Falluja/Press

Can the stirring sounds of opera reach out to a young generation of veterans dealing with the pain of post-traumatic stress disorder? That’s what Marine and Iraq War vet Christian Ellis and Iraqi American playwright Heather Raffo are hoping.

Along with composer Tobin Stokes, Ellis and Raffo worked to set Ellis’ wartime experiences to music, creating “Fallujah,” the first-ever opera written about the Iraq War.

But it wasn’t easy for Raffo and Ellis to come together to work on the project. Ellis said that while it’s hard for him to admit he held prejudice against those of Iraqi descent, those feelings were there.

“It took a lot for me to actually go meet (Raffo), and I’m glad I did,” he told NBC News.
 

…Ellis partnered with New York-based librettist Heather Raffo and acclaimed Canadian composer Tobin Stokes, and together the trio created a heart-wrenching emotional exploration of the lives of American veterans and Iraqis alike.

“In order to get the music to be perfect, we had to find the perfect librettist. Words before music,” says Ellis. “And the one candidate that stuck out to me the most was Heather because of her heritage, because she’s half-American/half-Iraqi, and part of her family still lives in Baghdad. She’s experienced a lot that none of the other librettists have experienced.

Raffo’s writing style is based on true events with real people. She has researched the effect of war on Iraqis and Iraqi points of view, most recently in the play 9 Parts of Desire, about nine Iraqi women. But until she met Ellis, she had not examined the war from a Marine’s point of view.

“I was taken with Christian’s honesty and the complexity with which he was able to articulate his personal dilemmas,” Raffo says. “Christian is an honest, open, complex and deeply feeling human being. So telling a story inspired by his life was very much in keeping with the type of work I do.”

Raffo’s words are emotionally draining and graphic at times, hitting the core of war-related issues with lines like “We’re lying here like dinner. His brains are in my mouth” after a sniper attack kills a soldier. “I wanted to put the audience inside the restless mind of a Marine returning from war,” says Raffo. “I wanted us all to collectively experience, without political point of view, how the memory of violence is carried by all who come into contact with it, how hard it is to heal from and how deep is the human desire to communicate even during conflict.”

…“People do die in this opera, and they die in very real in your face ways,” Ellis said. “The purpose of that is for you to come to enjoy a character and instantly have them taken out of your life, just how in reality, literally one day, I would be talking to a buddy and next thing I know he’s shot in the face dead. How do you react to that? How do you move on from that? How do you deal with that?”

Ellis left the workshops at times after hearing the words of deceased friends. “Being that vulnerable and that raw to the world is a very scary feeling,” he said.

One of his most painful memories is that of a teenage boy with a big smile named Wissam who sold bootleg DVDs to the troops. The boy used gestures to communicate and befriended Ellis, writing his name on his hand when the Marine could not pronounce it correctly.

Suddenly Wissam stopped visiting. Ellis learned the boy had been killed by insurgents who accused him of spying for the Americans.

Ellis said he never opened his heart in battle; the enemy was the enemy.  He grew to hate Iraqis and put the boy out of his mind until he wrote his story for New York playwright Heather Raffo.  Sharing his memories on paper helped him unleash his sorrow, and forced him to confront his prejudice against people of Middle Eastern descent, he said.  He was reluctant to work with Raffo, who has family in Iraq, but the two became friends while working together. He said her viewpoint balanced out the libretto. In total there are nine characters — three Iraqis and six Americans.

Composer Tobin Stokes blended traditional Iraqi music into the score as a way to unite the pain both sides endured. The company tested out “Fallujah” in May on a select audience that included former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan. Sullivan said it was the first time he shed a tear over the war…”