'Great food, great company, great music'. That sounds like more of the blurb for a dinner theatre, but we like to think that our opera ticks off all of the following, perhaps except for the food part, because ours is decidedly evil and high in preservatives.

The Casserole, follows two college buddies – Kevin and Anna – as they search through Kevin’s recently deceased grandmother’s house to try and excavate her special casserole recipe. Kevin has been dreaming of it – it reminds him of his grandmother and he longs for the transportive experience of being able to taste his childhood once more. Would it be overly-pretentious to say that we were trying to channel a Proustian moment with his 'Casserole aria', in which he regales the greasy splendour of her secret recipe? We’d like to think it’s not dissimilar.

However, try as they might, Kevin and Anna cannot find the recipe. Anna offers to try and find one online, and ends up on a forum that certainly offers a recipe, but not for a casserole that resembles Kevin’s grandmother’s. They find a recipe for necromancy.

Kevin, swayed by the promise of being able to speak to his grandmother and taste the casserole, is instantly beguiled, Anna less so. But when they attempt a necromantic ritual and accidentally summon three weirds, the evil spirits of old ladies who have been condemned for their culinary crimes, things get gooey.

'What we would really like is for audiences to have fun and connect with the story through the medium of opera without having to be extremely versed in operatic conventions and the history of classical music'

In thinking about our twin approach to the piece, or what we’ve fondly referred to as the Evan & Hannah Operatic Universe, it’s worth knowing that both composer (Evan L. Snyder) and first-time librettist (Hannah Hayden) are American. Evan hails from Michigan, where the opera is set. And although Hannah does have some familial links to Minnesota, also in the Midwest, it was her fondness for doom-scrolling through videos of white American women who couldn’t cook that led to her interest in writing about a casserole. It should also be noted that an American casserole does not possess the same sort of stewed dignity as a casserole on this side of the Atlantic. Though French in name, a casserole is usually comprised of a bunch of rich and quintessentially American ingredients such as Tater Tots, canned green beans, Velveeta cheese, canned tuna and noodles, which are then dumped into a tray, and cooked on high – for who knows how long? Well, we don’t, we never could find the recipe.

As you can imagine, the result is grotesque. And this is something that we were aiming for in our explorations in tone. Both of us were keen to work within a genre that hadn’t previously been done in opera, and creating a work that was indeed grotesque but also funny was absolutely the goal in creating this piece. We wanted to lovingly craft, prepare, and eventually serve to the opera world something that they’d never experienced. And while there aren’t very many new comic operas being written, it does seem like there’s an audience there for it.

Initially, the piece was conceived as a buddies stoner comedy, which eventually morphed and changed as we added more cast members and tightened up the story and all of our character’s motivations. However, some of the core tenets of that genre still remain in the show: it’s got an outrageous quest for food, surreal elements are implicit, and hopefully it taps into something that hasn’t been seen on the operatic stage. What we would really like is for audiences to have fun and connect with the story through the medium of opera without having to be extremely versed in operatic conventions and the history of classical music, which can sometimes be quite daunting and alienating for new fans.

The Casserole is Hannah’s first opera, and the transition from writing primarily for the page to writing for the stage was one of the biggest novelties in the creation of the piece. This was, of course, supported by a framework that emphasised in-person workshopping, and the creative input of Evan, who is a fairly accomplished tenor and has a wealth of experience on the stage. For Evan, who had written opera before, but had usually served as his own librettist, this project meant getting toexplore a new way of creating, which he found both artistically rewarding and genuinely enjoyable. Overall, if the audience can find a portion of the entertainment from this opera as we have felt during the creative process, then that will be worth it. 

The Casserole by Evan Snyder & Hannah Hayden is at Milton Court Studio Theatre from 20 - 25 June | gsmd.ac.uk 

The 2023/24 cohort on the Guildhall Opera Making course