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Carnegie Hall Set for World Premiere of Orange County Troupe's Opera

Writer's picture: Eric MarcheseEric Marchese

Updated: Jan 28

Lyric Opera of OC’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is being unveiled at the renowned venue.


In the upcoming world premiere of "The Yellow Wallpaper" which will be performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Diana Farrell, left, portrays protagonist Jane, Brooke deRosa is the ever-present housemaid Jenney, and Michael O’Halloran is Jane’s physician husband John. Farrell wrote the opera’s libretto and deRosa its music for Lyric Opera of OC, the company artistic director Farrell founded in 2017. Photo courtesy of Lyric Opera of OC / Molly Nouri
In the upcoming world premiere of "The Yellow Wallpaper" which will be performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Diana Farrell, left, portrays protagonist Jane, Brooke deRosa is the ever-present housemaid Jenney, and Michael O’Halloran is Jane’s physician husband John. Farrell wrote the opera’s libretto and deRosa its music for Lyric Opera of OC, the company artistic director Farrell founded in 2017. Photo courtesy of Lyric Opera of OC / Molly Nouri
 

For centuries, women have battled for equality, respect and dignity. Whether for the right to vote, for equal pay, or for power over their own bodies and reproductive rights, women have fought, and continue to fight, to be viewed and regarded by society as equal to men.


Now, a new opera on the subject of women’s healthcare, based on a seminal 19th-century literary work, is about to get its world premiere.


That work is the creation and product of an Orange County troupe, only the unveiling of the opera isn’t here at home, but at one of the most vaunted arts establishments of all – Carnegie Hall in New York City.


The opera is “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and it’s based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1876 short story, which delves into themes of women’s autonomy over their bodies and their health.


Women’s Health at the Forefront

The new opera is the brainchild of Diana Farrell, artistic director of Lyric Opera of OC. Farrell founded the Irvine-based troupe in 2017 with the aim of locating, producing and staging new works – particularly those written by women or whose subjects deal with women' s lives, issues and concerns.


The company’s press release says the opera is “set against the backdrop of the oppressive ‘rest cure,’ a 19th-century treatment for women suffering from so-called hysteria” and that it “weaves an evocative score and poignant text to explore a woman’s psychological journey from confinement to liberation.”


According to the London-based Science Museum’s websitethe rest cure was a medical treatment that involved bed rest, restricted diet, massage and electrical stimulation. It was used to treat hysteria, neurasthenia, and anorexia nervosa.


Dr. Mary Putnam-Jacobi. Undated.
Dr. Mary Putnam-Jacobi. Undated.

Farrell, who wrote the libretto in tandem with Brooke deRosa’s music, said their opera “draws inspiration not only from Gilman’s story, but also from the life and contributions of female physician Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, a contemporary of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, the inventor of the rest cure. Dr. Jacobi’s advocacy for women’s health and scientific rigor contrasts sharply with the pseudoscientific practices that often undermined women’s autonomy.”


Farrell calls the opera “a tribute to the voices of women – past and present – who continue to fight for control over their own bodies and health. Though the methods seem absurd in 2025, the story of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is as relevant today as it was in Gilman’s time.


“In the libretto, I quote the real-life work and words of Dr. Weir Mitchell and his male colleagues who created and anecdotally defended the ‘rest cure,’ and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first woman physicians whose scientific and rational documentation negating the rest cure was simply ignored by so many medical professionals at the time.


“It seemed a bizarre parallel to know that it has been 150 years since Jacobi began her methodical work and nearly 130 years since Gilman first published the novella based on her experiences, and yet in many places women are still not allowed autonomy over their bodies and care.”


Sopranos Farrell and deRosa also star in the upcoming New York production – Farrell as Jane, who is subjected to the dreaded rest cure, and deRosa as Jenney, Jane’s housemaid. The show’s producer and third cast member is baritone Michael O’Halloran, who fills the role of John, Jane’s physician husband. Farrell said the characters of John and Jenney “help demonstrate the outside elements of this real-life debate while Jane deteriorates in front of them,” with Jenney functioning as a Greek chorus.


The concert production is helmed by veteran opera director Cynthia Stokes. Pianist Carl Pantle, another longtime colleague of Farrell’s, is the production’s conductor, set to lead the New York-based chamber ensemble TerpsiKord, whose repertoire ranges from Renaissance to contemporary works.


Lyric Opera of OC’s press release refers to the upcoming concert production as “semi-staged,” meaning its show will focus primarily on the music and vocals and use minimal sets, costumes and any elaborate choreography – versus a fully-staged version with complete set design, costumes, more intricate staging and a more fully realized experience with stronger visual components.


The public domain book cover from 1899 edition of "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This copy uses her married name of Stetson. Artist unknown.
The public domain book cover from 1899 edition of "The Yellow Wall Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This copy uses her married name of Stetson. Artist unknown.
An Advocate Ahead of her Time

Gilman wore numerous hats in the pursuit of multiple endeavors. In addition to her literary works, she was a lecturer, humanist, eugenicist, early sociologist and an advocate for social reform.


Though her name might not be well known today, she was a utopian feminist – with her out-of-the-ordinary concepts and lifestyle, she served as a role model for future generations of feminists.


Gilman’s written works were primarily focused on gender, with two specific areas of concern to women: the problem of male domination, and the way society divided labor according to gender.


Her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” isn’t just Gilman’s best-remembered work; It’s clearly semi-autobiographical. Its focus is a woman who begins to experience a mental breakdown after three months of being closeted in a room by her husband, who insists it will improve her health.


Instead, she becomes obsessed with the room’s revolting yellow wallpaper.


Gilman’s intention in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to change peoples’ minds about the role of women in society. She wanted to illustrate that the lack of autonomy women were typically subjected to was detrimental to their overall well-being, whether physical, mental or emotional.


 
SIDEBAR: The Music of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
Drawn from True Events

The genesis of the story was Gilman’s treatment at the hands of her first husband, a physician.


Although the treatment he prescribes contrasts directly with what she truly needs, the narrator must do as he demands. In reality, mental stimulation and the freedom to escape the monotony of the room in which she’s confined would be far more beneficial.


“The Yellow Wallpaper” was essentially a response to Weir Mitchell, who had tried to cure Gilman of her depression through a rest cure. He’s mentioned by name in the story when its narrator says husband John “says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.”


O’Halloran, the show’s producer and a cast member, says Gilman “was definitely ahead of her time in that her writing was uniquely positioned from a female character’s point of view from a female author.”


He notes that in the mid- to late 1870s, the same time frame as Gilman’s work, the world saw “two of the Western stage’s most iconic and revolutionary feminist characters, both struggling with finding meaning and surviving the oppression of societal expectations and their husbands’ views: Nora, from ‘A Doll’s House’ and Hedda from ‘Hedda Gabler.’”


The difference, O’Halloran points out, is that Nora and Hedda “came from a male viewpoint of what women were thinking and feeling, whereas Gilman had the ‘audacity’ to write an even more visceral portrayal of the suffocating and, in this case, life-threatening, experience of a woman at the hands of her husband and ‘modern’ medicine.”


O’Halloran praises Gilman as “without a doubt ahead of her time. She didn’t shy away from menstruation, pregnancy, the horrors of pelvic massage and the nightmare that was the rest cure. These topics were far more risqué and biological for then-contemporary readers. In her piece, she ignores polite society and lays the groundwork for the honest, unapologetic feminism that would follow in the 20th century.”

 

Read the story: The Yellow Wallpaper

 

From Page to Concert Hall

Farrell first read Gilman’s book while a college freshman.


“I re-read it over the years and it stuck with me so hard. It became a fixation in my mind. I had memories of the imagery of (the narrator) seeing the wallpaper shift and become hangmen in gallows, and of eyes popping out. It was haunting.”


Farrell said that in 2003, as a young music major, she thought, “this would be so cool” as a live production and wondered if there were a play or other live version of the story.

 

“Over the years, as I became more of a producer and writer, I thought it would be such a great story, whether as a solo or a full production.”


Farrell finally found the time and the impetus during the pandemic. At the same time, and serendipitously, Carnegie Hall had an open slot in late January for another company it was working with.


As it had transpired, Farrell had sent another project to that company, and when that project fell through, they called her, saying they were “wondering if you’re still wanting this date.”


Her stage version “is absolutely a reflection of women’s health care spanning the time from 150 years ago up to today. (In Gilman’s time,) women weren’t let in on all of the information” about their health, healthcare and treatment.


In translating the story from literature to the concert stage, Farrell said she had to “find a way to demonstrate this in the libretto (because) in the book, it’s a first-person internalized story. I had to come up with theatrical devices and conventions for creating dialogue between the characters.”


Farrell said she uses a lot of quotes from the medical journals of Silas Weir Mitchell and Mary Putnam Jacobi as a way to “show the divide between (these) scholars” over the use of the rest cure.


On one side you had what Farrell calls “all these well-known Harvard figures jumping on board with this care”; on the other, those like Jacobi, whose work and writings precede those of Gilman by 20 years, were instantly opposed by the medical establishment.


Farrell characterizes Jacobi as “a brilliant, intelligent woman showing facts and evidence and being dismissed just because of her gender.”


 
SIDEBAR: The Significance of Staging New Operas
 

What’s ahead for ‘Wallpaper’ and Lyric Opera OC?

Since its inception, Lyric Opera of Orange County has produced some 25 shows. The troupe, Farrell said, “started with works that are in the public domain since opera is so expensive.” One example is its 2020 staging of Pauline Viardot’s 1904 “Cinderella”  – “not new, but it was being republished.”


A recent production Farrell refers to as “an official new work” depicts two Holocaust survivors: Krystyna Zywulska’s 2016 opera Two Remain.” The troupe staged it in Santa Ana in January of 2023 and again in Huntington Beach that November.


The company’s upcoming season will feature three or four all-new productions, including “Gilgamesh” at Cerritos Center, and at least two newer works written by living female composers. “We’re finding our niche, and really enjoying it.”


A concert version of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in Laguna Beach is planned for April in what Farrell calls “a sneak peek that will give Orange County a chance to see the show and help the O.C. premiere come to fruition through donations.”


The fully staged Orange County premier production is scheduled for October. Farrell said that as the venue has yet to be determined, anyone who wishes to see the show should visit Lyric Opera of OC’s website and social media sites.


‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

When: 8 p.m. Jan. 31

Where: Carnegie Hall, 154 W. 57th St., New York, New York

Admission: Starting at $80

Tickets: carnegiehall.org

 

Classical music coverage at Culture OC is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism. Culture OC makes all editorial decisions.

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