sM | What was your process like in representing an abstract peril like climate change in Last Year?

MA — The original soloist [Jeffrey Zeigler] and I had been trying to find a moment to make a concerto together for a long time. It occurred to me that it needed to be more than an abstract idea of, “Let me compose a cello concerto.” I was listening to a recording of The Four Seasons because my beloved’s father [John Corigliano, Sr.] was the soloist in it. It’s a wonderful, vital, unusual—rather extreme for its day—way of doing four small concerti, rather than a large movement. There’s an innocence about it. It’s the opposite of waking up in the morning, going out in October and realizing it’s 50 degrees [Farenheit]! I have literally found myself going, “This is seasonal weather. Okay. Take a breath.” But, of course, I turn off the Vivaldi, turn on the news, and the first thing I hear about is how Hurricane Harvey—another once-in-a-lifetime storm—has drowned Houston, a city I know very well.

So I thought, “You couldn’t write that Vivaldi concerto today. You couldn’t be that sunny and optimistic.” I thought maybe that’s actually a good idea for a piece. In order to write it, I’d have to confront all the feelings that we spend most of our time not thinking about. All of that dread and hope—and for that matter, guilt—you’ll do something stupid. Like, you’re going to the fish market, buying scallops, and the fishmonger’s wrapping them in plastic. You’ll say, “Oh, I don't need the plastic bag.” You’ll think, “I’ve done something! That’s at least one plastic bag that isn’t ending up in the belly of a porpoise.” Even as you miniaturize that and laugh it off, it’s a denial that you need to employ just to get through the day.

In the same way that Vivaldi’s subject isn’t really the seasons—it’s the Italians experiencing them—I came up with the subject of what we moderns experience with the seasons. How can I come up with musical tropes which speak to the way we live now? Maybe this is because I’m principally an opera composer, but I write as if I’m an actor. I have to excavate from my own emotional process, or nerve endings. I also work architecturally, planning events and all of that. But, ultimately, the sounds are coming off your own body in some way. So I’m glad it’s done! (Laughs) I’m glad I am no longer doing it. I am glad that it is recorded.

sM | What inspired you to cast the god of wine, Dionysus, as Dracula in your opera, The Lord of Cries?

MA — It’s one of the great disturbing characters. The Vampire is Dionysus. And Pentheus [The King of Thebes] is those of us who want to deny the kind of—sometimes ecstatic and sometimes disordering—lifeforce that Dionysus represents. How the whole show began is that I had been invited to consider Dracula for the opera house and couldn’t find a way that didn’t seem like a played card. All the symbolism of that narrative just seemed to be stuff that we had moved beyond. But the idea that in some way you can deny nature through force of will, or desire to be good… we’re still dealing with that.