Did you know that an intense debate over a prayer was pivotal to the creation of A Pregnant Pause?
The protagonist, Serena, is aptly named after The Serenity Prayer, but the creators of A Pregnant Pause Opera had a long and difficult time deciding whether including such a text would alienate those who did not identify as Christian or religious, and this was critically important to Alize Francheska Rozsnyai, Librettist, and Garth Baxter, Composer– that those from all backgrounds can receive the perspectives contained in A Pregnant Pause without feeling that the story is swayed in any way, religious or otherwise. Rozsnyai and Baxter began work on A Pregnant Pause back in 2021 after being introduced to one another by a friend and colleague soprano, Katie Procell, who had performed both of their works previously.
According to Wikipedia and many sources, “the serenity prayer” is not extracted from any Bible, but rather, was written in1930s by a Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. “In an October 31, 1932 diary entry by American YWCA official Winnifred Wygal, she quotes her colleague Niebuhr:
‘The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered.’
Drawing on this, Wygal published a prayer in the March 1933 edition of YWCA periodical The Woman's Press.”
It was in the 1940s, when the poem reached The New York Tribune, that it was adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, who first referred to it as the “AA Prayer.”
Even more importantly to Rozsnyai was to find out if a version of the serenity prayer exists in other religions or philosophies, internationally. She found versions much, much longer prayers for peace in Sufi, Bodhisattva Prayer for Humanity, Hindu Upanishads, Navajo, and others, but none were fitted to the precise decision that Serena was facing, in A Pregnant Pause.
Rozsnyai and Baxter both felt connected to the content of The Serenity Prayer, as leaving a perfect “open door” for Serena, by the end of the opera, but chose a version that is utilized by non-religious groups, with the removal of the word, “God.” The version in the opera reads “Oh, grant me the serenity…” Serena herself is not religious, and instead says, “there is a prayer I once heard.”
We hope that whatever your take on her situation, and your own, you’ll feel freely invited to reflect upon these perspectives in your own way, and through your own lens, as our humble and heartfelt goal with the creation of this work.
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