Designed for the Digital Stage

American opera companies, including Houston Grand Opera, have begun to create original content for virtual viewing.

By Heidi Waleson

Sept. 22, 2020 2:47 pm ET

Live performance with audiences remains difficult for opera companies as long as Covid-19 infection rates remain too high to permit large indoor gatherings. In response, several American companies have embraced comprehensive digital solutions. Their challenge will be to create original content that is designed for the medium, not simply standard performance forms shoehorned into a different distribution channel.

Some tantalizing projects have been announced. Boston Lyric Opera’s operabox.tv will offer a commissioned eight-part episodic series, “Desert In,” developed by composer Ellen Reid (of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “p r i s m”) and director James Darrah. Planned for release in the spring, it will be built using a television-style writers’ room approach, with multiple librettists and composers. The Opera Philadelphia Channel plans cinematic productions of David T. Little’s “Soldier Songs,” starring baritone Johnathan McCullough, and Hans Werner Henze’s “El Cimarrón,” starring bass-baritone Sir Willard White, for later in the season. Coming up on Sept. 24, 25 and 26 is Opera Omaha’s “Miranda: A Virtual Steampunk Opera,” a VR opera experience with music by the ever-inventive Kamala Sankaram. Gamers owning sophisticated VR gear will have a viewing advantage; others will have to make do with YouTube. Several companies will be dropping opera music videos: LA Opera plans, among others, an animated adaptation of a suite from Du Yun’s one-act opera “Zolle” and an exploration of the death of Carmen by writer-director Lila Palmer and composer Tamar-kali. 

On Sept. 18, Houston Grand Opera launched HGO Digital, a partnership with Marquee TV, an on-demand streaming platform for arts and culture. Most of Marquee’s other content comes from European arts organizations. It is subscription based, but the HGO content will be free, and the programs, their creation underwritten by a $1 million gift, will be released twice a month. These include recitals and several original opera films, such as David T. Little’s delightfully eccentric “Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera” (Oct. 23) and a double bill of Mozart’s “The Impressario” and Lee Hoiby’s Julia Child opera, “Bon Appetit!” (Nov. 27).

HGO Digital’s debut program, a 40-minute recital by Tamara Wilson, part of the Live From the Cullen series, made for a disappointing start, however. Ms. Wilson’s powerful soprano is easy on the ears—creamy, voluptuous and seamlessly produced throughout her range. I first heard her in 2012 at HGO as a luminous Elisabeth in the five-act French version of Verdi’s “Don Carlos”; in spring 2019 she delivered an eloquent Desdemona in “Otello” at Canadian Opera Company. She was supposed to sing her first Isolde at the Santa Fe Opera this summer. But Ms. Wilson seemed stiff and uncomfortable in the more exposed and intimate recital format, especially without an audience to provide feedback. An odd background of purple light and some stagey makeup did her no favors either. 

She began with Purcell’s “Music for a while,” lightening her timbre appropriately, and then leaped from the 17th century into the 20th with “Sleep is supposed to be,” “The world feels dusty,” and “I felt a funeral in my brain” from Aaron Copland’s “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson.” All three got overly assertive, relentless readings, magnified by some clangorous piano playing from Patrick Summers, HGO’s artistic and music director. André Previn’s Dickinson song “As Imperceptibly as Grief” got a more buoyant reading. Four Amy Beach pieces supplied some novelty: They were prettily tuneful, especially the moody “Night.” After an overwrought performance of the final Beach song, “Dark Is the Night,” Ms. Wilson’s voice bloomed more comfortably in Strauss’s “Morgen,” in a bit of welcome sunlight. More Strauss would have been preferable to the subsequent Rossini group, “La promessa,” “L’invito” and “La danza.” Ms. Wilson delivered their smooth, bel canto lines but not their playfulness, though she tried, and Mr. Summers did his best to push her along. She gave the concluding “We’ll Meet Again,” by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, a low-voice, cabaret croon but couldn’t communicate enough sincerity in that evergreen anthem of hope and resilience to break through the screen and the artifice of the production.