In Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s work at Opera Philadelphia, a group of people all suffer from hearing a mysterious hum; at National Sawdust, Paola Prestini and Mr. Vavrek’s adaptation of a 2007 film immersed the audience in the daily routines of Mennonites in Mexico.
By
Heidi Waleson
Kevin Burdette (center) in ‘The Listeners.’
PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO
Philadelphia
Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek are a potent operatic team. “Breaking the Waves” (2016) and “Proving Up” (2018), their chamber operas about anguished people in impossible situations, had searing, visceral immediacy. “The Listeners,” which had its U.S. premiere at Opera Philadelphia on Sept. 25 (the world premiere was in Oslo in 2022; the work will also be presented at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the spring), ventures into similar territory with larger forces, but lacks the ferocity of those earlier scores.
“The Listeners” is about a cult. In an American suburb in the Southwest, Claire, a high-school teacher (the powerful Nicole Heaston), hears a mysterious hum that no one else does. It isolates her from her family, costs her her job and drives her mad until she finds a similarly afflicted group of people led by the charismatic Howard (the raspy-voiced Kevin Burdette), who promises a solution to their suffering. “I alone can harness the hum,” he tells them.
The opera’s sharpest moments explore how the hum affects those who hear it differently. Claire’s opening aria of misery—“an electric drill driving into my brain”—builds into a howl; the paranoid ex-soldier Dillon (John Moore) delivers a jittery rant about “disguised cell towers” and “big dogs in D.C.”; Vince (Daniel Taylor) smokes weed to tolerate the noise. Ms. Mazzoli then ingeniously layers these voices and welds them into a murmuring chorus as Howard instructs them, “Let us all give voice to our personal relationship with the hum,” a musical demonstration of how a seductive leader can pull such a disparate group of people together and quell dissent.
A scene from the show at Opera Philadelphia.
PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO
But the Act 2 revelations of Howard’s nastier qualities, which disrupt the group, were abrupt and obvious, and Claire’s adoption of his leadership role should have been musically creepier. Mr. Vavrek’s expletive-laden libretto (based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill) was carefully set for intelligibility; Ms. Mazzoli’s orchestral writing was too smooth throughout, even with the electronic noise of the hum. We needed to feel more tension and disturbance.
Other standouts in the large, impressive cast included soprano Rehanna Thelwell as Angela, Howard’s “second in command,” poignant in her aria of loneliness; tenor Aaron Crouch as Kyle, the hum-afflicted student who has an uneasy romance with Claire; and soprano Lindsey Reynolds as Ashley, Claire’s resentful daughter. Corrado Rovaris was the sensitive conductor.
The neutral tones of Adam Rigg’s versatile set, subtly lighted by Yi Zhao, evoked a sun-baked, bland background for people whose torments are invisible. All the color was in Kaye Voyce’s costumes—when Claire took over at the end, everyone was in shades of pink and orange. One effective touch was to have the “confessions” of the cult members captured on live video and displayed in giant, looming projections. Director Lileana Blain-Cruz sculpted the group meditation scenes effectively; some more intimate moments—Angela’s manic first appearance; Howard’s sleaziness—were overdone. Raja Feather Kelly provided the undulating choreography for dancer Sydney Donovan, the Coyote with whom Claire finds common cause and a howl to counter the hum.
A scene from ‘Silent Light.’
PHOTO: JILL STEINBERG
Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Silent Light” by Paola Prestini and Mr. Vavrek, given its world premiere at National Sawdust on Sept. 26, is an unusual piece of theater. Based on a 2007 film by Carlos Reygadas, it is as much an immersion experience as it is an opera, with noises, speech, cooking smells and lengthy silences carrying as much weight as the music. By submerging the audience—the space was very small—in the daily routines of members of a Mennonite community in Mexico, the creators and director/designer Thaddeus Strassberger invite us to identify with these people and comprehend the deep feelings that lie beneath their oddly placid exteriors.
The plot is bare-bones. Johan (Daniel Okulitch), a married farmer with five children, has fallen in love with Marianne (Julia Mintzer), another member of the community. His wife, Esther (Brittany Renee), knows about the relationship. Johan asks his friend Zacarias (Anthony Dean Griffey) and his father (James Demler) for advice. Esther dies, but Marianne kisses her, bringing her back to life.
Mr. Vavrek’s minimalist libretto eventually supplies some information, but the opening 10 minutes have no words or music. There’s just the sound of insects, a loudly ticking clock, and Esther and her mother (Margaret Lattimore) preparing breakfast for the family—you can smell the bacon—who sit around an unfinished-pine kitchen table. Only when Johan says grace does the music begin—the instrumental ensemble is an eccentric quintet of violin, cello, trumpet, trombone and percussion, mostly playing solos, led by Christopher Rountree. The 12 choristers, initially seated on benches and facing upstage as though they are the front row in the audience, intone a hymn with the interpolated words “The only thing we cannot do is turn back time.”
Daniel Okulitch and Julia Mintzer
PHOTO: JILL STEINBERG
The delivery of the sung solo music was dispassionate and formal; characters often interacted without looking at one another. Other elements filled in. Nathan Repasz, a Foley artist, supplied sound effects like crunching footsteps and the pumping of milking machines (having female choristers in cow masks being milked was an unsettling choice); there was a video clip of a young Jacques Brelsinging “Ne me quitte pas.” Bruce Steinberg’s subtle lighting shadowed Johan and Marianne as they undressed (Amanda Gladu designed the traditional Mennonite garb) and made love in an upstage pool; a rain shower deluged Esther as she fled the family car and collapsed.
The strongest musical moments were choral. A mourning hymn “There’s a city of light ’mid the stars,” set with jarringly dissonant intervals, was followed by a hypnotic choral echo of “White linens,” an aria sung by Esther’s mother, as the women washed and laid out the body. The resolution of the story seemed almost beside the point, and the clock—which Johan stopped when he first left the house after breakfast—was started again, implying that life goes on. If you entered into the community mindset, as invited by the show, presumably it was all God’s will.
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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