Opera companies’ online offerings, including White Snake Projects’ ambitious ‘Alice in the Pandemic,’ continue to explore the possibilities of virtual performance.
By Heidi Waleson
Oct. 26, 2020 3:58 pm ET
One challenge to making live ensemble music online is latency—the signal lag between the computers of musicians who are not in the same location. With the aid of some tech experts, the Boston-based White Snake Projects, an indie opera company founded by Cerise Lim Jacobs, came up with a solution. In the Oct. 23 online premiere of “Alice in the Pandemic,” by Jorge Sosa with a libretto by Ms. Jacobs, three singers sang live in ensemble despite being at different locations.
“Alice” is ambitious in many respects. The one-hour opera, which has 10 scenes, was written, revised, rehearsed and produced entirely online in six months. Some of the “sets” are real (such as Alice’s bedroom); others are computer-generated, using video-game-style environments. Character avatars in the CG sets have facial movements that reflect those of the singers in real time; the singers’ actual faces also appear in boxes in those scenes. The opening performance had just one noticeable technical glitch—an interrupted scene that was restarted after a five-minute pause.
In the opera, Alice (soprano Carami Hilaire), a nurse, searches through a nightmare world for her mother (mezzo Eve Gigliotti), who has been taken to a hospital with symptoms of Covid-19. Alice’s hallucinations could stem from any number of sources. Permanently angry at her mother and guilt-ridden, she is stressed by her hospital work in the pandemic. She also appears to be addicted to pills and coming down with the virus herself. Her guide is the White Rabbit (countertenor Daniel Moody), alternately comical (he dances Charleston steps) and menacing. Alice meets him first in a subway car, then in an empty cityscape. He drags her through an ATM to the bedside of his rabbit wife, who, in the opera’s one lighthearted scene, gives birth to 12 babies. There’s also a fair and an underground cavern.
The CGI hallucinations alternate with “real” scenes, mostly in Alice’s bedroom, that pull the story back to the world in which millions of people are sick and dying. The intensity level of the arias and ensembles in these sections rises steadily; under Elena Araoz’s direction, which often has singers facing straight into the camera, the opera frequently spills over into melodrama.
Tech ingenuity notwithstanding, opera made for the screen needs new forms; the dramaturgy and music for “Alice” are old-fashioned. Ms. Jacobs’s libretto crams an enormous amount of thematic and emotional material into a relatively short span, and Mr. Sosa’s music, despite the occasional acerbic edge—such as a recurring circus-like arrangement of “The Sidewalks of New York”—is tuneful rather than acute. Thus, the overall impression is one of piling up and piling on, which leads to overload on the small screen. The climactic revelation scene, in which we learn the roots of the mother-daughter estrangement, is pure daytime TV (but with avatars), accompanied by an insistent backbeat.
The music director was Tian Hui Ng; the pre-recorded accompaniment consisted of strings, electronics, and the Voices Boston children’s choir (most noticeable as the baby rabbits). The three excellent singers weren’t always successful at making their performances work in close-up on the small screen—their emotion and expressivity seemed more suited to a theater space. Jeanette Yew designed the projections and lighting. The tech wizards—sound engineer Jon Robertson, video engineer Andy Carluccio, director of innovation Curvin Huber, video engineer/operator James Ruth, and director of CGI Pirate Epstein—created a remarkable new environment for operatic experimentation. The final performance is Oct. 27; future plans for the show will be announced on WSP’s website.
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The Opera Philadelphia Channel, a streaming service, also launched on Oct. 23, with “Lawrence Brownlee and Friends.” Like all the channel’s programs, the concert was filmed rather than live, shot in September at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater. Mr. Brownlee, the celebrated tenor, played genial host to his four collaborators—pianist Myra Huang and sopranos Lindsey Reynolds, Sarah Shafer and Karen Slack—in interview segments, during which they wore masks and were separated by a plexiglass barrier.
Elegantly produced, with simple but effective camera work and subtle theatrical lighting, the program also had a message about empowering and showcasing female and Black artists (all the performers fit one or both of those categories). Its progression from arias to songs by women, spirituals and more popular pieces was smooth and effective, and every performance sparkled.
A few standouts: Mr. Brownlee showing off his bel canto effervescence in “Allegro io son” from Donizetti’s “Rita”; Ms. Shafer’s lively rendition of “The Year’s at the Spring” by Amy Beach; and Ms. Reynolds and Ms. Slack in a heart-rending duet version of the spiritual “Watch and Pray.” Ms. Reynolds, the youngest of the group, displayed easy wit along with vocal flexibility in Victor Herbert’s comical “Art Is Calling for Me,” and the ladies serially bested Mr. Brownlee in “Anything You Can Do” from “Annie Get Your Gun.” Ms. Huang was a sensitive partner throughout. Future OPC offerings include “La Traviata” starring Lisette Oropesa (Oct. 30) and Mr. Brownlee in “Cycles of My Being” by Tyshawn Sorey (Nov. 20). A new film of David T. Little’s “Soldier Songs” and a series of digital commissions will follow.
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Newly created opera films now available from U.S. companies include Mr. Little’s “Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera” (Houston Grand Opera/Marquee TV). This engaging 45-minute comedy, featuring the obscure Belgian sport of finch sitting, has been artfully co-directed by Ryan McKinny (who also plays one of the six roles) and E. Loren Meeker. Built largely on monologues, it is ideal for socially distanced creation. Another ingenious project is “Tales From a Safe Distance,” from the Decameron Opera Coalition. Nine small opera companies banded together to create nine 10-minute original operas, plus a 10th wraparound piece, all with different creative teams, based on stories from Boccaccio’s 14th-century work about waiting out a plague.
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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