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Michel van der Aa’s film opera imagines what it would be like to leave your body behind to have your mind preserved in the digital world. 

By Heidi Waleson

March 24, 2022 5:52 pm ET

New York

Michel van der Aa’s work explores the intersection of music, film and technology. “Upload,” his haunting new film opera, which had its North American premiere at the Park Avenue Armory on Tuesday, skillfully harnesses all those elements to ask existential questions: What does it really mean to be alive, even as technology increasingly mediates and expands the space between life and death? Is it possible to be alive—and human—without a body? Even more important, is it possible to be human without pain?

The 85-minute piece starts in cavernous darkness. A disembodied soprano voice sings pairs of words that are all about physicality—“expand-lungs,” “pull-muscle,” “carry-weight.” A baritone voice joins in, alternating with its own word pairs. The list ends with “weight-less,” which is the current state of one of the two main characters. The story—Mr. Van der Aa wrote the eloquent libretto, in addition to composing the music and directing the show—is revealed through flashbacks. The Father (baritone Roderick Williams ), profoundly depressed after the death of his wife, has submitted to a radical new procedure. His mind has been uploaded and stored on a proprietary blockchain; his physical body and brain were destroyed. Post-transfer, he is visible to his beloved Daughter (soprano Julia Bullock ) as an avatar with no corporeal presence. Uploads, we discover, are minds freed of the infirmities of biology; they speak, feel, evolve and are eternal. 

The flaws in this seemingly ideal solution soon become apparent: The Father realizes that the unbearable trauma of abandonment that he was trying to escape is still part of him. He must now persuade the Daughter to “terminate” him or he will suffer forever. She, who was not consulted in advance about his upload and is distraught about his new state, is faced with the terrible prospect of having to kill him herself. 

The stage has a large screen at the rear and three movable screens in front of it. The action alternates between past and present. In the present, the Daughter appears live and the Father is an onscreen image. (The actual Mr. Williams is at the side of stage; his performance is transmitted in real time via motion capture technology.) The past, shown in a film that uses seven speaking actors, traces the process of being uploaded at the clinic.

Scenes set in the present are sung and brim with messy human emotionality, particularly from Ms. Bullock, who gives an unrestrained, impassioned performance. The yearning lyricism of her arias and the force of her untrammeled anger contrast with Mr. Williams’s more measured, articulated vocalism; Father and Daughter are arguing from different spheres. The 11-member orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Otto Tausk, is often punchy and percussion-forward, mirroring the chaotic upheaval of the characters’ reality and its dramatic arc. When the instrumental texture smooths and thins, the characters are recalling a nostalgic past or envisioning an unknown future. In one of the most moving effects, a funereal organ sound accompanies matching arias as the two contemplate the possibility of eternal separation from each other.

By contrast, the all-spoken scenes of the film of the upload clinic imply a scientific confidence in perfectibility. The laboratories there are furnished with mysterious technological objects. Even creepier is the clean, corporate, youthful amiability of both the CEO ( Ashley Zukerman ) and the psychiatrist ( Katja Herbers ), who, in order to model the Father’s brain, interviews his brother-in-law ( Samuel West, startlingly recognizable as the curmudgeonly vet from “All Creatures Great and Small”). When there is live orchestral accompaniment for the film, it has a noisy, mechanical vibe, suggesting some stress underneath the smooth façade.

Similarly, Mr. Van der Aa’s varied, textured use of film elsewhere in the opera goes far beyond illustration. In the scenes with the Daughter in the present, it serves as the set, depicting a large New York loft and a roof garden, but is never quite static. Mr. Williams’s avatar is sometimes a straightforward copy; at others, it is hugely enlarged and pulsating in streams of pixels. Midway through the opera Ms. Bullock sings a gorgeous, meditative aria that tries to picture the Father’s present existence. As she muses, “This is where you are now,” images unfurl around her. They could be undersea reefs, subatomic structures or mathematical fractals—beautiful but uncategorizable to her or to us. 

And in the penultimate scene, as the Daughter lies in bed, trying to decide what to do, a huge sheet is lowered over the audience, showing enormous video images of the heads of Father and Daughter on their respective pillows, as if we were at an IMAX movie. Again, they sing the word pairs as they did in the beginning, and the images seem as real as the humans. We aren’t told what the final decision is, but here, the two appear at peace with each other, just as music, film, and technology have coalesced. Are we being lulled into acceptance, as we were visually seduced by those beautiful fractals? Mr. Van der Aa isn’t telling. 

—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).

The U.S. premiere of a show, delayed by Covid-19, drawn from a Chinese compilation of myths that was first transcribed in the fourth century B.C.

By Heidi Waleson

March 17, 2022 6:11 pm ET

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Over the 80 minutes of “Book of Mountains & Seas,” which had its U.S. premiere on Tuesday at St. Ann’s Warehouse, composer Huang Ruo and director-designer Basil Twist create the world and destroy it. Their materials are simple: 12 singers and two percussionists along with some lengths of silk, large pieces of driftwood-like material and paper lanterns manipulated by six puppeteers. The piece is based on the eponymous Chinese compilation of myths that was first transcribed in the fourth century B.C.; the sung text is in Mandarin Chinese and an invented language. Yet the plots of the four myths that the composer adapted into the libretto are given only the most basic outline in the English supertitles, for the spirit of this haunting evening is atmospheric rather than narrative. “Book of Mountains & Seas” is an exquisite masterpiece of suggestion, an immersive tapestry of sound and image that weaves itself into your consciousness and makes its point about the interdependence of humans and their planet without ever saying it outright.

The opera begins in darkness. Only the faces of the singers, members of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, are illuminated; you can barely make out the percussionists ( Michael Murphy and John Ostrowski ) positioned at stage right and left. The singers, three per voice type (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), all have independent lines, and the music layers the voices in various combinations to create different textures and sonic effects. In the first scene, depicting a creation story about Pan Gu —a being whose body parts ultimately become the Earth’s rocks, rivers and finally humans—solo lines come together to build a hypnotic, chant-like texture with tight harmonic intervals. Here, it is mostly a cappella, with just some soft gong strokes adding another color. The singers move apart to reveal, at center stage, driftwood pieces emerging from Pan Gu’s cosmic egg; the glowing lanterns that are his eyes become the sun and the moon.

In the three subsequent scenes, new combinations of all these elements expand the piece’s mythic universe. In “The Spirit Bird,” a billowing sheet of silk becomes the ocean; a smaller one, flapping above, is the bird, once a princess who drowned. In revenge, she flies back and forth above the ocean, dropping twigs and branches into it. The percussionists trade bass drumbeats, symbolizing the ocean’s vastness and tides, as the soprano and alto lines swoop above the men’s repeated phrases.

In the third myth, 10 suns take turns revolving around the Earth until the day they decide to all come out together. The setup is extended at a length that seems impossible to sustain, but it works: The suns, paper lanterns, glowing orange and carried on long poles, emerge one at a time as the high and low voices alternate, with more joining in at each entrance, accompanied by the shimmering drone of a temple bowl and a high-pitched finger cymbal. When all the suns are visible, the ritual mood suddenly evaporates and violence takes over. The drum and marimba pound while the suns dance, change color and even dangle menacingly over the audience—their combined heat makes the Earth burn and die. The archery god then shoots nine of them, turning them blue, and leaving one—along with a single bass voice, the cymbal and the temple bowl—to light the Earth..

For the final scene, the driftwood pieces are gloriously assembled into the giant Kua Fu, whom we see chasing the sun across the Earth, but never catching it. A percussionist pounds out his journey, weaving around the rhythmic, repeating voices, symbolizing the frustration of his quest. The giant falls in exhaustion and drinks the (silken) rivers dry. Finally, he dies—pieces of his body are taken away. Once again, we are in the dark, with only the illuminated faces of the singers visible. The titles tell us that the giant’s staff became a forest of peach blossoms; bits of bright paper drop from above; and the final notes, soft solo voices over a drone, suggest a faint hope for rebirth. The cycle, it implies, will begin anew; we are fated to keep creating and destroying the planet.

Poe Saegusa designed the lighting; Lynne Buckson devised the black velvet costumes that were perfectly invisible until the curtain call. Huang Ruo conducted from the booth behind the audience. This extraordinary piece, co-produced and co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, had its world premiere last November at the Royal Danish Opera House with the choir Ars Nova Copenhagen. It was supposed to be part of January’s Prototype Festival, which was canceled due to the Covid-19 surge. Its resurrection two months later seems of a piece with the fragile hope of its ending: Perhaps there is something to be learned from death and devastation.

—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).

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center and the 10th anniversary of the American Opera Initiative, monument-inspired premieres from diverse creators

By Heidi Waleson

March 8, 2022 6:51 pm ET

Washington

Operas written for special occasions have a long history—for example, the many French Baroque pieces created for coronations and weddings. “Written in Stone,” which had its premiere by the Washington National Opera on Saturday, commemorates both the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center, WNO’s home, and the 10th anniversary of the American Opera Initiative, the company’s fruitful new-works development program. The project deftly combines the two, casting the Kennedy Center as a “living monument” and a diverse group of living creators as the appropriate people to explore the idea that monuments are more than cold stone.

The brief curtain raiser, the solo piece “Chantal” by Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, calls the very permanence of monuments into question. Ms. Moran, a potent mezzo, plays a surveyor who declares, “You know I know you’re leaning” and suggests that some monuments have outlived their time. “Rise” by Kamala Sankaram and A.M. Homes and “it all falls down” by Carlos Simon and Marc Bamuthi Joseph use the monument theme to make statements about changing times: the first regarding the role of women in civil society, the second about homosexuality. Finally, “The Rift” by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang looks at the divisions in American society through the story of the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“Rise” starts out playfully, its jaunty orchestration depicting Alicia (Vanessa Becerra), a Latina Girl Scout lost in the Capitol and desperate for a bathroom. She encounters a Powerful Woman ( Daryl Freedman, whose mezzo voice indeed powerful); the comic byplay about how long it took to get a convenient women’s rest room in this male bastion serves as a slightly awkward metaphor for the larger issue. The rest of the piece, featuring J’nai Bridges as a Black Capitol police officer, revolves around the Portrait Monument, Adelaide Johnson’s massive sculpture depicting Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was presented to Congress in 1921 in celebration of women winning the right to vote, and then ignominiously consigned to the Capitol crypt until 1997. We learn that part of the monument is rough and uncarved, emblematic of the struggle that continues. The opera is educational, if a bit didactic, and the final burst of inspiration—“Rise and add your name”—is appropriately fervent.

“it all falls down” is tighter and more character-based, built on the conflict between Mtchll, a pastor, and Bklyn, his son and successor, over the revelation that Bklyn is gay, and the efforts of their wife/mother, Laurel, to bring them together. The ostensible monument here is the Supreme Court, and its 2015 decision recognizing same-sex marriage, but the real monument at issue is the Black church, and whether it can accommodate such a challenge to its traditional values.

Church cadences of preaching and congregational response infuse the score; the chorus parts supply the sense of community and familial strength, even as the three central characters enact a struggle that could pull it apart at the seams. As Laurel, Ms. Bridges had more opportunity to shine than she did in “Rise,” her voluptuous soprano soaring in the peacemaker’s role. Bass-baritone Alfred Walker and tenor Christian Mark Gibbs brought vocal heft and theatrical intensity to father and son. In the final scene, the chorus sings text from the 2015 decision, as if approving of it, yet James Robinson’s directing astutely leaves open the question of whether Mtchll will agree to the premise of “Love over rules” and accept his son as he is.

“The Rift,” the longest and most substantial work in the evening, recalls the conflicts over the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which, from the time it was authorized in 1980, revived the pain of a deeply unpopular and divisive war. Four excellent singers play multiple characters, including Maya Lin ( Karen Vuong ), the Yale undergraduate who submitted the winning design (out of 1,421) to the blind competition, and Robert McNamara ( Rod Gilfry ), the defense secretary whose role in escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam made his name synonymous with its disastrous progress and outcome. The opera opens with a rhythmic, repeated, two-note motif, emblematic of the rift itself; then brief but potent scenes, each one musically distinctive, look at all the angles. In one, detractors squabble in a spoken melee (“No memorial for baby-killers!”); in the next, Maya Lin passionately describes her project, “It appears as a rift in the earth.” The aria, in which Mr. Hwang artfully mingles his own words and Ms. Lin’s, becomes an eloquent vision of catharsis and finally, healing.

Healing takes some time. We get McNamara’s self-exculpatory, yet not unsympathetic, musings, and vicious attacks on the design and the designer ( Ross Perot’s description is “some ugly black slab designed by an egg roll”). Grady Mitchell (Mr. Gibbs), a veteran with traumatic memories, and Phuong Tran ( Nina Yoshida Nelsen ), a refugee whose dead husband, a South Vietnamese soldier, will not have his name on the memorial, think it’s meaningless. But, young as she is, Maya Lin stands up for her design and her Asian heritage; Mitchell, Tran and McNamara visit the memorial and find some solace there as the two-note motif reappears. The opera ends with it resolved in a chord.

Robert Spano led the capable WNO Orchestra, which was behind a scrim on the Eisenhower Theater stage. Erhard Rom designed the blocky, no-frills set, leaving it to S. Katy Tucker’s black-and-white projections to provide salient details—the Portrait Monument; the church’s stained-glass windows, the helicopters over the rice paddies. Dede Ayite designed the costumes (the outfits of the congregation in “it all falls down” were the liveliest) and Mark McCullough did the lighting. Ms. Moran did her own blocking for “Chantal”; Mr. Robinson’s direction of the other three pieces was efficient if broad-stroked.

“Written in Stone” proved an ambitious and thoughtful way to mark two significant anniversaries, and to make the point, through all of these different voices, that the work is never done.

—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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Composer Christopher Cerrone and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann offer an updated, Americanized take on the Japanese director’s ‘Rashomon.’

By Heidi Waleson

Feb. 22, 2022 6:08 pm EST

Pittsburgh

‘In a Grove”by composer Christopher Cerrone and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, which had its world premiere at the Pittsburgh Opera’s Bitz Opera Factory on Saturday, is all about atmosphere. Based on the Ryūnosuke Akutagawa story that inspired Akira Kurosawa’s renowned 1950 film “Rashomon,” the 60-minute opera’s moody, haunting score, laced with electronics, explores the uncertainties—multiple, conflicting testimonies—that are the hallmarks of the story and the film. However, its libretto insists on resolving the mystery, which the story does not.

The setting has been updated from ancient Japan to Oregon in 1921; other significant details have been changed as well. The Outlaw, Luther Harlow, sees The Settler, Ambrose Raines, and his wife, Leona Raines, riding through a mountain landscape left desolate by a wildfire. Luther decides that he wants Leona. He lures Ambrose into a grove with the promise of a hidden treasure, ties him up, and then goes back to rape Leona. Ambrose ends up stabbed to death. 

Seven testimonies—four from witnesses with fragmentary knowledge, three from the participants themselves—offer conflicting interpretations of what happened. Each of the three participants claims responsibility for Ambrose’s death. In the Japanese original, the woman having been raped is the core of the story, making honor—that of the woman and that of her samurai husband—a critical factor. In a modern feminist twist, the opera’s woman is given more agency. Leona saves herself from being raped; she tries to rescue her husband and intervenes in the fight between the men. Finally, the revelation that Ambrose has a weak heart as a result of rheumatic fever in childhood—the frailty in the relationship is his, not hers—becomes central to the unraveling of the mystery.

Mr. Cerrone’s score, for nine instrumentalists and electronics, opens with a wind-like wash of sound; the instrumental soundscape, with fragments of melody subtly woven into a foundation of percussion, remains alluringly and dramatically hypnotic. Vocal lines are direct and unembellished, often with repeated notes and a sudden drop into a lower register for just a syllable or two. Like the instruments, the voices are amplified and sometimes electronically manipulated and distorted, alerting the listener to the fact that a character may be lying, or remembering wrong. Turning points are carefully signaled: For example, when Leona realizes—or thinks she realizes—that her husband hates her, the pounding orchestration disappears to leave her voice nakedly and poignantly exposed. 

Four skilled young singers each sang two roles—a participant and a witness—with only slight changes of hair and costume. Baritone Yazid Gray gave Luther a harshness as well as the seductive allure that tempts Ambrose off the path, and he brought stolid clarity to the Woodcutter who finds the body. Andrew Turner’s lyrical tenor supplied Ambrose’s pathos and the directness of the Policeman who arrests Luther. Soprano Madeline Ehlinger was luminous and sympathetic as Leona and forthright as her mother, who describes her missing daughter as an aspiring botanist. Countertenor Chuanyuan Liu sang the Medium through whom the dead Ambrose tells his version of events with an otherworldly flourish; his final duet with Mr. Turner—two Ambroses together—was a high point. He also illuminated the brief role of the shy Priest who sees the couple on the road before they meet Luther. Conductor Antony Walker, working with the instrumentalists from a loft high above the singers, ably welded the ensemble together.

For the stage, set designer Mimi Lien placed a runway, marbled in black and white, down the center of the small, black-box theater, with the audience seated on both sides. A translucent panel, its utility unclear, bisected the runway and moved from one side of it to the other between testimonies. The only other set pieces were two glowing images of naked tree trunks, one on each long wall behind the audience, which also shifted position, sliding along the walls, between scenes. There were no props. Mary Birnbaum’s acute, choreographic direction told the story clearly, with the aid of Yuki Nakase Link’s ghostly lighting and Oana Botez’s monochromatic period costumes that hinted at Japanese shapes. The look of the show paid homage to the story’s Japanese origins, coexisting ingeniously with the opera’s more American style in its dissection of this young couple’s tragedy. 

—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).

A jazz cabaret take on the final hours of Socrates’ life. 

By Heidi Waleson

Feb. 15, 2022 5:04 pm ET

New York

In the face of death, why not celebrate life to the fullest? That’s the spirit of Taylor Mac’s “The Hang,” now playing at HERE. Its initial January performances were canceled along with the whole Prototype Festival, at which it was suppose to have its premiere, because of the Omicron surge; how appropriate that an irreverent, queer jazz cabaret should be the show that came roaring back to life. This ebullient depiction of the final hours of Socrates features wailing saxophones, over-the-top makeup and costume design (performer El Beh’s headdress of toadstools is just one delirious element), dancing, flirtation, comedy and, always, argument. With his white robe, typewriter and sober demeanor, Plato ( Ryan Chittaphong ) is the odd man out; clearly, his published account sanitized a much more colorful event. 

In “The Hang,” Mac’s Socrates, with a flower-covered cap, purple robe and gloves, and a flowing bow in his long beard, embraces the crimes for which he was condemned to death—impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens—which, in this interpretation, are code for open debate and gay sex. There’s a lot of material in Mac’s book and lyrics, and if you haven’t been studying the Greeks recently, you will probably miss some of the references and the jokes. No matter: The 100-minute show sweeps you up in its exuberant, joyous anarchy, propelled by the infectious, toe-tapping abandon of composer and music director Matt Ray’s jazz songs and interludes. 

The eight musicians regularly join in the stage action: In a song about virtue, saxophonist Jessica Lurie gets into a scatting contest with singers Kat Edmonson and Synead Cidney Nichols. Contemporary references, like the ensemble number built on the catchphrase “OK Boomer,” are dropped into the mix. Socrates recounts his trial in an arch, Noel Coward -style rhymed narration, complete with British accent (“It was gayer than Spartans . . . The three proseCUtors had sons who were SUItors”). There are darker moments, as when a black-cloaked trio swoops in to declare that “the party is over . . . run, little children, flush all the drugs,” and the ensemble becomes a chorus of Socrates’ accusers. And as the hemlock starts to take effect, and Socrates sheds his gay finery for a white shroud-like garment, Mac reminds us gently that “Wondering is all we do . . . wondering is holy.” 

But overall, “The Hang” is a romp about love, community and dialectics, and a showcase for a cast of dynamic performers, unleashed by director Niegel Smith and choreographer Chanon Judson. There’s the sweetness of the drag artist Wesley Garlington, festooned in orange macramé and whistling seductively to Socrates; the belting power of Queen Esther; the astonishing, lanky physique of Kenneth Ard, clad only in a harness and feather headdress; the intense dancing of Trebien Pollard (resplendent in orange rams’ horns). The costumes and the womb-like setting are by Machine Dazzle. Anastasia Durasova designed the makeup; Kate McGee, the lighting. The memory of color, momentum and joy remains even after the jazz funeral has left the stage and the dead Socrates asks Plato, “Am I to be a statue, then?” Not if this group has anything to do with it. 

—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).

The operatic adaptation of Lynn Nottage’s play marries the best of its love-and-loss narrative to Ricky Ian Gordon’s musical talents in Bartlett Sher’s production.

By Heidi Waleson

Updated Feb. 8, 2022 8:15 pm ET

New York

‘Intimate Apparel,” the touching new opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage now at Lincoln Center Theater, is a good advertisement for a long and productive creative lead time. Composer and librettist were brought together by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program over a decade ago; the opera went through multiple workshops to refine Ms. Nottage’s adaptation of her 2003 play and Mr. Gordon’s musical interpretation. Scheduled to open in March 2020, the show was shut down by Covid-19 after three weeks of previews. Now running at LCT’s chamber-size Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, in a tight production by Bartlett Sher, performed by a splendid cast, “Intimate Apparel” is an elegantly constructed piece of theater in which music significantly expands and enriches the themes and emotions of the original play. 

Set in 1905 in New York, the opera is the story of Esther, a 35-year-old Black seamstress who creates lingerie for clients who include a rich white matron (Mrs. Van Buren) and a Tenderloin prostitute (Mayme). She lives in a boarding house with a sympathetic landlady (Mrs. Dickson) and has been diligently sewing her savings into a quilt for 18 years, planning to open a beauty parlor someday. She is illiterate, but with the aid of her clients, she carries on a romantic correspondence with George, a Barbadian laborer working on the Panama Canal; her longing for love is the chink in her armor of practicality and self-reliance. Esther’s true soul mate is Mr. Marks, the Orthodox Jewish fabric merchant with whom she bonds over the beauties of silk, wool and lace, but their relationship can go no further. Act I ends with a wedding, but in the second act, when an accelerating cascade of events shows George’s virtues to be an illusion, Esther is left to fall back on her own strengths. 

Ms. Nottage radically trimmed the play’s text, but also expanded it, creating subtly rhymed arias out of single sentences. There is no fat on the libretto—Mrs. Van Buren, Mayme, Mrs. Dickson and Mr. Marks each have just one brief aria that precisely establishes his or her essence and why that matters to Esther’s plight. The play was all two-character scenes; for the opera, an eight-member chorus enables the creation of larger episodes that were only described in the original, such as the opening party, which sets Esther’s solitude against the jolly ragtime antics of the boarding house, and the dice game in which George loses Esther’s savings. Ensemble members also sing shadowy backup parts in solos such as George’s letters, lending them extra depth. 

Episodes flow smoothly from one into the other, thanks to Mr. Gordon’s careful setting of the text, which segues effortlessly from expository conversation into arias and ensembles. The underlying momentum afforded by period styles like ragtime and blues never feels like affectation, and the two-piano accompaniment offers both tonal richness and percussive clarity that never overwhelms the voices. 

With her eloquent soprano, Kearstin Piper Brown conveyed Esther’s stoic dignity and reserve, making her disillusionment all the more heartbreaking. Baritone Justin Austin ably characterized George’s two faces: the passionate balladeer of Act I, wooing Esther in poetic letters that it turns out he did not write, and the real, much darker man of Act II who is illiterate, has a marked Bajan accent, and is more interested in his wife’s money than her love. Krysty Swann’s voluptuous mezzo brought a louche ease to Mayme; soprano Adrienne Danrich gave Mrs. Dickson’s motherly warnings to Esther (“Marry up”) extra force; mezzo Naomi Louisa O’Connell made Mrs. Van Buren’s boredom and disappointment sympathetic. Arnold Livingston Geis’s sensitive tenor poignantly expressed the loneliness of Mr. Marks; the rippling piano accompaniment sensually illustrated the love of beautiful things that he and Esther share. Conductor Steven Osgood and pianists Nathaniel LaNasa and Brent Funderburk skillfully coordinated the musical action from two platforms set high above the stage. Marc Salzberg’s careful sound design kept the balances steady and the text clear. 

Michael Yeargan’s spare turntable set made the music’s smooth scenic flow visual. Simple pieces of furniture—Esther’s sewing machine, the table on which Mr. Marks unrolls his luxurious fabrics, Mrs. Van Buren’s boudoir chaise longue—established each setting, and were quickly moved on and off by ensemble members. Catherine Zuber created the splendid period costumes, including Esther’s extravagant corset creations and the Japanese silk smoking jacket that symbolizes the downfall of her hopes. Jennifer Tipton did the atmospheric lighting; a few projections (59 Productions), such as a crowded street on the Lower East Side, came and went swiftly, letting the audience concentrate on the characters, their trials and dramatic arc deftly limned by Mr. Sher’s acute direction. In the intimate, 290-seat Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, gathered around the thrust stage, we seemed to be living in their world. 

—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).

Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia collaborate on a film of Ana Sokolović’s work, about a group of women preparing their friend for her wedding day.

By Heidi Waleson

Feb. 2, 2022 5:41 pm

One of the most interesting creative developments resulting from the Covid-19 shutdown of live performance is the recognition that operas can work as films. Rather than the familiar video representations of staged performances, these projects are conceived for the screen, expanding the visual environments of the stories and even divorcing the physical process of singing from the characters on the screen. Boston Lyric Opera and Opera Philadelphia have pioneered individually in filmed opera; their collaboration on a film of Ana Sokolović’s “Svadba” (2011) is now available to subscribers on the digital channels of both companies at operabox.tv and operaphila.tv; on-demand viewing is $15. 

“Svadba” is a good candidate for film treatment. A riveting, 54-minute a cappella piece for six female voices and incidental percussion, it is about ritual and community rather than plot: Five women prepare their friend, Milica, for her wedding the next day. Alternately fierce, tender, playful and ecstatic, the friends coalesce around this monumental life transition. Ms. Sokolović’s libretto draws from Serbian poetry and folk tales, but much of the text is an invented, onomatopoeic, syllabic language. Carried by the tight harmonies and complex rhythms of the music, it makes its impact viscerally, rather than committing to literal meaning. 

The film, directed by Shura Baryshnikov, takes the idea a few steps further. Six singers recorded their parts in a studio, while five dancers and an actor ( Jackie Davis as Lena, here called the Elder) performed on location—a rustic beach house and its environs on Cape Cod. The camera cuts back and forth between the two, which is occasionally disconcerting until you figure out which of the singers is playing the bride (I watched it twice). Four bridesmaids wear diaphanous, sparkly tulle; the fifth, Lena, wears a plain dress with an apron—it’s her house. (Costumes are by Lena Borovci. ) The attendants gather flowers and grasses for bouquets and beach fruits for jam; they undress and dress the bride; they play games. In Hannah Shepard’s screenplay, the natural world is infused into these rites of passage.

Opening the piece up into the stunning landscape adds texture—Ana Novačić was the production designer and Katherine Castro the director of photography—though it also sometimes detracts from the almost claustrophobic intensity and intimacy of the vocal writing. In an early scene, Lena dyes Milica’s hair while the other bridesmaids dash outside, take off their dresses, and dance on the beach in their underwear; it seems odd that the six women are not all together. Other scenes cohere better. In one, the singers recite the Serbian alphabet and layer nursery rhymes as the dancers face off in a playful contest. And in the most magical sequence, the sun sets, and the bride goes out to the beach alone as the ensemble, with a bit of reverb applied, sings (in Serbian), “Wet your hair with stars.” Here, the physical separation on screen seems right—it is a nocturne and an incantation, fading into the sound of a rain stick, as Milica falls asleep on the beach beside the waves. At dawn, she is awakened, also magically, with the wispy sound of an ocarina, and the final preparations begin. 

The film’s casting also gives the piece new dimensions. The camera celebrates Victoria L. Awkward’s beautifully complicated Black hairstyle, with its multihued extensions, giving Milica’s hair-dyeing sequence extra resonance. It also interpolates a cameo appearance by a nonsinging Betrothed—who is a woman ( Olivia Moon ). There was an all-female production team as well as cast. The folk-based rhythms and harmonies, nonsense syllables, and vocal noises like lip trills and tongue clicks can make “Svadba” seem like a mysterious anthropological ritual from some exotic ethnic group. In the film, the identifiable location and the diverse cast make it feel both contemporary and timeless. 

The splendid vocal ensemble, conducted by Daniela Candillari, featured Chabrelle D. Williams, who brought anticipatory ecstasy to Milica’s big solo; Brianna J. Robinson, Maggie Finnegan, Mack Wolz, Hannah Ludwig and Vera Savage created a vibrant, varied tonal palette with wonderfully precise articulation of the syllabic material. In addition to Ms. Awkward and Ms. Davis, the dynamic onscreen performers included dancers Jay Breen, Sarah Pacheco, Sasha Peterson and Emily Jerant-Hendrickson.

Verdi’s opera gets a new staging from Bartlett Sher that moves the action to Weimar Germany in the 1920s.

By Heidi Waleson

Jan. 3, 2022 4:20 pm

New York

Amid the Omicron-related cascade of theater, dance and concert cancellations, the Metropolitan Opera’s New Year’s Eve show— Bartlett Sher’s new production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”—went on as planned. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, gave a brief curtain speech thanking the company and the audience, and noting that thanks to the Met’s stringent health measures (“You have no idea,” he said wryly), none of its performances have been canceled. It was not business as usual, of course. The gala dinner was called off, there were some empty seats, and Mr. Gelb urged the audience members to keep their masks on. Still, there was plenty of festive attire and selfie-snapping, and Quinn Kelsey, who sang the title role, took his bows in a 2022 tiara as confetti dropped on the audience. Just when we started taking live performance for granted again, we were reminded how easily it could go away. 

That would be a shame, given the incandescent performances delivered by Mr. Kelsey and Rosa Feola as his daughter, Gilda. The opera’s principal characters can seem particularly unsympathetic—the court jester, the libidinous duke he enables, and the ditsy, easily duped daughter whom he basically imprisons. But Mr. Kelsey found unusual nuance in Rigoletto, both as singer and actor. His booming baritone has both volume and lyric poignancy, and he assorted those traits to create new sides of the character with every appearance. In the first scene, his voice scraped harshly as he did his job, taunting Count Ceprano with his wife’s infidelity. Alone in the next scene, he shed that mask along with his jester props—red gloves, black ruff—and ruminated about his own evil deeds with a soliloquy that encompassed both guilt and fear. In Act 2, when he implored the courtiers to tell him where they had taken his abducted daughter, you could hear that real begging did not come easily to him, and in the subsequent duet with Gilda, their mutual devastation was palpable. 

Ms. Feola also rose above Gilda’s vacuous innocence to create a character with some agency. Her luminous soprano made “Caro nome” more than just a star turn. It was thoughtful and deeply felt, and you sensed the character’s through-line, connecting her love for her father and this new feeling for a mysterious young man. Piotr Beczala’s Duke, on the other hand, was one-dimensional—vocally bright, hearty and focused on getting what he wants. Even “Ella mi fu rapita,” in which he suggests that Gilda could make him change his ways, offered no variety. 

Mr. Sher’s production, created in cooperation with Staatsoper Berlin, ostensibly updates the story’s Renaissance Italy setting to Weimar Germany in the 1920s, but there is little in Michael Yeargan’s set or Catherine Zuber’s costumes that conveys a strong sense of period, or why that period is thematically significant. The set, a giant cube, rotates on a turntable. In the first scene, courtiers wearing “old Hollywood” slinky dresses, uniforms or black tie spill through tall, narrow doors on all sides until the set comes to a stop, revealing a huge reception room with gold pillars and blood-red walls. Subsequent rotations take us to Rigoletto’s multistory house and the assassin Sparafucile’s den of iniquity—both generically impoverished, though the latter has a bar setup in the center. The set also turns in midscene on occasion. This supplies some drama, but more often distraction, upstaging the singers at critical moments. For example, when Rigoletto, dragging the zippered body bag containing what he thinks is the murdered Duke but is actually Gilda, suddenly hears the Duke singing, we’ve lost track of him and his horrified reaction because we are focused instead on the turning set.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Mr. Sher’s directing also has mixed results. The opening party scene is lively and precisely choreographed to demonstrate the underlying violence and nastiness of the Duke’s regime. Little moments are telling: Rigoletto kicks Monterone’s cane out from under him and makes him fall; in Act 2, the courtiers do the same to Rigoletto. Giovanna, Gilda’s companion ( Eve Gigliotti ), is here made part of the conspiracy to destroy Gilda—she takes money from the Duke; watches, unfazed, as her charge is abducted; then leaves with a suitcase. The more nuanced theatrical characterizations of Rigoletto and Gilda also take this production out of the realm of the obvious. But there are more confusing choices as well, most notably the scene in which Gilda substitutes herself for the Duke as murder victim. During part of it, with the aid of some drenched red lighting designed by Donald Holder, she appears to be in two places at once. 

Andrea Mastroni was a businesslike Sparafucile, lacking some of the assassin’s menace despite his handsome, velvety bass; Varduhi Abrahamyan, a properly blowzy, assertive Maddalena, helped make the Act 3 quartet a vocal high point of the evening. Craig Colclough was a potent, disheveled Monterone. Conductor Daniele Rustioni proved a sympathetic accompanist to the singers, but he did not keep the score’s dramatic tension at a consistently. high level. In a way, the whole show suffered from that lack of pure animal energy—it was almost too subtle. “Rigoletto” is a barn-burner—you have to gallop along with the sexism, violence and sentimentality in order for it to work. In this production, despite some gripping theatrical and vocal moments, the all-consuming sense of tragedy was missing. 

—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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Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding team up for an operatic retelling of Euripides’ play.

By Heidi Waleson

Dec. 14, 2021 5:22 pm

Washington

Opera is about voices and foundational myths, so what better place to give a voice to the voiceless and retell myths from alternative points of view? “… (Iphigenia),” an intriguing new opera by the jazz luminary Wayne Shorter and vocalist Esperanza Spalding, which was performed at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater this weekend, is the latest work to tackle those revisions. Like The Industry’s “Sweet Land” (2020), a multi-collaborator project that explored colonialism, and last month’s Met premiere, Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” which told the Orpheus legend from Eurydice’s point of view, “Iphigenia” rewrites a familiar story.

In Euripides ’ play “Iphigenia in Aulis,” the Greek armies, en route to Troy to retrieve the abducted Helen, wife of Menelaos of Sparta, are becalmed at Aulis. Their leader, Agamemnon, is told by a seer that the goddess Artemis will revive the winds if Agamemnon sacrifices his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. An ensuing battle of wills involving Agamemnon, Menelaos, the warrior Achilles, and Iphigenia’s mother, Clytemnestra, ends when Iphigenia agrees—begs—to be sacrificed for the good of Greece. Mr. Shorter and Ms. Spalding suggest that this acquiescence puts the words of the patriarchy into the victim’s mouth; in their “Iphigenia,” she finds her own.

The piece incorporates techniques not typically associated with opera. In the pit, an orchestra heavy on brass sonorities is contrasted with a fleet, improvisatory jazz trio— Danilo Pérez (piano), John Patitucci (bass) and Brian Blade (drums), members of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, positioned on the stage. Characters adopt a range of vocal styles—traditional operatic singing; chanting; and speech, as in the role of the Usher ( Brenda Pressley ), who questions the received narrative. The six Iphigenias, including Ms. Spalding, often sing in wordless vocalises. Ms. Spalding’s libretto incorporates numerous poetically obscure lines (“Her pardon breaks awake your heart in re-earthing”) as well as lengthy quotations from other writers.

In Act I, the sacrifice is enacted several times, each with a different Iphigenia and a slightly different focus, but always stressing the brutal machismo of the Greek warriors with the pounding orchestra and the hectoring male voices (three principals and a chorus of six). Montana Levi-Blanco’s costumes, Lileana Blain-Cruz’s direction and Jen Schriever’s lighting are deliberately over-the-top. As the warriors in their armor and plumed helmets march in circles, indulge in a drunken frat-party, and frantically ride a rocking horse (actually a deer), their antics recall Monty Python skits, but these absurd creatures have weapons. The Iphigenias, each wearing a different color, lie dead along the lip of the stage.

For Act II, the painted backdrop of trees and the stone altar (designed by Frank Gehry ) disappear, and the six Iphigenias are left alone on the dark stage, empty except for the instrumental trio, now revealed in a rear corner. Encouraged by the Usher, the individual Iphigenias sing, speak and chant their own thoughts (the texts are by Ganavya Doraiswamy, Safiya Sinclair and Joy Harjo) in a girl-power circle, supported by the trio, all in a much sparer, mellower musical vibe. The most affecting testimony is the last: As Iphigenia of the Open Tense, Ms. Spalding deploys her trademark vocalizations, the wide, looping leaps that start timidly and then press onward as though she is improvising her way into articulateness. (There’s a parallel moment in “Eurydice,” when the heroine first descends to the Underworld, tries to speak, has no language, and gradually acquires some.)

Act III plunges back into the myth with the men, the noisy orchestra and some new sculptural elements made of crumpled wire mesh (it’s unclear if they are trees or clouds). This time, the text is from the 1904 play “Iphigenia” by Charles S. Elgutter, and the creators exaggerate operatic tropes: Tenor Arnold Livingston Geis (Agamemnon), baritone Brad Walker (Menelaos) and tenor Samuel White (Kalchas, the seer) are practically bellowing at each other in their competitive rage. ( Kelly Guerra, also one of the Iphigenias, signals the opera sendup with a brief appearance as a Metropolitan Opera HD host/opera star at the top of the act.) Ms. Spalding, in a silver jumpsuit and sneakers, starts to play the virgin victim’s role as written, but, encouraged by the vocalizing of the other Iphigenias, breaks character and arrests the trajectory by mesmerizing the men with her own song until finally they take it up themselves and retreat. So much for the Trojan War.

The other excellent Iphigenias included Nivi Ravi, Joanna Lynn-Jacobs, Alexandra Smither and Sharmay Musacchio (though her impressive contralto was ill served by the bouncing vocal line of her Act II aria, made obvious by the sound design). Clark Rundell conducted the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.

“… (Iphigenia)” works better on a conceptual level than a practical one. At 105 minutes, it feels too long and repetitive, especially since much of the dense libretto text is set so that it is incomprehensible without recourse to subtitles and some advance reading. The most arresting musical passages are Ms. Spalding’s vocalises and the ensemble singing of the other Iphigenias (composer Caroline Shaw did the a cappella vocal arrangements); the dramatic contrast between the jazz trio and the orchestra is underutilized. Ms. Spalding is a virtuoso vocalist and bass player, not an actress, and her elfin stage presence didn’t quite fit theatrically, especially in Act III. And there’s a thin line between satire and looking like a bad example of the thing you are making fun of, those Monty Python stomping marches included. Mocking opera for its outmoded aspects is easy; calling it out for its historical treatment of women is justified. The challenge is to successfully use and transform its considerable strengths to say something new.

—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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Appeared in the December 15, 2021, print edition as ‘A Sacrificial Figure Finds Her Voice.’

The Metropolitan Opera’s staging of the work by composer Matthew Aucoin and librettist Sarah Ruhl refreshes the familiar. 

By Heidi Waleson

Nov. 24, 2021 5:54 pm

New York

On Tuesday, for the second time in just two months, the Metropolitan Opera presented the New York premiere of a new opera to an enthusiastic reception. If the pandemic-enforced absence from live performance has taught us anything, it is that new voices, rather than business-as-usual repertory, are the lifeblood of this old art form. It is especially telling that the piece, “Eurydice” by composer Matthew Aucoin and librettist Sarah Ruhl, tackles one of opera’s foundational stories and finds something new to say about it. 

I saw “Eurydice” at its world premiere at the LA Opera in February 2020. It felt tighter and more persuasive here, and Erin Morley’s richly varied soprano gave the title character more depth and poignancy than Danielle de Niese did in Los Angeles. The tragedy of “Eurydice” creeps up on you. In this telling, based on Ms. Ruhl’s 2003 play, it is Eurydice’s tragedy, rather than the story of a man who loses his wife twice. The journey to the Underworld is a psychological one. First, Eurydice finds love with Orpheus, although they are different—she is about words, he is about music. Vaguely discontented, she retreats to the protection of her (dead) father. He laboriously helps her rebuild her consciousness and remember what love is, but when offered the opportunity to move forward, she turns back. It is the wrong choice. Eurydice’s refusal to take on adulthood, with all its contradictions, results not in a safe, eternal childhood but rather in emptiness with neither words nor music. 

The piece is never weighty or didactic. Ms. Ruhl’s spare, direct text leavens seriousness with comedy, and Mr. Aucoin’s music, though heavy on percussion, follows suit, allowing those elements to coexist. The composer, who is 31 years old, is deeply versed in opera—his forthcoming book, “The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera,” demonstrates how profoundly he thinks about it—and throughout “Eurydice” he and Ms. Ruhl play with our expectations. For example, they gently poke fun at the story’s conceits: Orpheus’ song at the gates of Hell is a heroic salvo rather than a plea. In the myth, Orpheus’ singing can make stones weep; in the opera, three characters are actual Stones, and these rather dopey, bossy guardians do indeed weep, but we have to wonder why. 

Philip Glass is the clearest musical influence in the score, especially in the orchestration, yet Mr. Aucoin’s use of repeated figures and phrases works in its own way. Rather than pushing forward or inducing a hypnotic trance, the music of individual scenes feels swirling and circular, inviting the listener to sit with the feelings as the characters uncover them, and each scene has its own distinctive tone. The effect is cumulative. In the final scenes, Hades, until then a comic figure, is revealed in all his sinister cruelty and power. Eurydice, rather than becoming his unwilling bride, sings a wrenching final aria that encompasses all the love, warmth and humanity that she has found, and then chooses to dip herself in the river of forgetfulness; the opera ends in orchestral grunts and abrupt silence.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Ms. Morley’s vibrant soprano encompassed Eurydice’s naiveté, playfulness and growing understanding, moving from a bright, flexible, high-lying tessitura to a more dramatic and lyrical expressivity. As Orpheus, baritone Joshua Hopkins conveyed an artist’s macho single-mindedness. Orpheus’ Double, a countertenor, represents his musical consciousness. The ploy works most effectively when the two have slightly dissonant duets; Jakub Józef Orliński was occasionally inaudible but always noticeable, especially when he was shirtless and wearing the flowing, gold-embroidered black pants designed by Ana Kuzmanic. Bass-baritone Nathan Berg brought an affectionate warmth to Eurydice’s Father, and Barry Banks’s stratospheric tenor toggled effectively between Hades’ comic and sinister natures. Stacey Tappan, Ronnita Miller and Chad Shelton supplied bumptious comedy as the Stones. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin artfully made the score’s percussive extremes expressive (the orchestra took a well-deserved, onstage bow at the end), and the invisible, wordless chorus of the dead sounded like loss personified.

Director Mary Zimmerman’s production emphasized the opera’s meditative quality, and Daniel Ostling’s spare set and T.J. Gerckens’s lighting used simple means to evoke place and emotion. The upper world is a bright, sunny beach, sparsely furnished with a couple of beach chairs; the Underworld is a dark, patterned stone wall and the cutout yellow sun is now black. An elevator between the two worlds is a clever touch; efficiently, the shower inside it confers the forgetfulness required in the land of the dead. Ms. Kuzmanic used bright colors, patterns and fabrics to mythologize the quasi-modern costumes—I especially liked how Hades’ attire went from a loud suit to a long gown (he was on stilts), with full-length tail and horns for his final appearance as his true self—and the Stones, encased in gray like giant Michelin Men, looked properly absurd. Denis Jones supplied amusingly goofy ’60s-flavored choreography for the wedding scene, and S. Katy Tucker’s projections included graphically varied titles—all caps for shouting, calligraphy for letter-writing—that integrated seamlessly with the décor. 

—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).