Contempo-Scary Music: Q&A with soprano Nancy Allen Lundy

Soprano Nancy Allen Lundy has enjoyed a varied career with an emphasis on contemporary music. Last season, she and pianist, Stephen Gosling, celebrated David Del Tredici’s birthday at Barge Music after her earlier performance of Dracula at Merkin Hall with American Modern Ensemble. A favorite of Tan Dun, she has originated and performed his leading ladies around the world, including Vancouver Opera, Netherlands Opera, NHK (Tokyo), BAM, and Royal Symphony Stockholm. This season she reprises the role of Zina in Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart directed by Simon McBurney with Netherlands Opera, a role she earlier premiered in Amsterdam with subsequent performances at ENO (London), La Scala (Milan), and Opera de Lyon.

Nancy was kind enough to answer a few questions about her role in the upcoming performance of David Del Tredici's Dracula — a 20-minute setting of Alfred Corn's poem, “My Neighbor, the Distinguished Count,” which retells the famous gothic tale from the point of view of a woman living next door to the Count — at ACO’s 40th Season Opener, “Contempo-Scary Music,” on October 28, 2016 at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. The New York Times has called the piece a “gloriously giddy melodrama.”

Soprano Lundy performed Del Tredici's Dracula
with the American Modern Ensemble in 2014

American Composers Orchestra: Can you talk about your character in David Del Tredici’s Dracula?

Nancy Allen Lundy: I am the neighbor lady of Dracula and have been friends with his parents. Over the years, I imagine we shared dinners, watching as the young boy grew to adulthood. I find myself strangely attracted to this young man whose physical traits are somehow altered from what I remember. He seems to be quite fond of me as well. He pays me “visits”, sending me gifts in the interims. As the narrative progresses, I question why he seems no longer interested in me. Realizing I am indeed hooked, I find my whole life’s meaning is tied to the whims of this odd creature with “an electric tic active at the corner of the mouth”.

ACO: The piece asks for an uncommonly theatrical performance from an orchestra-accompanied soprano. Can you talk about the moments in your role that might surprise (or scare?) an unsuspecting audience member?

NAL: I doubt that anything will be frightening, even for young people. I believe the effect is more comical; an indulgent, hyper-dramatic reading of a person losing her grasp and falling victim to an unusual addiction; the addiction to human blood by which the average, run-of-the-mill vampire is afflicted. And I wouldn’t want to give anything away, now, would I…. [insert scary laugh] ??!!

ACO: In his program note, David says “Nervous giggles and startled gasps would not be unwelcome here,” but he also explains the works deeper meaning: “the listener confronts the more ominous world of addiction, betrayal, and obsession. And inevitably, there comes the ultimate degradation—a Faustian bargain with a devilish price: devolution into the living dead.” Can you talk about the ways in which you try to convey these themes?

NAL: It isn’t in my best interest to try to convey themes or morals. I read the lines and play the scenes and let the audience take what it gleans from it. I feel the ache in my eye teeth as they start to lengthen, I feel the thirst, the hunger for Dracula’s visits, the crushing devastation of a jilted lover. I feel the madness of obsession, the grotesque, itching convulsing as life is leaving and the undead is being born within my flesh.

ACO: You have performed Dracula before with the American Modern Ensemble and last March you celebrated David’s birthday with a recital of his music at Barge Music with pianist Stephen Gosling. Can you talk about your relationship with Del Tredici’s music?

NAL: I have been an admirer of the work of David Del Tredici since I was a music student at college in Northern Minnesota, the same school where Phyllis Bryn-Julson went. Her recording of Alice was there in the library, and I familiarized myself with it in equal measure to Beethoven, Mozart, and all the rest which was unknown to me. It was the greatest treat to meet him finally in his NYC apartment to sing through Dracula. His music mirrors his own thoughtful humanity, flare for the dramatic, aching poignancy and youthful wonder. If I were more of a music theorist, I would say that his music is logically constructed and balanced in symmetry. But my main interest in his music is that it moves me to sing about all that he sees is human, dramatic, poignant and wondrous. And funny, too!

Watch Nancy Allen Lundy's performance of 
Dracula with the American Modern Ensemble:

Hear soprano Nancy Allen Lundy in David Del Tredici's Dracula at Contempo-Scary Music, ACO's 40th Season Opener on October 28, 2016 at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall.