When you think about it, the opera is the perfect place to tell “the Battle of the Sexes” story. The historic tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs has it all: high stakes, an over-the-top villain, and an underdog narrative featuring a plucky heroine. According to the Los Angeles Times, that was composer Laura Karpman’s logic when she decided to write the opera “Balls.”
Indeed, that is its actual name. It’s probably the best title ever.
“Balls” will be featured in First Take, the Times reports, a workshop that “provides composers with the chance to hear their opera performed in front of an audience, to test out ideas and see what works, and to leave with a high-quality video recording.” Of the six operas at this year’s First Take, “Balls” is the only one composed by a woman.
As the opera’s official synopsis reads, “‘Balls’ dramatizes the tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs and draws on the comedic, dramatic, and hugely political nature of this match. ‘The Battle of the Sexes’ changed not only the perception and treatment of women in sports forever, but substantially advanced the women’s rights movement.”
As the Times reports, “Balls” is only one act and will feature a tennis match as the “main narrative device,” the sound of bouncing tennis balls entwined in the score, actual commentary from the 1973 broadcast’s transcript, and “creative time-hopping” — so Susan B. Anthony can stop by.
Karpman, who was a teenager when King decimated Riggs on live TV, remembers watching the match. “At that point I was already composing,” she recalled. “It gave me the feeling that I could do anything.”
That feeling stayed with Karpman as she forged a career as a composer. “As her career writing concert music and film scores progressed, Karpman realized that she, like King, faced systemic sexism in her chosen field,” the Times details. “She wasn’t going to be handed the same opportunities that her male colleagues were given. She had to make them happen.”
And we’re so glad she did.
After coming up with the premise for “Balls,” Karpman, who is one of the founding members of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, brought on author and New York Times columnist Gail Collins as the show’s librettist. Collins, who wrote about the King-Riggs match in her 2009 book “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present,” also points to the significance of King’s win.
“Laughing at women was the thing that everybody used to try to undermine the women’s movement,” Collins explained, referencing Riggs’ public attempts to belittle King. “The fact that she just gave it right back to him, that she was sassy and on the mark and that she figured out how to stand up for herself when people tried laughing at her — to me that was the great story.”
“If ‘Balls’ can bring [this story] to more people, then that by itself will make me really happy,” Collins added.
As they worked on “Balls,” Karpman and Collins were acutely aware of the parallels between “the Battle of the Sexes” and the 2016 election, something we also noticed.
Collins believes that, though she did not win her bid for president, Hillary Clinton succeeded in showing young women that it’s normal for a woman to work in politics or run for the highest office. “That’s a historical triumph that [Clinton] will always have,” Collins stated. “And Billie, in a very different and more fun way, told the same story with that tennis match.”
In case you can’t catch “Balls,” there are a couple other King v. Riggs projects on the horizon. Emma Stone and Steve Carell will portray the opponents in the upcoming biopic “Battle of the Sexes,” directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. And Elizabeth Banks will face off against Paul Giamatti in an untitled film based on King and Riggs for HBO.
You can catch “Balls” at First Take this Friday, February 24 in Los Angeles. Visit the First Take webpage for more information or to buy tickets.
Karpman is a four-time Emmy winner whose credits include “Paris Can Wait,” “CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap,” and “Taken.”
