The composer’s new work, which had its premiere at Houston Grand Opera in a production by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, follows a Confederate landowner and an enslaved woman in her household as they run a Union espionage ring during the Civil War.
By
Heidi Waleson
Oct. 25, 2023 at 5:34 pm ET
Jamie Barton and Janai Brugger
PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP
Houston
In 2000, Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” launched a flurry of activity in the creation and production of new American operas. It became one of the most produced 21st-century titles and made it to the Metropolitan Opera last month. On Friday, Houston Grand Opera opened its season with the world premiere—the company’s 75th—of Mr. Heggie’s most recent work, “Intelligence.”
Like “Dead Man,” “Intelligence” is based on a true story, this one more than a century older. During the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond landowner, ran a Union spy ring with the assistance of Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved woman in her household. Mr. Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar have blended historical record and imagination to fashion a tale centered on Mary Jane’s journey toward finding the truth of her traumatic past. The path is logical, but that narrative drive, full of heavy-handed foreshadowing, toward Mary Jane’s discovery—a slave auction and the forced separation of mother and child 20 years earlier—feels formulaic. The lengthy opera is an inert, mechanical structure, its characters and situations erected as plot points rather than an authentic, developing story with dramatic sweep.
The 80-minute first act is crammed with information: We meet Mary Jane, Elizabeth and Lucinda, a mysterious woman who seems to know a lot about Mary Jane. A pair of cardboard villains—Callie Van Lew, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, and Travis Briggs, a Confederate Home Guard—who embark on a romance even though Callie’s husband is off fighting for The Cause are bent on uncovering the suspected spying activities. Also in the mix are Wilson, Mary Jane’s husband, who is part of the spy operation, and Henry, Jefferson Davis’s butler, who falls in love with Mary Jane. Events include a devious plan: Mary Jane goes to work in Davis’s home, the Confederate White House, where she can surreptitiously pick up information since no one suspects that she is literate. She sets the Davis house on fire as a distraction from her activities; Elizabeth, fearing discovery of the spy ring, buries the journal that contains her codes and other secrets. The 50-minute Act 2 features murder, revelation and apotheosis.
Michael Mayes and Caitlin Lynch
PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP
It’s a lot of material, and Mr. Heggie’s music tends to be blandly pretty, with little to distinguish one character from another. Each gets at least one obligatory aria, but Mary Jane’s opening song, a minor-key lament that establishes her ignorance about her origins, doesn’t sound all that different from Elizabeth’s declaration, “I didn’t know I could hate like this.” The copious text abounds with expressions of rage and terror, but we never hear it in the music, and Mr. Heggie’s ensembles often go on long past the moment when they’ve made their point.
Only the singing—Janai Brugger’s lyrical soprano (Mary Jane) contrasted with Jamie Barton’s powerful mezzo (Elizabeth)—supplied some variety of tone. The sole character with any real edge is Travis, sung with verve by baritone Michael Mayes. The scene in which he threatens and fondles Mary Jane as if he had every right to do so was the one moment in the evening that made the power dynamics of slavery visceral. Caitlin Lynch’s high soprano brought a slyness to Callie; mezzo J’Nai Bridges was a cipher as Lucinda; Nicholas Newton’s sumptuous bass-baritone gave Henry authority; and tenor Joshua Blue was poignant as Wilson, whose love for Mary Jane means he will do anything for her. Kwamé Ryan was the capable conductor.
J’Nai Bridges and Ms. Brugger, surrounded by the dancers of Urban Bush Women
PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP
One unusual element in the piece is its built-in dance component, featuring eight members of Urban Bush Women, ebulliently choreographed by Ms. Zollar, the company’s founder. One dancer played Mrs. Davis; the others were a continual presence, embodying the ancestral roots that support Mary Jane and Lucinda. In an early scene, they surrounded Mary Jane and helped her walk toward the danger of her undercover role in the Davis house; in Lucinda’s aria “Who am I?” about the horrors of the slave trade, they formed a single line behind her, representing the trafficked and exploited. In Act 2, as Mary Jane gleans more information about her past, their dances become more elaborate—and elaborately costumed—accompanied by African drumming from the pit. They also acted out Mary Jane’s culminating discovery. The spying tale fades away, and the opera concludes with uplift as Mary Jane, backed by the dancing ancestors, resolves to tell her own story. Like the rest of the opera, it’s logical, but pat.
The design concept ingeniously evoked the opera’s multiple locations: Mimi Lien’s set, a multilevel, movable box with transparent sides, suggested hiding places and secrets, as did John Torres’s mysterious lighting; Wendall K. Harrington’s shadowy projections depicted the real (an oak tree, a bookshelf) as well as the remembered (sheets transformed into ship sails; daguerreotype portraits; slave auction posters; African fabric designs). The costumes, originally designed by Carlos Soto and realized by Clair Hummel (who also designed the dancers’ costumes), contrasted sober period authenticity for the living characters with vibrant colors and vivid details for the spirit dancers. Ms. Zollar’s rudimentary scene direction exposed the static quality of the libretto; her explosive choreography appeared to belong to a different show altogether.
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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