30 Days of NYMF on BroadwayWorld Day 23: Backstage with the Wise Guys behind DON IMBROGLIO

By: Sep. 24, 2005
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Backstage with the Wise Guys behind DON IMBROGLIO
By Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi

Composer Peter Hilliard and librettist Matt Boresi met five years ago when they were students in NYU's graduate Musical Theatre program, and they've been working together ever since – laboring under the stuffy old notion that Rossini and Offenbach were right: you should have a good time at the opera.  Combining high- and low-brow art, wild comedy and beautiful singing, they believe that opera can and should be enjoyed by the masses.  Their opera buffa, Don Imbroglio, has its world premiere this week, as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival.  The sold-out run has just added an additional performance on Thursday, September 28 at 4:30PM.  Following are excerpts from an interview with Peter and Matt during a recent rehearsal break.

Tell us about your process as collaborators.

Peter: Matt and I met at NYU in 2000, and we wrote a 20-minute opera called Wonderful Clockwork.  We worked well together from the very first lyric he sent me, and we really haven't looked back.  The next year we wrote Don Imbroglio, and we've written four operas and a number of other things since. We write fairly quickly, but our prep time on any given piece is really extensive; we try to absorb the work of every person we can find who has ever tried to do what we're trying to do.  For this piece, we listened to Mozart and Rossini and watched mob movies 24-7.

How did you decide to write an opera about the mob?

Peter: The first decision we made for Don Imbroglio was to write an opera buffa, all the other decisions sprang from that. We knew we wanted it to be contemporary, so we needed a current socially stratified situation, and the mob presented itself almost immediately. 

Matt: Everyone loves mafia stories... I think it's because the mob operates outside the rules of society, and modern people felt very straightjacketed by society. They're bad dudes, though, not loveable miscreants.  Still, the mob provided the social construct we needed, and the Italian jokes.  I'm Italian, and I've got plenty of jokes to tell.

There's been a lot of public debate recently about the death of the American musical.  What's your opinion, as authors?  And where does your own work fit in?

Matt: We wouldn't be so harsh and apocalyptic - there are some wonderful musicals on Broadway right now.  But a lot of musicals lately are send-ups of musical theatre that sort of hate musical theatre.  Don Imbroglio is in some ways a send-up of comic opera, but we love opera... we love it... and we hope we've made a loving piece that acts as a comic opera in itself, not as some kind of indictment of the form.

The New York Musical Theatre Festival is a festival of new musicals, not operas.  Who are you writing for?

Peter: Matt and I choose to write operas partially because we love singers and singing, and partially because audience expectations for an opera are totally up in the air. When people see a musical, they expect to see something like a favorite musical they already love. But when people see a new opera, all bets are off, and they can afford to be pleasantly surprised. 

Matt: We love to hear opera fans say they got all the in-jokes, and we love to hear people say that they normally "don't get" opera, but that they had a great time at our piece. We're writing for people who want to be happy they went to the trouble of leaving their TV behind.

Don Imbroglio plays at the Lion Theatre (410 West 42nd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues) on Off-Broadway's Theatre Row on Sunday, September 25 at 8PM, Tuesday, September 27 at 8PM, Wednesday, September 28 at 1PM, Thursday, September 28 at 4:30PM, Friday, September 30 at 8PM, and Saturday, October 1 at 4:30PM and 8PM.  All tickets are $15 and available by phone (212) 352-3101 and online at http://www.nymf.org.


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