in a positive way. I've noticed that opera wants to attract the best writers in the world. There are great playwrights out there, and some poets, who would write opera, but they've noticed that opera does not credit librettists. And they notice that opera is not fair to librettists often. And I thought if we're going to continue to change this art form, and we're gonna continue to tell new stories, we're gonna have to attract our best writers. And I just thought one way to do that is to create this award for librettists. OPERA America has done such (a) wonderful job. I mean, the Discovery grant, the award that Cerise (Lim Jacobs) proposed and funds. She was an inspiration for this award, actually. I just thought we needed to honor the story a little bit more. And if we're going to improve opera, we need to attract the best writers we can. And the best way to do that is to honor what librettists do. Peoples talk about this being the golden age of American Opera. I don't know. I mean, yes, it could be. We won't know. That's what people 50 years from now will call us, if they need to. And it will be a point of many dissertations, even if that happens. But I do think that if there is a golden age of American opera, I think it also has to do with the prominence of the librettist in the creation of new opera. I think that we now turn to the story and to the librettist in a way that we probably didn't quite do in 1950, 1940, and then long time before. It was nothing for a composer to do whatever he wanted with a librettist's script, and we've seen all the letters and all the mean things that happened between composers and librettists. I think there is a greater appreciation for what librettists do these days and that makes me very happy. 

Marc A. Scorca: And you've contributed to that both through your good work and through your philanthropy. For both of those, we are so grateful. Mark Campbell, let me say thank you. I'm so happy to have this conversation with you and to document your insights about the art form, about the libretto; to hear stories of your career, which is now storied in terms of the American opera librettist. So with pleasure, with honor, with gratitude, thank you so much for this time today. 

Mark Campbell: Thank you, Marc. I really appreciate you having me.