Morgan Richter is the author of the new novel The Understudy. Her other books include the novel The Divide. She lives in Seattle.
Q: What inspired you to write The Understudy, and how did you create your character Kit?
A: I love novels that center around the performing arts, and I thought the time was right for a thriller set in the rarified environment of professional opera.
With Kit, I wanted to create a character who seems outwardly cool and collected, but is actually kind of a mess. This is a combination I find deeply relatable!
Kit has trained all her life to be a professional opera singer, which is a difficult and demanding multiyear process, and even though she knows she possesses an elite set of skills, she feels like her career isn’t quite where it needs to be. She suspects she’s doing something wrong, but she doesn’t know what, and she doesn’t know how to fix it.
At the start of the novel, just when Kit finally thinks she’s on the right path--she’s been cast in her first leading role, in an avant-garde opera based on the 1968 cult film Barbarella--she’s derailed by her ambitious and scheming understudy, Yolanda, who is cheerfully willing to murder Kit to nab the role for herself.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Kit and Yolanda? How would you compare their relationship to that of the characters in the classic film All About Eve?
A: Kit and Yolanda despise each other--they loathe each other practically on sight, in fact--because they’re polar opposites locked in competition for the role of Barbarella. Kit is highly skilled but robotic, whereas Yolanda is a sloppy performer who lacks formal training but is so gorgeous and magnetic onstage that it compensates for her vocal flaws.
At the same time, though, it’s gradually revealed that Kit and Yolanda share a lot of common ground. It’s implied that they come from similar troubled backgrounds, though they’ve dealt with that in wildly different ways.
In her adult life, Kit has compensated for her chaotic childhood by becoming rigid and controlled, whereas Yolanda has become a violent loose cannon who lashes out at anyone she believes is in her way.
I love All About Eve, and it’s been an extremely useful shorthand for conveying the basic bones of my story. As soon as I mention All About Eve, everyone immediately understands that my book is about a conniving and unscrupulous performer trying to steal a role away from a more experienced rival.
A Town & Country review of The Understudy quipped that it should’ve been titled Aria About Eve, which is hilarious; I wish I’d thought of that first!
Honestly, though, I think the more apt pop culture reference is the notorious 1995 turkey Showgirls. While Eve Harrington behaves disgracefully while trying to replace Margo Channing onstage, at least she never resorts to violence, whereas in Showgirls, Nomi Malone steals a role from arch-rival Cristal Connors by shoving her down a flight of stairs.
This sort of uncouth behavior is much closer to the spirit of The Understudy, in which Yolanda constantly tries to murder Kit to snag the part of Barbarella for herself.
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn
anything that especially surprised you?
A: I was lucky enough to be in the middle of a Writers’ Room Residency at the Seattle Central Library while writing the book, which meant I had access to a calm, serene, gorgeous room in the main downtown library in which to write.
It also meant I was located very close to the stacks, which were loaded with great resources about opera, and very close to the reference librarians, who could point me in the right direction whenever I got stuck in my research.
The piece of research that sticks with me the most is a wonderful 2008 documentary by Susan Frömke titled Audition, which profiles the handful of talented young finalists still in the running after multiple rounds of rigorous nationwide auditions for the Metropolitan Opera.
The level of vocal skill on display from all the competitors is dazzlingly, dizzyingly high, and the number of available slots is dauntingly low. The documentary manages to be both heartbreaking and inspiring, and it helped me appreciate the terrifyingly precarious nature of seeking a career in professional opera.
Q: The Library Journal review of the novel says, “From dress rehearsals and deaths through final flowers, feathers, and fanaticism, Richter’s novel stays mostly at fever pitch in a way that will intrigue even readers who don’t give a fig about opera’s theatrics.” What do you think of that description?
A: That’s a fantastic pull quote; I’m grateful to Library Journal for providing it! But it gets at the heart of something I’ve noticed several times when reviewers discuss The Understudy.
I keep seeing variations on a particular theme: “Even if you think opera is boring, you’ll still enjoy The Understudy.” There’s something gratifying about that, of course; I’m glad people who aren’t interested in opera still find my book entertaining.
I’d venture to say, though, that if you enjoy The Understudy, there’s probably a lot about opera that you’d enjoy as well. Opera storylines tend to be fun and highly dramatic: Think of Mozart’s Don Giovanni being dragged down to hell by demons as retribution for his dastardly behavior, or of Puccini’s Tosca stabbing the vile Baron Scarpia, or of the messy and lethal drama between Bizet’s complicated heroine Carmen and her jealous lover, Don José.
While dreaming up the story of the homicidal rivalry between Kit and Yolanda and the dark secrets of their respective pasts, I revisited themes prevalent throughout classic opera, like murder and vengeance and betrayal and dark passions. The Understudy isn’t a pulpy, juicy book despite the opera setting; it’s a pulpy, juicy book because of the opera setting.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m writing a new novel that combines two of my big loves: 1) dishy insider stories of famous filmmaking disasters, such as The Devil’s Candy, Julie Saloman’s exposé on the trouble-plagued production of Brian De Palma’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and 2) comic books.
I’m trying to shape my thoughts into a dark comedy of errors, in which an ambitious young director tries to film an infamously unfilmable graphic novel and finds herself plagued with troubles: studio interference, online abuse, on-set sabotage, a leading man with a penchant for involving himself in grandiose Fyre Festival-style failures, a leading lady who’s been moonlighting as costumed nocturnal vigilante, and a neurotic screenwriter who vehemently denies he’s using AI, even as he keeps leaving ChatGPT prompts behind in his script.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I think my big takeaway from writing The Understudy is that the world is ready for an opera based on Barbarella! Everyone who reads it seems enthusiastic about that concept; I even had one grouchy reviewer, who otherwise had nothing positive to say about my book, grudgingly admit that a Barbarella opera is a pretty terrific idea.
I can picture it easily--the colorful sets featuring groovy spaceships and alien planets, the glitzy Paco Rabanne-inspired costumes. I’d be happy to write the libretto; I’d just need to team up with a talented composer who could write an infectious score to match my words, and we’d have an instant smash hit on our hands.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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