THE COMPOSER RESPONDS:

Behold the power of the press to completely distort a story when a reporter has a particular point of view and wants to project it upon the situation that he is covering.

There was NO censorship involved in the decision that Philip Littell and I took to change the title of our opera. The fact is, I never liked that title -- not because of the word "whore", but because it gives too much away about what one ought to think about the main character. My working title for the piece had been for a long time, "The Refugees," but most people found that it conjured up associations for them with third-world refugees -- our story takes place in France in 1871 -- and could be misleading. We then toyed with about twenty or more other titles and were still never completely satisfied. "Boule de Suif, or, The Good Whore" was the best we could come up with prior to the initial press release announcing the project, and the real problem proved later to be that some people had trouble figuring out the pronounciation of the word 'suif'. So, when Glimmerglass asked us to reconsider the title, I was more than glad to have a chance to revisit a question that had never been completely settled to my satisfaction. This, therefore, was in no way "artistic pandering" as so many of you, thanks to Mr. Wakins' skewed reportage, have chosen so quickly to judge it. Indeed, it was quite the contrary: a case of revisiting an artistic question in order to find the right match between the title and the work itself.

Revision and rethinking are intrinsic parts of the artistic process, and the only reason that this was turned into a little pseudo-scandal was because that was the way the reporter wanted to see it. The opera deals just as frankly with its subject material as the original Maupassant story, and then some -- come see it this summer and find out for yourselves -- don't let the newpaper reporters tell you what to think.

Stephen Hartke