This is part of a series of interviews conducted with writers who will attend the 2015Celebration of Southern Literature April 16-18. (Previously, WUTC has interviewed Jill McCorkle, Ron Rash, Andrew Hudgins and several others.) More than 40 writers will be at the Celebration, taking part in discussion panels and other events, as well as meeting fans and signing autographs. The public is invited. The schedule and ticket information can be found here.
Charles Frazier is the author of three novels: Nightwoods (2011), Thirteen Moons (2006), and Cold Mountain (1997), which won a National Book Award and was adapted into an Oscar-nominatedfilm.
Now Cold Mountain is being adapted into a different medium: opera. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon and librettist Gene Scheer have created it, and it's set to premiere August 1st in Santa Fe.
Both Frazier and Hidgon grew up in the Southeast--Frazier in North Carolina; Higdon in East Tennessee, and the region's influence is evident in both the novel and the opera.
"There are little bits and echoes of old-time Southern Appalachian music" in the opera, Frazier says.
For example, he says, one of the singers plays the fiddle, "and I think he's going to be playing the fiddle live onstage as he's performing in a couple of scenes."
Frazier says he's happy with the opera, and the cast is "incredible." Baritone Nathan Gunn plays Inman, and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard is Ada.
"She looks like Ada just stepped right off the page," Frazier says.
In this interview, Frazier tells us about the opera; also, about the as-yet-untitled novel he's working on, which centers on Varina Howell Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis; and much more.
