Michael Korie (born April 1, 1955) is an American librettist and lyricist whose writing for musical theater and opera includes the musicals Grey Gardens and Far From Heaven, and the operas Harvey Milk and The Grapes of Wrath. His works have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and internationally. His lyrics have been nominated for the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award. In 2016, Korie was awarded the Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Biography
Korie was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of Benjamin and Janet Indick. His father, a pharmacist, published scholarly essays on H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. His mother is a sculptor and President Emeritus of the National Association of Women Artists. Raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, he graduated from Teaneck High School in 1972. Korie studied music at Brandeis University before transferring to the journalism department of New York University. In the mid-1970s he worked as a journalist, freelancing and editing for The Village Voice and other Manhattan weeklies. His background in reporting informed several works he was to write based on non-fiction figures in the news.
Operas and musicals
Where's Dick? The first work of Korie's to receive major attention was a "new-vaudeville" crossover opera called Where's Dick?, composed by Stewart Wallace and developed at Playwrights Horizons. A satire that transformed current events into a comic book world of villainy, the opera featured characters including the “midget master builder” Stump Tower, based on Donald Trump, and the twin Tarnish Brothers: Sterling and Stainless, inspired by William and Lamar Hunt's attempts to corner the world silver market. It premiered at the Miller Outdoor Theater in 1989 in a production mounted by the Houston Grand Opera and directed by Richard Foreman. Writing in The New York Times, critic Bernard Holland called it "the type of musical stage work…we ought to be pursuing". The Village Voice’s Leighton Kerner described it as "a grisly comic indictment, both grotesque and sublime".
Kabbalah
Korie's next collaboration with Wallace was Kabbalah, conceived in seven musical sections or “gates” according to Kabbalistic philosophy. The work's libretto is written entirely in archaic languages, including Medieval French and German, early Spanish, and Aramaic, in order to trace the growth of Kabbalistic practice through the Jewish Diaspora. Recordings of interviews he conducted while in residence among orthodox Kabbalistic communities in Jerusalem were mixed into live performances during the work's 1989 premiere, co-produced by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival and Dance Theater Workshop, with direction and choreography by Ann Carlson. John Rockwell in The New York Times said of it, "Kabbalah may prove ultimately more important for what it promises than for what it provides. But even what it provides has its real merits."
Harvey Milk
Korie’s next collaboration with Stewart Wallace was the opera Harvey Milk, conceived as an epic opera in three acts and co-commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, and San Francisco Opera. It depicts the life of the slain politician and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. The first act (“The Closet”) represents Milk's early years as a closeted stock broker in New York, his arrest in central park, and his decision to depart for San Francisco with his lover Scott Smith in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion. The second act (“The Castro”) charts Milk's transformation from a San Francisco camera store owner to an elected City Supervisor. The Third Act (“City Hall”) dramatizes his hardball-style politicking and head-butting with his assassin, fellow Supervisor Dan White. Milk's premonition of his death is shown in the aria “If a Bullet Should Enter My Brain...,” as he makes a tape recording of his last will just weeks before his murder by White. Sections of the actual recording were included in the score.
The opera premiered on January 21, 1995 at the Houston Grand Opera
and generated controversy over the first presentation of openly gay love scenes on the operatic stage. The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the best new operas in years" and The Independent’s Edward Seckerson wrote "the libretto is among the sharpest in contemporary opera". K. Robert Schwartz in The New York Times wrote “Harvey Milk is an unflinching in-your-face kind of opera, a work that examines not only Milk’s tragedy but the awakening of gay consciousness in America.”