Lillian Alling Set Models

Our Director of Production, Terry Harper, came back from Banff a couple of weeks ago and instead of bringing us touristy t-shirts, he bought us pictures of the Lillian Alling set models.











Terry returns to Banff this week and the next time he returns, he'll be bringing the real life sets back with him!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian's Travel Blog, Entry #2

Chicago
June, 1927

I have lost count of the days since I left New York City behind me. I thought never again to look with such awe upon a place as I did upon that city of towers, but I have discovered that America is full of wonders. And space – America is full of space. Over these last weeks, I have put my sturdy shoes to good use on my way to North Dakota, on my way to Jozéf. Every day, from dawn until dark, I walk. I think of Jozéf, and how my life is bound to his.

I have seen so much I hardly know where to begin. First, everywhere there are good roads. I have marked them on the map I made at the library in New York City, and I follow them west and north to North Dakota, so that I will not get lost. These roads are full of cars, big American cars. Sometimes, these cars stop for me, for I suppose I am a curiosity, a woman, walking alone. Without fail, a man is alone in the car. My English is so poor, I have difficulty understanding their words, but their meaning is clear enough.

I will confess that once I accepted a ride with such a man. He was a salesman, I believe, for when we stopped in a town for hamburgers, he shows me a suitcase full of kitchen wares – along with a pistol he keeps in the glove box of the car. He was showing off, trying to impress me. If only he knew how hated the sight of a gun is to me, with what I have lived through.

This man has trouble keeping his hands to himself. After I finish eating, I tell him I must use the bathroom, and leave through the back door. I stop only to take the pistol from the glove box, fearing he may come after me. I am, after all, a woman alone. For the next few days, I must keep to the woodlots and fields, out of sight of the road. But the hamburger was delicious.

I have seen farmlands so vast and so fertile that the young wheat flows in the wind as far as the eye can see. I laugh to myself, in a place called Pennsylvania, to see wealthy farmers who could afford to buy many trucks using wagons and horses instead, just like the peasants back home. In the towns, I am struck my how people walk down the street smiling. Where I come from, only idiots smile so much. But like everything else in America, happiness is plentiful. I suppose it is easy to smile here.

Not everything in America is beautiful. In Ohio, the factories and steel mills make the air foul and choke the rivers. In Chicago, I see magnificent buildings like in New York City, but also newcomers from many countries, pressed together in tight quarters – like in New York City. Everyone struggles to be successful, to be American. They see my worn shoes and my dusty clothes, and they think I am a peasant – like they used to be, before they became Americans. Now, they want only Americans for friends. I hear Yiddish in the streets, but I pretend not to understand. For as much as I want to belong, I want just as much to be invisible, anonymous.

I am discovering what freedom feels like, and space to oneself. I keep away from the cities, preferring the openness of the countryside. Most nights I sleep under the stars and wake to the gentle dawn – knowing that each day brings me closer to Jozéf. America is hope, and I hope that soon I will find him. Tomorrow I set out again, north and west to North Dakota.

A Special Afternoon With VO’s General Director

Join the Opera Club on Sunday September 26th from 2-4pm at the Fletcher Challenge Theatre in the SFU Harbour Centre for a look into the process of bringing a world premiere to the stage! The Opera Club charges a drop-in fee of $10 per lecture, or you can purchase a yearly membership! For more information, visit their website here.

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 4)

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 4

Service decided that he would arrest Alling for her own protection. She was searched; she carried two ten-dollar bills, a reasonably sure defence against any charge of vagrancy. Arraigned before a justice of the peace on September 21, she was convicted instead of carrying an offensive weapon, the eighteen-inch (half-metre) metal bar she had with her to protect herself, not against wild animals, but against men. One account suggests that she was asked four times if she had anything to say. At the fourth, she let fly four obscene expletives. The justice of the peace fined her twenty-five dollars, a sum she did not have. In lieu of payment, she was sentenced to two months in Oakalla Prison, near Vancouver, a ruling that would accomplish the lawmen's objective of keeping her off the trail in winter.

She duly served her time. Once she was released, prison staff found her a job for the rest of the winter at a Vancouver restaurant, where she saved as much money as she could. Come spring, she set out once more. On July 19, she arrived at Smithers, where a policeman again tried to dissuade her from her trek. She declined, but she did promise that she would check in at each of the cabins on the Telegraph Trail. This she did. Several weeks later, linesmen Jim Christie and Charlie Janze watched in amazement as she walked into the clearing where their two small cabins stood, her face badly swollen from insect bites, windburned and sunburned, slumping from exhaustion and lack of food, her clothes almost in tatters. Yet she would not turn back.

Since they knew they could not dissuade her, they tried to help. Christie gave her his cabin. Over the next three days and nights, she ate well, slept indoors and began to recuperate. Janze gave her a pair of breeches and two shirts, a felt hat and a pair of boots that would fit her smaller feet with the aid of two pairs of woollen socks. Then Christie set out with Alling towards the Nass summit and Cabin 9 on the trail. Meanwhile, linesman Scotty Ogilvie left Cabin 9 to come south to meet her. He never arrived. Trying to cross a river in flood, he tumbled in, hit his head on a snag and drowned. His fellow linesman at Cabin 9 found him the next day, his body wedged against a waterlogged cottonwood tree. Ogilvie was buried nearby. When Aliing passed this way the next day, it is said that she left behind a small bunch of wildflowers.

Lillian’s Travel Blog, Entry #1

New York City
May, 1927

Never did I think to feel the firm land under my feet again. For twelve days, my stomach tossed with the ocean. We were packed below decks like pickles in a jar, just as tight and just as stinky. There were families from many shtetls – Slonim, Motol, Pinsk – but none from Hrodna. I listened to their stories and their dreams, especially the young girls. They saw themselves in jewels and furs, married to rich Americans. But I kept my dream to myself. Jozéf is here, I know he is. Just as I know I must find him.

At last we left the ocean behind and followed the shoreline of skyscrapers, so tall that they make your neck ache just looking up at them. The ship docked to let the first and second class passengers disembark, but not us below decks. Us they put on a smaller boat, and ferried us past the Lady Liberty (she is magnificent) to Ellis Island. I will not dwell on the indignities I suffered there, for I have sworn never to look back. Only forwards. After two days, they declared me fit to begin my new life in America.

I soon discover that the people back home were wrong about one thing: the streets of New York are not paved with gold. They are crowded and noisy, with a hundred different languages that make my poor ears ring. Everyone is in a hurry to make it big, too busy to notice a poor girl like me – unless it is an oafish flirt who thinks that because my English is poor, I am too stupid to see through his charming lies.

I find a bed to share with another girl in the small apartment of a family from Gdansk. For this honour I pay them ten dollars a month, and even so they treat me like a servant. I bite my tongue and keep to myself, taking comfort from my dream of finding Jozéf. As I fall asleep at night, I try to imagine the expression on his face when he sees me.

It takes many days, but at last I find Sergei Nikitich Lazinsky, Jozéf’s brother, in Brooklyn. I walk there across a beautiful bridge that is very famous. But I find out that Jozéf exaggerated when he told us of Sergei’s success. He is living with his wife and children in a rundown tenement building, no better than the one in which I have found a shared bed in the city. I suppose that life here has hardened him, for he is suspicious and ill-tempered, and does not believe me when I tell him that I am Jozéf’s betrothed. But I am not so easily put off, and refuse to leave without an address for Jozéf. At last Sergei tells me he is working for a man in North Dakota.

I am happy, until I go to the big library and discover that North Dakota is 1500 miles from New York City. Back home, we never imagined how big America is. I do not know how I will travel there, but I will not stop. I must find Jozéf. My life is bound to his.

From the books in the library, I have drawn a map to guide my way to North Dakota. I have found work stitching hems and have saved as much money as I can – except for what I spent on new shoes. As I set out on this journey across this strange land, all I know for certain is that I will need sturdy shoes.

Lillian Blogs!

Not only does Lillian Alling tweet, she also blogs! Starting tomorrow, we'll be posting Lillian's journal entries as she walks across North America and into the treacherous foothills of Telegraph Creek, in search of a mysterious man named Jozéf.

Go behind the scenes and into the mind of Lillian Alling. She will be blogging about arriving amidst the chaos of Ellis Island in the 1920s, hopping trains, befriending Norwegians in the North Dakota prairies, spending time in Oakalla Prison Farm and her hopes and dreams of a new life.

Follow Lillian's adventures on Twitter and here for weekly journal updates.

*journal entries may not reflect what will be seen onstage.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Opera Speaks: Creating Lillian

Creating Lillian: Inside the Creative Process of Lillian Alling

Thursday, September 30, 2010 7-9pm
Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free. Seating is limited.

Discover how a large-scale opera is created from scratch. Composer John Estacio, librettist John Murrell, director Kelly Robinson and members of the production team for Vancouver Opera's new commissioned opera Lillian Alling will share their three-year process of writing and producing this dramatic opera that depicts a young Russian woman's epic journey, on foot, across North America in the 1920s. Cast members will perform excerpts from the opera.

Based on a real historical character, Lillian Alling takes us on a journey from Brooklyn, New York to a Norwegian farming community in North Dakota, across the Canadian prairie and into the wilds of northwestern British Columbia. Along the way, Lillian spends time in Vancouver, is jailed in Oakalla Prison Farm, in Burnaby, and walks the famous "Telegraph Trail" to the banks of the Skeena River. Her story is sweeping, personal, romantic, and heart-wrenching. This will be a rare opportunity to get inside the creative process with an extraordinary team of opera artists.

Opera Speaks is an ongoing series of free public events that engage the community in exploring the themes and issues arising from Vancouver Opera's productions. For more information about Opera Speaks, visit www.vancouveropera.ca