Run AMOC* Festival and ‘The Gospel at Colonus’ Review: Mythology and Mortality in Opera

At Lincoln Center, the American Modern Opera Company contemplates the past, present and future through strikingly different productions; at its open-air amphitheater, Little Island stages the landmark 1983 musical retelling of a Sophocles tragedy, rethinking central elements.

By 

Heidi Waleson

July 16, 2025 at 4:38 pm ET

A performance of ‘Music for New Bodies’ at Lincoln Center. PHOTO: LAWRENCE SUMULONG

New York

Some summer festivals delight in the unconventional, and two marquee venues here are pursuing that path with gusto. Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City, previously light on classical programming, is hosting the Run AMOC* Festival, curated by the American Modern Opera Company, a maverick group of creators and performers. Downtown, Little Island’s producing artistic director is the inventive Zack Winokur, also a co-founder of AMOC with composer Matthew Aucoin.

The Lincoln Center offerings included the mashup “The Comet/Poppea,” which I reviewed at its Los Angeles premiere in 2024, and an extravaganza of works by Julius Eastman. Last week, it presented Mr. Aucoin’s intriguing 70-minute “Music for New Bodies.” The composer, who conducted, has called it both an opera and a “vocal symphony”; the latter reflects how the sung text weaves through the acoustic and electronic instrumental texture. The singers also move among the instrumentalists in a minimalist staging by the venerable Peter Sellars; Ben Zamora’s lighting features intensely saturated colors on a rear screen and a lot of darkness.

The arresting music seems to grow organically from the sprawling, passionate recent poems of Jorie Graham, which grapple with the chaos of a ravaged earth and humanity given over to machines. Five movements track a protagonist through a cancer diagnosis and thoughts about immortality through cryogenic preservation; a plunge into the ocean’s depths to consider human-wreaked habitat destruction; an operation and the hallucinations of anesthesia. Two sopranos, a mezzo, a tenor and a bass-baritone form a tapestry, tossing fragments of lines back and forth or condensing the texture into tight harmonies as they voice the ocean’s inhabitants or the surveillance state as well as the thoughts of the protagonist. A printed synopsis supplies an essential guide, yet the cascading words don’t seem excessive as they carry the vivid colors and sensations in this immersive musical universe.

The 18-member instrumental ensemble is equally varied, with the wailing oboe (Joe Jordan) in a starring role and an enormous battery of percussion that requires four players. Sections of cacophony and dislocation feel intentional and visceral, as do the eerie, almost comic passages—in the “Prying/Dis-” operation movement, the singers become a bossy robotic entity. Mezzo Megan Moore is spellbinding in “Deep Water Trawling” as a primal voice answering eternal questions. In the final section “Poem,” chaos and terror recede with the words “The earth said, remember me” and a series of powerful chords, a suggestion that some elemental force will survive, no matter what.

By contrast, Doug Balliett’s AMOC “opera” “Rome Is Falling,” performed on Sunday, is a goofy, noisy, rock ’n’ roll romp through the last centuries of the Roman empire. Mr. Balliett, fronting a nine-member band, narrated and played bass guitar; four game opera singers, a children’s chorus and two dancers threw themselves into the tale of several centuries of mayhem compressed into an hour. Lively set pieces included baritone Jorell Williams whipping through the “80 emperors in 80 years” (most of them “killed by his troops”) after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, and countertenor Chuanyuan Liu as Honorius romancing his beloved chickens while the Goth Alaric sacked Rome in 410. Post-Attila the Hun (also Mr. Liu, in a fur coat), the story understandably trails off into confusion (I had to look up Ricimer, the Germanic general, given ferocious voice by tenor Paul Appleby). Mr. Balliett’s announced themes about the Roman betrayal of the Goths and the rise of Christianity don’t quite gel; better get your actual history elsewhere.

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Kim Burrell and the company of ‘The Gospel at Colonus.’ PHOTO: JULIETA CERVANTES

At its open-air amphitheater, Little Island has re-created “The Gospel at Colonus,” the landmark musical by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson that had its premiere at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 1983. “Gospel” retells Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” as a black Pentecostal church ritual, in which the cursed exile Oedipus at last finds sanctuary, community and a peaceful death, with the exuberant singing of the gospel choir at its heart. Mountings of the Breuer staging over the past four decades featured members of the original cast, including the Blind Boys of Alabama as Oedipus.

This all-new production, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, has rethought some central elements: The Preacher, who tells the story and doubles Oedipus, and Theseus, the Athenian king who offers Oedipus sanctuary, are played by women (actress Stephanie Berry and gospel singer Kim Burrell), giving the show a contemporary, inclusive feeling. For the multi-vocal Oedipus, the blind jazz singer Frank Senior is paired with bass-baritone Davóne Tines, whose potent sound and buff physique play against the age and infirmity of his character.

It all worked, especially when Ms. Burrell, a force of nature, fronted the James HallWorship and Praise choir in the roof-rattling (had there been a roof) ensemble numbers. Mr. Tines found the old king’s vulnerability in “Lift Me Up (Like a Dove),” after Creon kidnaps his daughters, and showed off his uncanny range (up to falsetto) in “A Voice Foretold”; Mr. Senior’s rougher, more direct singing made a poignant contrast. Also notable were the vocal stylings of Samantha Howard and Ayana George Jackson as Oedipus’ daughters, and the properly smarmy overtures of Kevin Bond as Creon and Jon-Michael Reese as Polyneices, the villains of the piece. 

The minimalist red set by David Zinn placed the core of the band (featuring the one original cast member, organist Butch Heyward) at the center of the stage; the chorus, in simple blue costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, had seats in the first row of the amphitheater, turning the audience behind into the congregation. Mr. Chowdhury made efficient use of the cramped playing space. Although Garth MacAleavey’s high-volume sound design resulted in significant distortion at full cry, this was an infectious celebration of redemption.

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).