In ‘The Mother of Us All,’ Susan B. Anthony leads the charge for women’s suffrage; in ‘Freedom Ride,’ a young black woman decides whether to openly fight segregation in interstate travel
ByHeidi Waleson
New York
Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera “The Mother of Us All” (1947) is a natural commemoration piece for this year’s centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which secured women’s right to vote. Yet this eccentric portrait of Susan B. Anthony, the crusader for women’s suffrage, depicts a never-ending struggle. Stein’s gnomic text, full of repetitions and oddities, and Thomson’s jaunty marches, waltzes and folk-like tunes create a stew of noise and conflict, with Susan B., as she is called, always working to be heard above it. Anthony, who died in 1906, is a statue when the opera ends with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but even this is not a triumphal moment. It is, rather, a reminder that the fight goes on.
The New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have collaborated on the production that runs through Friday in the Charles Engelhard Court of the museum’s American Wing. This sculpture gallery made symbolic sense—a raised stage surrounded Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Diana with her bow drawn, and Jo Davidson’s statue of Gertrude Stein is tucked into a corner of the room—but there were practical drawbacks. Director Louisa Proske deployed the large cast and chorus both on the stage and in the surrounding area (Susan B. spent one scene declaiming from a pulpit; another character sang from the balcony), but the challenging sightlines and the amplification often made it difficult to know who was singing, what they were saying, and where they were. (There are 21 named characters, and while some of them were introduced with wall projections, it was still hard to keep them straight.) The miking also kept the show at a continuous, too-loud volume, muddying its squabbles and undercutting the opera’s intimate, homemade quality.
Felicia Moore’s opulent, Wagner-scaled soprano could probably have dispensed with the amplification. She captured Susan B.’s determination as well as her exhaustion, an immovable monument in a simple, 19th-century black dress, with the other characters, in outfits by Beth Goldenberg that ranged from the early 19th century to the present, swirling around her. Bass-baritone William Socolof was imposing as her primary antagonist, Daniel Webster ; tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole impressed as the feckless Jo the Loiterer, who wants to marry Indiana Elliot (the assertive mezzo Carlyle Quinn ) but is annoyed that she will not take his name. Conductor Daniela Candillari couldn’t always keep the singers and the six instrumentalists coordinated in this reverberant space—not ideal, but adding to the anarchic spirit of the piece. Ms. Proske’s final image was also true to the opera’s themes. Three top-hatted men, who remained on the stage after all the other characters had filed off to pay homage to Susan B.’s statue, stamped on the ballot box and destroyed it, a reminder that rights must be defended in perpetuity.
Chicago
Dan Shore’s opera “Freedom Ride,” given its world premiere at Chicago Opera Theater at the Studebaker Theater on Saturday, is a noble effort to tell an important story, but its earnestness leaches the tension out of a violent and dramatic episode in the American civil-rights movement. The 90-minute piece follows Sylvie, a fictional young African-American woman, as she decides whether to join the Freedom Riders, activists who rode buses and trains in the South in 1961 in a campaign to integrate interstate travel. Sylvie ( Dara Rahming ) keeps changing her mind about participating. She is urged on by the organizer, Clayton ( Robert Sims), and discouraged by her mother, Georgia ( Zoie Reams ). We hear that Riders are beaten and jailed, and that it’s God’s will that things remain as they are. After an attack on a church rally, she decides to ride.
But Mr. Shore’s clumsy, awkwardly rhyming libretto fails to create any character development or a convincing dramatic arc to tie together what is basically a collection of songs. Pleasantly tonal but mostly unmemorable arias alternate with livelier choruses, original spirituals that unite and encourage the community of Riders and supporters. Overall, the musical tone is oddly serene, even when the subject is people being hurt and arrested. Only one impassioned aria caught my ear: Leonie Baker (soprano Whitney Morrison ) tells Sylvie to leave well enough alone and not make trouble—she just wants to get to Jackson, Miss., and doesn’t care if the train is segregated. It reminded me of “My Man’s Gone Now” from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”
Notable singers included soprano Kimberly E. Jones, a charismatic presence as Ruby, a would-be Rider felled by asthma, and some ensemble members with featured moments—bass-baritone Vince Wallace (Tommie), mezzo Morgan Middleton (Frances) and soprano Samantha Schmid (Mae). Lidiya Yankovskaya ably led the Chicago Sinfonietta. Director Tazewell Thompson positioned the chorus on folding chairs at the sides of the bare stage, observing the smaller character scenes at the center. Harry Nadal’s costumes, all in shades of black, gray and white, suggested period newsreels and TV images; only Sylvie’s final outfit, as she prepares to board the train, had color—an orange dress.
Donald Eastman (set design) and Rasean Davonte Johnson (projection design) used images of locations, such as a church balcony and a train station to evoke place. And the final images of the evening—a panorama of mug shots of real Freedom Riders—had more impact than the opera itself.
—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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