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The Witch
David Irving's one act opera The Witch, was commissioned
by The Concert Society of Putnam and Westchester County and received its
world premiere in Somers, New York.
About the Concert Society of Putnam and Westchester County - by Beth Waterfall
On
the Trail of a Tail of a Witch - by Beth
Waterfall
Second Place Award Winning Article for the New York State Press
Association
Richard Serbagi (left), President and Music
Director of the Concert Society, and David Irving rest against old stone
foundations as they go over the score for The
Witch in the area known as The Traps.
It is here that the action of the opera begins
About the Concert Society of Putnam and Westchester County, taken from "The Concert Society" from North County Views, North County News, by Beth Waterfall.
Behind the ventures of the concert society are the energies of board members dedicated to their belief in producing music in their own arena. And always there is the driving force of Richard Serbagi -- cellist, teacher, conductor and tireless innovator of fresh approaches to sharing the spectrum of music he loves. The society's premiere production of David Irving's The Witch typifies the efforts of the concert society to stretch out as far as possible and reach up as high as it can go. Irving joins other prominent composers whose work is being brought to Putnam and Westchester audiences by the concert society through its "Meet the Composer" performances. Aided by grants from the "Meet the Composer" organization, the concert society has previously presented renowned composers such as David Amram, Michael Colgrass, John Corigliano, Ivana Themmen, David Gilbert and the late Walter Hagen.
Soloists such as Grayson Hirst and Metropolitan Opera singer Isola Jones have appeared with the society. Many of its musicians perform regularly with the American Ballet Theatre, the New York Ballet, American Symphony and the Metropolitan Opera.
The cast for The Witch features British-born opera singer Sally Munro
who has performed widely here and abroad; Robert Williams, hailed by the
Christian Science Monitor as "One of the finest tenors in memory:' J.B. Davis,
who began singing opera at the age of 14 and has completed 13 tours with
the famed Goldovsky Opera Theater; and Ann Irving, who has appeared in many
leading roles with important American opera companies. Colleen Quinn will
appear in the dance sequences within the
opera.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"Our folklore is the poetry of the composite American
mind."
---
Carl Carmer
The cabin beside the road.
The composer stood before the little cabin at the side of the road. Its screen door hung wide. A pail turned mouth down over a nearby post. Long hardwood logs hugged the ground under cover of a star-patterned quilt, and a sign in the grass whispered that handmade Taghanick baskets could be found inside.
David Irving hesitated. He rapped his knuckles sharply on the doorjamb and waited…wondering.
Witches' feet make star tracks…
Did witches' feet really make star tracks in the dust?
That's what a character in his opera sings. At one time the thought might have amused him. Now he felt it was no smiling matter. After all, he concluded, others--and their beliefs--deserve respect. Whether he agreed with them or not. After all, who was he to question the answers people find for themselves to "explain the unexplainable" in their lives?
All day Irving and his musician colleague Richard Serbagi had been on the trail of a tale of a witch.
The Witch is the name of Irving's latest composition, a one-act opera, based on legends and lore of what are called the "border people" in the Hudson Valley, fiercely independent people who live off the beaten path in small pockets not unlike those where can be found the mountaineers of, say, Tennessee.
This is how the opera came to be.
Serbagi, president of the Concert Society of Putnam and Northern Westchester, asked Irving for a composition reflecting the history of the Hudson Valley.
"It's for the people here: it should be about the people here," Serbagi explained.
Irving found a book called The Hudson by the late Carl Carmer. Set in 1935, it was about the customs and beliefs of little-known people of the river valley. It was Carmer's feeling that this was a way to recount history.
In the chapter "Witches Make Star Tracks," Carmer told of folk who fear the supernatural. He had met them in three sociological Islands: the Hill, a Taghanic mountain not far from Kingston; the Eagle's Nest, a craggy climb 20 miles south; and the Traps, an area 20 miles farther south yet.
An opera is born
Intrigued, Irving wrote a libretto for an opera based on Carmer's collected legends and lore. Soon the opera had taken over his life and he became a detective, searching for more and more background on Carmer and his experiences with the people who respected the supernatural.
On the recent day here described, book in hand, Irving and Serbagi headed north by car to try to trace the footsteps of the author, hunting down what they could find about witches and those who believed in them. (Little did they realize what success they would have.)
Standing outside the little cabin not far from Kingston, the composer felt the wind slap at his face, forcing his eyes into a tight squint.
He knocked one more time.
A woman, nearing 40, finally answered. Her blondish hair was pulled straight back, her hands thrust deep into overall pockets.
"Whatcher want?" she said. The tone wasn't unfriendly. Just direct. (Apologies to this nice woman if her country accent is not exactly recorded here.)
"My name is…"
Irving introduced himself and Serbagi; he explained their mission. Carmer's book -- he held it up -- the basketmakers on the Hill knew about witches. Since she was a basketmaker, did she have any information on the subject? Did people in the area still believe in the supernatural? Where exactly was the Hill?
"Turn aroun'n look behin'yer…Enny place yer set yer eyes is the Hill," she said.
"What's your name? Irving inquired.
Lizzie Proper's m'name…
"Lizzie Proper's m'name," the woman said. (Proper, Proper…that was one of the families mentioned in the book.) "I don't know about witches, although thur wuz one they sed was a witch. She lived close ta yere. But I don't know she really wuz. Oh, she wuz mean, all right, and us kids called her a witch, but…"
The day had begun early for the composer, shortly after dawn eerily lit the canyons of New York City, his home. By rights he should have been feeling fatigue, but…
"Carrie Simmons wuz her name," Lizzie Proper was saying. "Her son wuz the one who played tricks…that's wut I think anyways, He wuz the one crumbled her bread and put manure in it…
"Thur wuz a witch, name' Hat Rope, tho. M'Uncle Bert wud sit thur fer hours and we'd listen to 'm tell stories…
"She wuz, as far as I know, a real witch. She cud tern herself into differ'nt things, you know? She terned herself into a cat in front of my uncle, right in front of 'm, in the barn."
Standing in the doorway, Lizzie Proper told how Hat Rope took the form of a cat and flung herself right at Uncle Bert. She near choked him to death. He had to do something drastic, he thought, like git her arm. So he grabbed that cat and flung it right off and the next day he went to her house and Hat Rope's arm was black'n blue and hurt, right where's he hurt that cat's arm.
Lizzie Proper sucked in her breath.
"I don't know so much 'bout witches, but I believe in ghosts, that's shur," she offered.
"My father," Lizzie said, "he comes here still. Why one time a salt cup flew right past my face, and a pepper cup right behind. Now, how do ya 'splain thet? She inquired, providing her own answer. "Thet wuz my father, shure.
Irving and Serbagi listened intently.
"Now here's somethin' thet jist happened not long ago…"
Lizzie Proper launched into a story good for any Hallowed Eve.
The secrets of the Taghanics
Lizzie makes baskets like her mother and father before here and their mothers and fathers before them. The Propers appear to have inherited the secrets of the Taghanic Indians who were the first to know which oak, hickory and ash trees to cut down and how to strip with their fingers the wood fibers from their core to weave into life-lasting valuable baskets.
"One day the phone rung hyere," Lizzie recounted, "and it wuz a man who sed he wuz from Hawaii and he wanted ta know whiter I cud mend some of his baskets."
The man arrived with baskets Lizzie guessed had come from Africa. She said she'd try to make the necessary repairs and he left them with her. As she and her teenaged daughter were examining them, they discovered a pin with a pearl on its head stuck into one.
"Why, that's a real pearl," said Lizzie. "Imagine."
It was later that night when Liz's daughter got up from where they were sitting to go to the kitten for a drink of water. Suddenly Lizzie heard a scream.
Boney fingers on the spine
"Boney fingers club right up my spine," cried her daughter, running in from the kitchen. "I felt 'm. Jist like boney fingers. They clumb right up m'spine!"
After a spell, Lizzie was thirsty and she went to get herself a drink.
"It wuz terrible," she sed, spilling out her account of what occurred on her trip to the kitchen.
"I felt'm. I felt those boney fingers clumb right up m'spine, that's just wut it felt like, boney fingers clumbing right up and down my spine.
"I come back and sed 'Whurz thet pearl? Whur is it?" Lizzie said she knew wut she had ta do.
Lizzie Proper reached for the pearl-headed pin. She grabbed the thing and flung it right into the fire. Then she got those baskets and threw em right out the door, calling after.
"You git out o' here, ya damned ghost, and leave us alone. Clumb back into yer basket and stay thur," she yelled. "We don't wunt eny part of you!"
"I talked right to it," Lizzie explained.
When the owner of the African baskets called later to see whether the repairs were completed, Lizzie Proper told him no and they wouldn't be.
"He sed, 'You found the pearl, did ya?"
"Yes, I found the damn pearl," Lizzie said.
"And you had a ghost there, didn't you? He said.
"Yes, and I threw the pearl in the fire and the damn baskets, ghost 'n'all, right out the door!" Lizzie Proper informed him.
Irving and Serbagi liked this woman. She was talented, down-to-earth and a person of strong will and opinion. She pulled no punches either.
How much were her baskets?
Lizzie quoted a price for a nest of three that ran more than a hundred dollars. Many inquirers, she noted, found the sum high. They didn't appreciate, Lizzie said, that she knew how to find and cut down just the right trees herself and that she, with the participation of her daughter, had the secrets for how to turn them into basket prizes.
How do you…Irving began, to be stopped by Lizzie midsentence.
"If I told ya how, then wudn't be no damn secret, wud it?" she inquired. "Besides, I won't talk no more about tha baskets less'n ma daughter's hyere. We're in it tagether."
But what Lizzie Proper was willing to do was give directions to the house where Carrie Simmons, the one she used to call a witch as a child and who used to say that Lizzie ran home from school naked, just because she tucked her skirts up inside the elastic of her underpants.
Irving's eyes all but glowed as he and Serbagi headed back to the car. Could they believe the luck of their day? They were headed for the very house of the very witch mentioned in Carmer's book.
"On Serbagi!…Onward to the witch's house!" sang Irving.
First stop, Ohioville
At the beginning of the excursion, hoping to find a region called The Traps, it was agreed, Serbagi would drive. Irving would read from Carmer's book. The author referred to having passed through a little town called Ohioville.
Adrenalin began to flow like champagne when Irving cheered, "There it is! Ohioville. Back up. You passed it!"
Carol Johnson points out the way to area know as The Traps.
A sign announced a liquor store by the name of the town, which was little more than a widening in the road. A canoe hung suspended from chains outside the shop, backed by an advertisement for bait. The woman inside knew nothing about the The Traps region and had no comment about witchcraft, but sent the pair around the side of the building to ask at another door.
Carol Johnson, a pleasant young woman as it turned out, is a genealogist with the local historical society in nearby New Paltz. She said the stone houses there were built beginning in the late 1600s, by the Huguenots. They were the original "patentees," receiving grants of land from the King of England.
Did they believe in witches?
Look for scratches inside the door
"Why, you can still see the scratches inside the door that the Huguenots put there to keep the witches out," Johnson noted. She gave directions and sent the musicians on their way.
I had passed through Ohioville and Plutarch and it was dusk…
Irving read on.
I welcomed the sight of a gas station…Can I get a bite to eat here?
The response came from a tall dark woman who came out, loose-jointed and gawky, cheekbones high, mouth twisted and sunken.
I guess you kin, she said. It's about the only place in the Traps.
Uncle Charlie's wife witched him
It wasn't hard to find The Traps. There was even a road sign announcing the area.
Little streams ran here and there. Old houses, tumbled down long before were marked only by old foundations of stone. One ramshackle place still hung in there, clapboard painted and flaking red. Shredded plastic whipped at its windowed eyes and a Jacob's ladder swung slightly in a side yard.
Witches make star tracks, Irving sang.
It was the Town Highway crew's supervisor, a tall and weathered man named Walter Bartsch, who next pointed the way. Operas about witches seemed a low priority to him, but he did his best to tell how to reach the site of the gas station where Carmer had stopped and heard his first witch tales.
"Hold it," Irving commanded. The scene that ensued amazed the squirrels and the chipmunks. The composer and conductor leaped from their car.
"Look here," cried Serbagi to Irving, holding up old pieces of exhaust pipe. "This is the place all right. Here's where the gas pump stood."
Irving began singing snatches from the opera, telling its story.
Singing passages from the The Witch
A New York City reporter has been sent up here to catch the flavor of authentic regionality. He has not bargained for witches, however. The people he meets give him an earful, including the woman at the gas station where he stops in for a sandwich.
Uncle Charlie owned most of this here mountain once, she sings. Danged if I don't think that wife o' his didn't witch him into signing it almost all away for a bran new five-dollar bill.
Irving jumped from foundation stone to foundation stone, singing arias about witchcraft.
I seen her witchcraft once. It looked like a piece o' red chalk…You had to burn it to make it any good..
The stories poured forth and so did the operatic songs.
No good comes from Eagle's Nest
Doug Bell from Port Ewen, three miles from Kingston, admitted he'd heard witch stories all his life, but said it was ghosts that he'd personally had experience with. He told of the house down by the water that no one had gone near for 15 years, because of the haunts.
"I was 15 and one night there'd be furniture, the next night nothing. A doctor was stabbed to death there; it's his spirit that can get no rest," the young man said. "You couldn't drag me to that house. People see lights in the woods…"
Folks do what they damned please on Eagle's Nest…They're mostly black sheep and they never say anything and they drink all they can get. It's the worst place in seven counties, Carmer recorded in his book.
Driving up Eagle's Nest was a test of auto endurance and driver skill. Serbagi could hardly believe they made it to the top. This is where Carmer had gone, finding a little cleared plateau at the end of the almost impassable road. A man named Jacob Flodder stood in front of his house, looking like an Indian chief. His wife was Stella Yellow Bird.
They told of rockin' chairs a'rockin jest like somebody were in them and somebody's lookin' through the window at night..and not seein' nobody there.
The house at the top of Eagle's Nest is new these days, made of stone with heavy log beams inside. A wreath of grape vine dotted with red poppies graces the outshanty wall.
At the top of Eagle's Nest
It was on the way down that Irving met up with Cornelius, a 76-year-old lifelong Eaglenester who allowed as how he'd spent his whole life on the mountain. "Except for when they took me away to serve in the military during "World War II. I hear my daddy talk of witches, but he's gone now, just like the eagles." So were the stories of witches, no matter how many journalists traveled up the mountain to dig them out again, for Cornelius was polite, but he refused to talk.
The "witch" is gone
Lizzie Proper's directions to Carrie Simmon's house worked. When Irving and Serbagi pulled into the drive, the first thing they met were six friendly Toggenburgh goats who all wanted their ears scratched.
And next? A black cat that rolled over for a tummy pat.
The place didn't look like a witch's house now. It was too neat and cared for -- modern, with an addition.
The hour was late when a blue-eyed cheery woman with white hair opened the door and asked Irving and Serbagi in. They entered the low-ceilinged kitchen with a big old black wood burning stove in center position and 12 heavy handcut beams running overhead. Her husband sat at the kitchen table, a fat stuffed green olive in the bottom of a cocktail glass. Frank Glausen Jr. was his name. For 51 years he had worked as a manager and engineer for the New York City subway system. At one point he had a 22-piece band named the Glausen Renodians and played for Mayor Jimmy Walker. Mrs. Glausen grew up in Manhattan on Twelfth Street where her mother ran a boarding house and "carried" Al Capp, the originator of L'il Abner, when he couldn't pay his rent.
She remembered running into Gene Tunney just before his fight with Jack Dempsey and his asking to carry her bucket of milk for her.
Did the name Carrie Simons sound familiar to them? Irving inquired.
Yes, it was one of the names on the deeds that came with the place, they said. The deeds were all there, going all the way back to the original grant from the King of England.
And witches? Did they know anything about witches?
No, Glausen said, not exactly. But there was a quicksand hold on the land that might pass for a witch's trap. It held shallow water with a sandy white bottom and never froze over no matter how cold it gets. The tales were told about a cow getting sucked down inside and a dog nearly was lost there once. Glausen stayed clear of the spot.
Mrs. Glausen was keen to know about the opera Irving had written on the witch tales of their area.
"I'm an opera love myself," she said, pointing out the organ in the front room.
"I'm especially fond of Aida and love to sing along with Gilbert and Sullivan."
The moon shone silver on the witch's trail
As the car headed back from the "witch hunt," Irving continued to hum snatches of arias from The Witch. He and Serbagi couldn't get over the people they had met and the success of their day.
The moon, a silver sliver, hung suspended overhead in the darkening sky.
The journalist in Irving's opera did not believe in witches, although the witch has the last say.
"Witches make star tracks," Irving sang.
* * * * * * * * * *
*