The New York premiere of an opera based on the true story of a second-generation Vietnamese-American teenager who takes two jobs to support her brothers after her mother leaves the family, and is sent to jail for truancy even though she is an honor student.
By Heidi Waleson April 15, 2019 3:57 p.m. ET
New York
At the end of “Bound,” the 45-minute opera by Huang Ruo that had its local premiere at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, co-produced with Fresh Squeezed Opera, on Saturday, I most wanted to know why social-service agencies didn’t intervene in this tale. This was probably not what the creators had in mind. (Houston Grand Opera commissioned the piece as part of its community engagement work; it had its world premiere there in 2014.)
Bao-Long Chu’s libretto comes from a true story about a second-generation Vietnamese-American teenager who takes two jobs to support her brothers after her mother leaves the family, and is sent to jail for truancy even though she is an honor student. The opera tries to explore issues of loss and obligation in this immigrant community, but its telescoped narrative falls into cliché. As a result, even though the opera sets out the way each of the four characters—Diane (the heroine), Khanh (the mother), Stanley (the employer) and Judge Moriarty—is bound by a different set of requirements, outrage at parental abandonment and judicial overreach is the actual takeaway.
That said, the opera has some arresting music. Much of it is in the 10-instrument ensemble, which sets spiky harmonies and extreme timbral contrasts against Diane’s high soprano laments. In one striking moment, as Diane and the judge face off in the courtroom, a trombone and a pipa (a Chinese lute) accompany them, aptly capturing this extreme power imbalance. Stanley orders Diane around in a rhythmic scherzo; as Khanh appears to her daughter in jail, the richness of her mezzo suggests motherhood even as glassy instrumental writing evokes the homeland ghosts that took her away from her children. The two women have the most developed parts; Fang-Tao Jiang was an impassioned Diane; Guang Yang a forceful Khanh. Bass-baritone Daniel Klein (Judge Moriarty) and baritone Andrew Wannigman (Stanley) capably filled out the vocal quartet; Alex Wen led the ensemble.
The minimalist production, directed by Ashley Tata, had a clever scenic idea: An array of hanging shirts, bagged in plastic, evoked the dry cleaners where Diane works (Stephan Moravski designed the set; Corina Chase the costumes). But the video/projection element, designed by David Bengali, wasn’t successful, since the images were readable only when they appeared fleetingly on the front of the store counter, and fragmented when projected on the shirt array. Abigail Hoke-Brady did the dim lighting.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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