This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Christy L’Esperance: In "The Brightness of Light," you portray photographer Alfred Stieglitz and you sing the words contained in his letters to his wife, the famed American painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
How familiar were you with these two artists before working on the project, and what's been the most interesting element of their story as you've come to know them a little better?
Rod Gilfry: Well, I was very familiar with Georgia O'Keeffe because she's super famous and I spent a lot of time in Santa Fe and there's a Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, so she's sort of part of our American artist vocabulary.
Alfred Stieglitz, I had no idea about. I was surprised to find out that George O'Keeffe was married. I don't know why she's been portrayed as probably not heterosexual, but she definitely was. And they had a very rich sexual relationship in addition to their regular relationship, and I was very surprised at that.
They wrote to each other very graphically sometimes, and very passionately. I certainly learned a lot about him.
CL: Composer Kevin Puts showcases an iconic American woman in Georgia O'Keeffe. So what is it like working with another iconic American woman, Renée Fleming?
RG: Oh my gosh, Renée and I go back so far you would not believe it. We met in 1985 doing a competition, a voice competition, in Belgium and the competition organizers put us up with the same family for the duration of the competition. I think it was about two weeks and we had bedrooms across the hall from each other.
It's been a really great journey and we’ve been able to reaffirm our great friendship and collaboration that we've had for decades now.Rod Gilfry
We shared the same bathtub, although not at the same time, I want to make that clear.
Neither of us had careers. Neither of us could speak any French. We got by with this family by making animal sounds and you know, pulling what we knew from songs and Arias that we had learned. So that's when I first met Renée.
So, this “Brightness of Light” project has been just so wonderful. It's been a really great journey and we’ve been able to reaffirm our great friendship and collaboration that we've had for decades now.
CL: It's fascinating how those operatic paths intertwine.
This work takes the words from the letters between two visual artists over their 30 year relationship and turns them into a marriage of music and art. What do you hope the audiences take away from a performance of “Brightness of Light?”
RG: Georgia O'Keeffe was a very independent woman. They didn't even live together for the last maybe decade of Alfred Stieglitz's life.
He wanted to stay in New York and she moved to New Mexico and she pursued her passion and he was very lonely, but she was a maverick. She was insistent that she do what was right for her and what was what was necessary for her art.
The thing I want people to take from this is this very passionate relationship which went on for decades. They continued to have a deep love for each other despite the distance, and he was invited to come to New Mexico several times. He never went, he just didn't want to. He loved being in New York City. That was his environment.
So there is great sadness in this relationship, but there is also great honesty and great joy.
I want people to take away that they had a deeply loving relationship with great respect for each other. In the final moments of the piece, she goes off on her way and she's talking about the amazing expanse of the horizon and how beautiful it all is. I think that's sort of the theme of the piece.
Rod Gilfry and Renée Fleming star in Kevin Puts' "The Brightness of Light," September 27th and 29th at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Tickets and more information can be found at kcopera.org.
