It’s Opera—Everybody Dies from Erica Miner

As we head into a rather big news week, do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

Jim: I take full responsibility for the premature appearance of week’s question, which was supposed to be next week’s question. I miscalculated the date. So, apologies to all. But I feel this topic fits our guest poster’s book better anyway. 

Erica Miner writes a thrilling series of mysteries set in the world of opera. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of reading all her books (as advance reader copies), including her latest, OVERTURE TO MURDER, which released just last week. I’m a BIG FAN of Erica’s and love her engaging amateur violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan. Though serious in tone, these books are so much fun. And you’ll learn a lot about opera reading them. As you’ll see below, Erica is a violinist who played for many, many years with the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, THAT Metropolitan Opera. A marvelous writer of juicy murder mysteries, Erica is a brilliant lecturer and screen writer as well.

Please welcome Erica Miner to 7 Criminal Minds and don’t miss OVERTURE TO MURDER!

“It’s Opera—Everybody Dies”

 

CSI: OPERA?

 

Asked if any of my Opera Mystery novels have been “ripped from the headlines,” my response was, “It’s opera. It makes its own headlines.”

 

Headline-worthy events are not a nightly occurrence at the opera. But they have happened. 

 

As I think back to my 21 years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera, there were two discoveries that stood out as the most significant: 1) an opera house is the perfect environment for mischief and mayhem; and 2) what goes on offstage can be more dramatic than what happens onstage. Two of the most significant examples of these occurred while I was there.

 

Image 1

Once during a live performance being broadcast to thousands, if not millions, of people across the US (Verdi’s Macbeth—I know, the dreaded word; and believe me, it was one of the most disastrous productions of the 20th century), a guy in the audience decided to commit suicide by taking a flying leap off the balcony (see picture 1). I’m not making this up! Fortunately for everyone else, he waited until the intermission to do the deed. It had to have been the longest in Met history, since—ugh—there was all that cleanup to do. 

 

The above is an example of something dramatic happening away from the stage. But on a different occasion, the catastrophe occurred onstage during a performance that was not supposed to be part of the performance.

 

The opera was new to the Met: The Makropoulos Case by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. It was written in Czech, but we were doing it in English (a salient detail in this story). The stage director, in his infinite lack of wisdom, had the poor comprimario tenor (comprimario singers are solo singers who do minor roles, the equivalent of supporting actors in film) singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder. Seriously? Picture this: the Met stage is itself eight or ten feet high, then add twenty feet to that, with a singer who had a fear of heights. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Sure enough, at the first performance of The Makropoulos Case, the poor tenor was singing from the top of a twenty-foot ladder in front of four thousand people. He sang a couple of lines, and then collapsed and plunged to his death right there on the stage (see image 2). Turns out he had had a heart attack—no surprise. But here’s the kicker: the last words he sang before the fall were, “You can only live so long.”

Image 2

 

You can’t make this stuff up. Writing about such incredible events is hard to resist. But would I rip the above stories from the headlines to use in my novels? Highly unlikely. It would be recognized by too many people as real life, coming from such a high profile institution as the Met. There’s a fine line between actual occurrences and fiction. I think many well-informed people would have issues with my reproducing some of the Met’s least savory moments in my novels.

That said, I have taken inspiration from these happenings to develop and deepen my characterizations. The vast majority of my characters represent an amalgamation of the traits and experiences of the people I worked with. I remember one particularly vivid headline-generating incident that involved one of my closest colleagues. I based one of my main characters on this person, couched the event in fictional prose to make it less recognizable, and wove it into the plot of the first book in my series, Aria for Murder. Those in the know understood the connection. Some were critical, others kinder in their assessments. In subsequent novels, however, I’ve steered away from being too close to real life.

Nonetheless, when it came to my protagonist I did not hesitate to base her on the person I know best: myself. At the beginning of Aria for Murder my protagonist, Julia, is a young violinist much like me when I first started out at the Met: a naïve, inexperienced, starstruck neophyte who knows nothing about the political machinations and infighting that go on backstage. She’s just excited to be making her debut in the orchestra of the world’s most prestigious opera company. Little does she know something terrible is about to happen. It's not long before Julia finds herself entangled in a murder investigation and becomes cognizant of the dark side of the theatre, with its shadowy hallways and hidden stairways. 

 

The dreadful occurrence that sets the story in motion is based on a real situation that to my knowledge was not covered in the media, involving a company member: a case of what happens at the Met stays at the Met. Only insiders are familiar with the true circumstances. But I chose to fabricate a fictional happening from a newsworthy one. In that sense, I fueled the story with a recent though not current event.  

Other plot points in Aria for Murder and the sequels Prelude to Murder and Overture to Murder are based on headlines and stories that have been reported in the media. Opera companies are rife with volatile people and potential danger. This goes back to my theory that opera houses provide the perfect setting for calamity and catastrophe: sometimes tragic, sometimes unbelievable, but always headline worthy.

 

A friend of mine was at a rehearsal where the soprano was singing her death scene, while her twelve-year-old son was waiting patiently at the back. The friend asked the boy what he thought about his mother’s death scene. The kid replied, “It’s opera. Everybody dies.”

 

Wise words from the mouth of babes. What happens onstage can be reflected in true occurrences and vice versa: the kind of sensationalism that media like to proclaim in their headlines. That’s one of the aspects of opera that results in its wide appeal: a unique art form that chronicles true occurrences, both contemporary and timeworn. 

 

Verdi, one of the greatest opera composers, based works like Don Carlo on true events, heightening Spanish history with exalted music. Anthony Davis’s The Life and Times of Malcolm X musicallyrecounts the infamous assassination of a controversial public figure. The tradition continues, ripped from headlines both recent and historical, with true life situations that often end in tragedy, where someone, if not everyone, dies.

 

It’s opera. 

 

 

Bio:

 

Erica Miner

Award-winning Seattle-based author, lecturer, screenwriter and arts journalist Erica Miner believes opera theatres are perfect places for creating fictional mischief! Drawing on her 21 years as a violinist at the famed Metropolitan Opera, Erica balances her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera, guiding readers through a dramatized version of the opera world in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series.

Erica’s young violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan, investigates high-profile murder and mayhem behind the Met’s “Golden Curtain” in Book 1, Aria for Murder (2022), finalist in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Chanticleer Independent Book Awards. 

In Book 2, Prelude to Murder (2023) (‘A skillfully written whodunit of operatic proportions’—Kirkus Reviews https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/erica-miner/prelude-to-murder/, 

Distinguished Favorite, 2024 NYC Big Book Awards, further operatic chaos and ghostly apparitions plague Julia at the Santa Fe Opera. In Overture to Murder, releasing in Oct. 2024, Julia finds herself in jeopardy once again at the San Francisco Opera. 

 

Erica’s debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. Her screenplays have won awards in the Writer’s Digest, Santa Fe, and WinFemmecompetitions. When she isn't plumbing the depths of opera houses for murderous mayhem, Erica frequently contributes reviews and interviews for the well-known arts websites www.BroadwayWorld.com, www.bachtrack.com, and www.LAOpus.com.

 

AUTHOR WEBSITE:

https://www.ericaminer.com

 

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:

https://www.facebook.com/erica.miner1              

https://twitter.com/EmwrtrErica          

https://www.instagram.com/emwriter3/

 

ISBNs: 978-1-68512-781-7 (pb)        978-1-68512-782-4 (eb)