Melissa Dunphy

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Melissa (right) and her husband, Matthew Dunphy (left) standing in a privy they found under their house.

Melissa Dunphy (born 1980) is an Australian-American composer best known for her vocal, political, and theatrical music.

She is most notable for the Gonzales

Rachel Maddow Show in 2009; Maddow described it as "probably the coolest thing you've ever seen on this show." Dunphy completed her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and is currently on the composition faculty at Rutgers University
.

Early life

Born in Brisbane, Australia, Dunphy was raised in an immigrant household. Dunphy's father was a Greek immigrant, and her mother was a refugee who fled from China to evade the Cultural Revolution. Dunphy first began piano lessons at age 3. Her mother introduced her to music after reading that "kids who studied classical music are better at math."[1]

The Boghouse

In 2016, Melissa Dunphy and her husband, Matthew Dunphy, discovered privies while renovating a  former magic theater that they had just purchased in Old City. After excavating the first privy (which extended 19 feet below the property), they found hundreds of ceramic artifacts,  glass bottles, oyster shells, and animal bones dating back to the early 1700’s. Refusing to sell the items, the Dunphy's kept the artifacts and are still in the process of cleaning centuries worth of composted human feces and mud from the various broken shards and artifacts, and slowly piecing them back. Melissa and Matthew have a podcast named The Boghouse where they talk about their experiences buying the magic theater, and the chaos that followed their discovery of thousands of pre-revolutionary artifacts.

Gonzales Cantata

Conceived while Dunphy was at

Senate Judiciary Committee was made up entirely of men, with the exception of Dianne Feinstein - and also because there are more female opera singers than male - she reversed the genders and cast sopranos as Gonzales and as the male senators. Orrin Hatch is an alto, because he was more sympathetic to Gonzales and it needed "a different vibe";[3] Feinstein is a male tenor. The cantata includes an aria for Gonzales called "I Don't Recall," in which the soprano sings the title phrase 72 times, the same number of times that Gonzales said it in the hearings.[4] Dunphy reports that she asked John Ashcroft for permission to arrange his song "Let the Eagle Soar" as a "companion piece," but he turned her down on grounds of "artistic differences."[2]

The piece is generally

P.D.Q. Bach,[5][7] or pointed out the use of "Coplandesque harmonies when characters were being folksy."[5]

The work premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September 2009. It was staged as a cantata or oratorio; characters wore red or blue dresses depending on party affiliation, with tiaras as well as sashes bearing their names.[4] American Opera Theater staged the work as an opera in February 2011; reviews were less positive, with critics saying that Dunphy's parody of Baroque music compared unfavorably to P.D.Q. Bach and criticizing her out-of-period use of dissonance. Anne Midgette, criticizing the piece's lack of a coherent message, wrote, "Performed as a cantata, this piece may be an amusing diversion; staged as an opera, it reveals its dramatic deficiencies and loses some of its zany humor."[6][7]

Selected other works

  • Black Thunder (2008) - work for baritone, violin, cello, and piano which received an honorable mention in the ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Foundation 2009 Art Song Competition.
  • What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? (2010) - choral work to the text of public testimony by WWII veteran Philip Spooner in support of Maine's No on 1 campaign, which aimed to preserve same-sex marriage in the state. It won the 2010 Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition.[10]
  • American Dreamers (2022) - choral work set to a collection of 5 texts from American writers reflecting on their experiences immigrating to the U.S. when they were children. The piece was commissioned by PhilHarmonia, a Philadelphia based community choir led by Mitos Andaya Hart.
  • Alice Tierney (2023) - an "archeology opera" based on Dunphy's experiences excavating privy sites near her Philadelphia home. The piece was commissioned and premiered the Oberlin Opera Theater.

Awards and honors

Dunphy has received awards from NATS Art Song Composition which won first place for her song cycle Tesla's Pigeon, and choral work What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? which won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Competition and has been performed nationally by ensembles including Chanticleer and Cantus. In 2024, Dunphy was awarded and Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. She was the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant[11] for Alice Tierney, an opera commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory which premiered in 2023 at Oberlin and Opera Columbus.[12]

Dunphy has been a composer in residence with the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra since 2010. She also previously worked with Volti Choral Arts Lab from 2013-2014, Volti Choral Institute in 2016, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus from 2015 to 2018.

Acting

Dunphy is also a stage actress. She has played a number of Shakespearean roles for theatre festivals and companies in Pennsylvania, where she has resided since 2003. The Philadelphia Inquirer called her "unquestionably the city's leading Shakespeare ingenue" for her performance as Ophelia in the Lantern Theater Company's Hamlet.[13]

References

  1. ^ Farr, Stephanie. "Flush with artifacts". The Philadelphia Inquirer. pp. C1–C2. Retrieved April 25, 2024.
  2. ^ a b Jones, Ashby (September 2, 2009). "Alberto Gonzales, the Concert Opera (No, We're Not Kidding)". The Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
  3. ^ Gonzopera. The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC. September 3, 2009. Archived from the original on September 8, 2009. Retrieved 2010-12-01.
  4. ^ a b Nichols, Peter (October 2009). "Sympathy for the Attorney General". UPenn School of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2010-12-01.
  5. ^ a b c Stearns, David Patrick (September 6, 2009). "The Gonzales Cantata". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on November 25, 2010.
  6. ^ a b Midgette, Anne (February 14, 2011). "American Opera Theater's resigned 'Gonzales Cantata'". The Washington Post.
  7. ^ a b c Smith, Tim (February 10, 2011). "'Gonzales Cantata,' 'Dido' form unusual double bill". The Baltimore Sun.
  8. ^ Sanchez, Julian (September 3, 2009). "Gonzo Opera". The Atlantic.
  9. ^ Horton, Scott (September 3, 2009). "And Now: Fredo, the Opera". Harper's Magazine.
  10. ^ Hartman, Lee (April 13, 2010). "Melissa Dunphy wins Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition". Kansas City Metropolis.
  11. ^ "Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grants". Opera America. Retrieved 2024-04-16.
  12. ^ "Oberlin Opera Theater Presents World Premiere of "Alice Tierney" Jan. 27-29". Oberlin College and Conservatory. 2023-01-11. Retrieved 2024-04-16.
  13. ^ "Performance". Melissa Dunphy. Retrieved 2010-12-01.

External links

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