Boston Lyric Opera teams up with television professionals on an inventive project set in a supernatural motel.
By Heidi Waleson
June 2, 2021 4:37 pm ET
Live opera performance with in-person audiences is gradually returning, with summer festivals putting on (mostly) outdoor productions and opera companies announcing indoor seasons for the fall. This is a happy development, but I hope that producers will not forget about the enormously innovative and creative work in digital media that has enlivened these locked-down months and revolutionized ideas about what opera can be. One such project has its debut on June 3: “Desert In,” commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera and produced in association with Long Beach Opera, is an opera miniseries in eight episodes, each 10 to 20 minutes long. It streams on BLO’s operabox.tv, with two episodes released for subscribers each Thursday, and the general public on Friday.
Conceived by composer Ellen Reid, playwright christopher oscar peña, and director James Darrah, “Desert In” is a highly original marriage of opera and series television. Eight writers, most of them with television credits, divvied up the episodes; eight composers contributed music. Only three of the characters are played on screen by singers; the others are portrayed by actors, their sung parts voiced by unseen vocalists. Mr. Darrah directed five of the episodes; the other three directors include, in television series fashion, one of the project’s writers and one of its actors.
Rough cuts of the first three episodes offer a tantalizing, if sometimes frustrating, window on the project (I had to watch them twice to figure out what was going on). The basic premise: In a motel somewhere in the American West, people can be reunited with their dead loves—for a price. In Episode 1, “This House Is Now,” we meet the inn’s owner, Cass (mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard ), and her wife, Sunny (soprano Talise Trevigne). Motel guest Ion (actor Raviv Ullman ; baritone Edward Nelson ) is having a joyously steamy reunion with Rufus, his dead lover (actor Alexander Jon Flores ; tenor Jesus Garcia ), but he doesn’t have enough money to keep the magic going. We also meet the vaguely menacing handyman, Federico (actor Anthony Michael Lopez ; tenor Alan Pingarrón ). The two next episodes introduce the Lounge Singer (vocalist Justin Vivian Bond ) and Derek (actor Ricco Ross ; bass-baritone Davóne Tines), whose wish to reunite with his dead son appears to have consequences for Ion.
Music, text and cinematography are inextricably entwined. Spoken monologues open each episode; music then launches the action. Ms. Reid’s score for episode 1 is lush and expansive, its voluptuousness setting the amorous tone. The photography and visual pacing (Mr. Darrah directed) also shape the storytelling: Our viewpoint on Ion and Rufus keeps switching between their lovemaking in the motel room and a day at the beach, when Rufus takes his surfboard into the waves and disappears. This episode has only brief snatches of song, most of it performed by Ms. Leonard’s Cass; the instrumental music, remarkably varied for an ensemble of just seven players, conducted by David Angus, supplies aural tension and texture.
The vibe of episode 2, “Love Is Like the Sea,” also directed by Mr. Darrah, is quite different. The opening monologue by Mx. Bond (who uses the gender-neutral honorific)—a comic, over-the-top TV pitch for the inn—sets its tone (Joy Kecken is the writer). Nathalie Joachim’s jittery, percussive music animates a raucous nighttime pool party, its champagne-fueled abandon laced with unease. Visual density and overlapping camera shots enhance the colorful, deliberately chaotic atmosphere, but also contribute to some narrative confusion: Since the actors don’t sing, it can be hard to match character with vocals. Printed text—“Ion sings” or “Rufus responds”—is sometimes splashed over the images; it helps, but also calls attention to the artifice of the conceit.
The centerpiece of Episode 3, “Someday you’ll know…they’re calling you too,” with music by Ms. Reid and Vijay Iyer, is a torchy cabaret song, “My Boy,” dispatched by Mx. Bond with gravelly voiced authority. That episode ends with a ritual led by Ms. Leonard, whose cartwheel black hat, elbow-length red gloves, and imperious gesticulations suggest glamour and sorcery. Also in television style, mysterious elements keep curiosity simmering between episodes.
The screen actors are skilled and attractive; Mr. Ullman’s Ion is especially poignant. Ms. Leonard is in her element as the gorgeous, hard-edged innkeeper—the setup is clearly not benign—and her brief, eloquent arias drop naturally into the cinematic texture. Mx. Bond’s outsize, gender-fluid persona adds to the unconventional ambience. The work of Michael Elias Thomas (director of photography), Yuki Izumihara (production design), Molly Irelan (costume design) and Pablo Santiago (lighting design) is central to the series’ hallucinatory atmosphere.
“Desert In” represents an extreme deconstruction of opera’s familiar tropes. Singing voices are a single element among many rather than the driving force of the narrative—but when we hear them, we pay attention. The “auteur” tradition is upended: The different composers inject unusual variety, and the writers’ room technique of communal plotting and character development gives each episode a distinctive outline while maintaining a consistent narrative. As was the case with BLO’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Mr. Darrah is experimenting and forging a new art form.
Other talented creators are also working at the intersection of opera and film: Check out, for example, the haunting lullaby “The Island We Made” (Angélica Negrón/Matthew Placek/Sasha Velour) on the Opera Philadelphia Channel and “Gallup (Na’nizhoozhi)”(Matthew Aucoin/Blackhorse Lowe/Anthony Roth Costanzo and Davóne Tines), LA Opera’s newest Digital Short Opera has metamorphosed many times over its four-century-plus history. Why should it stop now?
—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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