A new opera takes flight: The story of two 1930s aviatrixes is Opera Kansas award-winner

When Lisa DeSpain and Rachel J. Peters started to brainstorm for an entry in Opera Kansas’ Zepick Modern Opera Competition, they wanted something with a local edge.

“Knowing the company was based in Wichita, it was important for us to find a story that had a lot of local interest,” said Peters, a librettist. “And as female creators of opera, we are always very interested in finding interesting female protagonists to write about and to bring to the fore stories of women we might not know much about otherwise.”

They decided to focus on a female pilot.

Their first choice, Amelia Earhart, was too obvious, they agreed. Then they looked deeper and found other heroic aviatrixes with a Wichita connection.

Their names were Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes, who competed and won the transcontinental Bendix Trophy Race in 1936, the first year that women were allowed to race in teams. They flew a Beechcraft C17R Staggerwing, created and manufactured in Wichita, to victory — stunning all experts as well as their competition.

“Staggerwing,” which premieres next weekend by Opera Kansas, tells the story of their flight as well as the misogyny they faced as female pilots. Figuring heavily in the story are Walter and Olive Ann Beech, especially Mrs. Beech’s advocacy for the pilots.

Museum setting

It will be staged at the Kansas Aviation Museum, which at the time of the Bendix race was the Wichita Municipal Airport, a refueling site for the duo.

“This literally happened right outside those windows,” said Opera Kansas artistic director Ashley Winters, who is directing the production. “Of course, it’s a dramatization in our show, but … you’re walking there in the place that touched their lives.”

Winters said museum personnel were excited about having the story performed in their space. The atmosphere, she said, lends itself to the production.

“I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but there was the presence of history there,” she said. “We are walking in their footsteps in this space. It’s sort of a hallowed space without being creepy or weird.”

The timing for the performance, Winters said, is perfect, as the museum is working on creating a new exhibit on women in flight. The museum recently acquired Thaden’s 1929 Travel Air plane, designed by Beech before the creation of Beechcraft, which won the 1929 “Powder Puff Derby,” a consolation race for women.

A Staggerwing, although not the one piloted by the duo, is part of the museum’s collection.

“It was just kismet to do this together,” Winters said of the collaboration.

Opera competition

The Zepick Modern Opera Competition is a biennial contest named for Dr. Lyle Zepick, a longtime Opera Kansas patron. It was scheduled to be performed in September 2020, coinciding with his 75th birthday, but was delayed because of the pandemic.

“Staggerwing” will premiere with a gala on Friday night, including cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and talks by the composers and Zepick. Seating is limited to 100, but there will be a livestream of the performance, available for 24 hours after its conclusion. Another performance of the opera, which has about a 60-minute running time, will take place Saturday night, and will be performed free with admission during the weekend next Saturday and Sunday.

Peters and DeSpain will be in Wichita all this week to sit in on rehearsals and lead discussions about the duo.

Winters, who was on the committee to judge the 128 submissions but did not have a vote, said “Staggerwing” immediately impressed her.

“When I saw it and read it, making sure the proposal was complete, I was sure it was going to win. The proposal was right for our community and was what the commission we were looking for,” she said. “It really seemed to check all the boxes and it did it in a good, solid way.”

DeSpain, the composer, and Peters, who were awarded $25,000 to develop the opera, dug into the music of the late 1920s and early ‘30s to create “Staggerwing.”

But both of the New York City-based composers were already fans of that era of music.

“I was studying Mozart until I met Count Basie,” DeSpain said. “My first love of jazz came from Count Basie, Betty Morton and the Territory bands — that swinging, blues, riffy, joyous, bouncy (music). I was like, ‘Wait, that’s not Mozart, I want to do that!’”

Peters, likewise, spent her youth repeatedly checking out Cole Porter records from her library.

Winters said the music for scenes on the ground is very reminiscent of the songs of that time, and that the music when the two are aboard the plane shifts to more of a movie score.

Jesse Warkentin, a music director for Music Theatre Wichita, conducts the four-piece band, which includes a clarinet and vibraphone.

“Staggerwing” is the second of three operas the two have composed together. One, a commission for an opera company in DeSpain’s native Utah, was about women’s contributions to the Transcontinental Railroad. An upcoming work, which will debut in Cleveland, is based on the short story “Men I’m Not Married To” by Dorothy Parker.

Peters said she would write the libretto for each song, then passing it over to DeSpain for the music while Peters began the next song. Peters said all of their musicals so far have been written out of sequence of the finished product.

“Sometimes you don’t know what the beginning needs to be until you get to the end,” she said.

Research on subject

Their research for the Opera Kansas piece included everything from obituaries to books such as “The Barnstormer and the Lady,” the story of Walter and Olive Ann Beach.

“There’s no shortage of information out there, it was just finding a way of making it coherent and theatrically compelling and emotionally something the audience could respond to viscerally,” Peters said.

Olive Ann Beech, Winters points out, was the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, something that is alluded to in the opera.

“Wichita, Kansas, should be proud of that. We should be proud that we supported these women, supported these endeavors,” she said. “We changed the world.”

Performers Luke Harnish and Georgeanne Yehling play the Beeches in “Staggerwing.”

Playing real people, they say, is difficult.

“There’s a huge responsibility to do these people justice,” Yehling said. “There’s so much nuance in playing a historical figure, someone who actually existed. In the case of Walter and Olive Ann, their family are still in town and still a pillar of the community. We’re lucky to have those resources to build upon.”

“There’s lots of people still alive whose own lives have been shaped by the Beeches,” Harnish added. “It’s sometimes hard to find that reality. Their legacy is still alive in Kansas and worldwide.”

Others in the cast are Bethany Filer as Blanche, Lisa Gerstenkorn as Louise, and Nathan Snyder in two roles.

The Beeches’ daughter and a longtime Opera Kansas supporter, Mary Lynn Beach Oliver, said she was pleasantly surprised to hear that her parents would be portrayed in an opera.

“It makes you quite proud,” she said from her home in Colorado. “It’s exciting.”

The story of “Staggerwing,” she said, is one that deserves a wider audience.

“I’m somewhat prejudiced,” she said with a laugh. “It’s about two very indomitable women who were willing to take on this challenge, encouraged by my parents.”

Other ‘Hidden Figures’

Winters compares the story of Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes to the movie “Hidden Figures,” about Black NASA scientists who didn’t get the credit they deserved during their careers.

“Even in Wichita, people don’t know this story about our Wichita people and what our Wichita people did to give us partly the future we have today,” she said.

DeSpain said Thaden and Noyes’ story needs to be told.

“One of the things I’m always conscious about is trying to find the everyday hero,” she said. “Because we all know the Amelia Earharts. I love the ordinary person who does extraordinary things. … Finding hidden stories to tell gives great satisfaction in bringing to life these missed stories of Olive Ann and Walter, as amazing advocates, and as Louise and Blanche achieving their goal in the plane.”

The career of the most famous flying female in history, an Atchison native, overshadowed others, they said.

“When you say to anyone ‘aviation’ and ‘women,’ the only name that comes to our national consciousness is Amelia Earhart,” DeSpain said.

“We said, ‘She can’t be the only one.’ We’ve all heard her story,” Peters continued. “There were so many other people who were trying to do very similar things and grappling with the same obstacles she was. Who were they? There were so many we could spend the rest of our lives writing operas about these amazing women.”

“If the art can help raise the profile, people will know there are more and get a sense of what was happening,” DeSpain added. “Louise pushed so many envelopes. She is crucial to pushing the boundaries of aviation ingenuity in America. We should be celebrating that.”

Walters said that “Staggerwing” has the capability of being performed and enjoyed outside Wichita by other opera companies.

“It’s different, it’s unique, it’s singable. It’s catchy,” she said. “So much modern opera, contemporary opera, is moving and tells very deep and very emotionally based stories. They’re trying to make social change with the stories they tell. That’s a great place for opera to be. There’s also a place in opera to be entertained and have a good time.

“Especially coming out of the pandemic, don’t we want to have a good time?”

“Staggerwing” by Opera Kansas

When: 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 30; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 31, as well as 11 a.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 1

Where: Kansas Aviation Museum, 3350 S. George Washington Blvd.

Tickets: $75 for the Friday night gala; $25 ($20 for seniors) for Saturday; Saturday and Sunday matinees are free with museum admission; available at operakansas.org/our-performances/

Livestream: $25, available for the Friday performance, also from operakansas.org/our-performances/

Other appearances: Peters and DeSpain will be at Radio Kansas’ “Green Room” at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and the William Penn Science Building at Friends University at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Blanche and Louise will be at Exploration Place at 11:30 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Wednesday, and at the Kansas Aviation Museum at 10:30 a.m. Friday.