Monday night’s performance, the first in 18 months, featured the Met’s first-ever opera by a Black composer: a stage adaptation of the memoir by Charles M. Blow.

By Heidi Waleson

Updated Sept. 29, 2021 6:58 pm

New York

Opening night of the Metropolitan Opera on Monday was a major event: The country’s largest opera company returned to the stage after 18 months. The vaccinated and masked capacity audience was thrilled just to be there, cheering when the lights went down for the orchestra to tune. And the standing ovation that erupted at the end of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was nearly earsplitting, a demonstration of appreciation for the Met’s first-ever opera by a Black composer. 

I first saw “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” in 2019, when it had its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. It played differently in the Met’s much larger space, with some of its more intimate moments receding and its grand-opera aspects coming into their own. Mr. Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons also added new material; the chorus was much larger; and Camille A. Brown, who co-directed the Met production with James Robinson, created several vivid new dance numbers. 

Based on the memoir by Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist, “Fire” depicts a challenging childhood, rife with poverty, infidelity and violence, in the small town of Gibsland, La. The youngest of five boys, dreamy Charles—or Char’es-Baby, as he’s called by everyone—longs for attention from Billie, his distracted mother, and is convinced of his otherness when he is sexually molested, at age 7, by an older cousin. As he gets older, his sleep is haunted by “beautiful phantoms”: Sex with a female classmate, baptism and initiation into a college fraternity can’t banish them, or the shame that he carries “in a holster ’round my waist.” The opera opens with 20-year-old Charles heading home to Gibsland with a gun to kill the cousin who assaulted him; the rest is a flashback to how he got there. 

Scaled up and adapted for the Met, Allen Moyer’s spare sets, with lighting by Christopher Akerlind, looked great. A large, movable open box represented the family’s wooden shack, an abandoned forest cabin, a car, or a plain wall; Greg Emetaz’s shadowy projections—vintage black-and-white photos of houses, a highway at night, a tree-surrounded pond and, most dramatically, a huge image of Char’es-Baby’s haunted face during the assault scene—created atmosphere. The costumes by Paul Tazewell, new to the team for the Met, had a lively vibe, especially the ’70s party outfits for the scene in the seedy bar where Billie pulls a gun on her cheating husband and his girlfriend. Mr. Robinson and Ms. Brown used the expanded ensemble effectively to show the claustrophobia of the community that surrounds Charles, as well as his isolation within it. 

Ms. Brown’s dances added new texture and nuance. At the beginning of Act 2, a “dream ballet”—with 12 male dancers fluidly personifying those “beautiful phantoms”—clarified the teenage Charles’s anguished guilt. At the beginning of Act 3, the dancers, now a close-knit band of fraternity brothers, stomped, clapped and slapped out a ferocious step routine. Its athleticism and sheer testosterone were riveting, and the fraternity hazing scenes that followed seemed doubly menacing. 

“Fire” has some unusual character devices. Charles (baritone Will Liverman ) watches his younger self ( Walter Russell III, a boy treble); sometimes they sing together. Destiny and Loneliness, voices in Charles’s head, are personified by a soprano (Angel Blue). In St. Louis, the intimate relationship of Charles and Destiny/Loneliness came across powerfully; at the Met, especially in Act I, Billie (soprano Latonia Moore ) became the dominant force as she dealt with her sons, her cheating husband, her struggle to make ends meet, and her disappointments in grandly scaled emotion and vocalism. 

While the big house swallowed some of its textual detail, the deftly structured, cinematic libretto maintained its theatrical momentum. The orchestra, under the enthusiastic direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, brought richness and sweep to the score, though it tended to overpower the singers. The women, particularly Ms. Moore and Ms. Blue, were better able to cut through the sound; Mr. Liverman’s impassioned delivery in his arias of pain and fury could not always manage it; he was most effective in quieter, rhapsodic moments, like the love scene with his college girlfriend Greta (also sung by Ms. Blue). 

Ms. Blue brought warm, seductive charisma to her roles; her Act 1 aria, “There once was a boy of peculiar grace,” was particularly alluring. She was also skilled at playing with the orchestra rhythm quartet (piano, bass, guitar and drums) that inflected some of the numbers with a jazz swing; she bent pitches and took time to create a freer delivery. Mr. Blanchard’s music—catchy, up-tempo showpieces like the naughty, bluesy ensemble in the bar (its refrain is “Lord love the sinner”) and wistful laments like the Billie/Charles duet, “Where did Love lose me?”—was tuneful and expansive. 

Notable supporting players in the big cast included Chauncey Packer as Spinner, Billie’s charming but cheating husband; Briana Hunter as his girlfriend Ruby; Ryan Speedo Green as Uncle Paul, who teaches Charles life lessons from farming; Chris Kenney as the jaunty, predatory Cousin Chester; and Donovan Singletary doubling as the baptizing Pastor and the scary fraternity pledge-hazer Kaboom. 

The story has a happy ending—its protagonist, after all, is now a well-known journalist, who took a curtain call with the cast and production team. Even more critically, the Met has finally welcomed Black creators telling a complex, contemporary story of a Black man. May that openness be just the beginning.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal. 

In Chicago, a production that moves Verdi’s work to the mid-19th century from medieval times and a concert of Bizet’s classic.

By Heidi Waleson

Sept. 22, 2021 5:25 pm

Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its 2021-22 season on Friday with a new production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in its regular theater, with full orchestra and chorus. Audience members had to show proof of full vaccination and wear masks; the performance was captured on video for future transmission to ticket buyers who chose not to venture into the theater; and there was no gala party, so no evening dress. Otherwise, this was normal grand opera—for the first time in 18 months—and the near-capacity audience seemed delighted to be there. 

Director David McVicar shifted the story from medieval times to the mid-19th century; John Macfarlane’s unit set depicted a ruined Presbyterian chapel. “Macbeth” is about the destructive nature of power, and the effect of playing all the scenes—blasted heaths and palaces alike—in this confined space, with stygian lighting by David Finn, emphasized its gloomy nihilism. “Macbeth” started out dark and got darker. Moritz Junge’s severe costumes intensified the effect: Most of the men were in military uniforms and the witches of the opening scene wore austere black church dresses. The witches also sat in pews, reading their spells out of hymnals, their gesticulations choreographed by Andrew George. For the Act 3 conjuring scene, they had stripped down to Victorian undergarments and the pews were gone, allowing for some freer cauldron-stirring activity. 

Other eccentric touches included three feral children, associated with the witches, who acted out the murderous prophecies with daggers and a rag doll. Mr. McVicar also supplied the Macbeths with a backstory and a possible explanation for their ruthlessness: at the end of the conjuring scene, we got a pantomime suggesting that their only child died in infancy. The production’s ending also implied that not all was well—Macduff, collapsed in despair upstage, was hard to overlook amid rejoicing at the death of the tyrant. 

Making her role debut, Sondra Radvanovsky lacked some of the vocal heft needed for Lady Macbeth but turned in a committed theatrical performance. As Macbeth, the strident Craig Colclough started off demented and became increasingly more so as the evening progressed. Christian Van Horn was a convincing Banquo; Joshua Guerrero excelled in communicating raw pain in Macduff’s aria about the death of his family. It was a treat to hear the chorus, lurking in darkness and giving voice to the gloomy atmosphere; the lament for their destroyed homeland that began Act 4 was especially moving. Enrique Mazzola, the company’s new music director, led the orchestra with a bel canto-inspired buoyancy. The transparency was welcome, but the Verdian propulsion was missing, and the dramatic momentum occasionally sagged.

***

Chicago Opera Theater’s concert “Carmen,” performed at the Harris Theater on Thursday and Saturday, had an unusual feature: Stephanie Blythe, an eminent mezzo-soprano, sang the tenor role of Don José. Ms. Blythe has been experimenting in cabaret settings with a bearded male alter ego, Blythely Oratonio; this was their first foray into a full opera performance. In addition, Jamie Barton sang her first Carmen. Opera houses tend to choose more sylphlike mezzos for the part and Ms. Barton, who has publicly condemned body-shaming and celebrated her queer identity, was ready to demonstrate that when it comes to singing, size shouldn’t matter. 

Ms. Barton’s sumptuous mezzo made for a rich, expressive Carmen; she played the role with a direct, I-take-what-I-want attitude rather than as a seductress. (As part of Joachim Schamberger’s minimal staging, she rejected the classic red flouncy skirt in favor of silky black trousers and a motorcycle jacket, which she later removed to reveal a spangly transparent blouse over a black bra.) 

Ms. Blythe’s opulent instrument sits comfortably in Don José’s range, and for the most part the voice could have been coming from a man. It sounded almost too easy, however: Some of the excitement in listening to male tenors arises from the difficulty of producing that high tessitura, and that frisson was missing here. Nor did Ms. Blythe develop much of a characterization for Don José, just the occasional, tantalizing flash of impulsivity and repressed violence. Most critically, there was little sense of attraction or sexual tension between the two characters. Even in concert form, thoughtful staging could have produced some original ideas from the gender-bending and queer identities of the two leads; instead, the show was just a showcase for the voices.

The chorus sections and swathes of orchestral writing were omitted, adding to the showcase impression; and the opera was performed in the version with sung recitatives instead of dialogue. Supporting singers included Michael Sumuel, a robust Escamillo, and Kimberly E. Jones, whose thin, pinched tone was ill-suited to Micaëla. Brandon Cedel, Evan Bravos, Lunga Eric Hallam, Rachel Blaustein and Leah Dexter did capable work in the smaller roles. Lidiya Yankovskaya led the ebullient orchestra. 

—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).

My short presentation on Josquin marking the 500th aniversary of his death:

The story of a Black police officer’s family struck by tragedy when their son is killed by a white police officer.

By Heidi Waleson

Sept. 14, 2021 1:09 pm

Detroit

Michigan Opera Theatre embarked on a new chapter of its history last year with the appointment, as artistic director, of Yuval Sharon, best known for genre-defying, site-specific projects like “Sweet Land” with the Industry in Los Angeles. Mr. Sharon immediately made his iconoclastic presence felt with October’s “Twilight: Gods,” a one-hour version of “Götterdämmerung” performed for audiences in cars, staged in MOT’s parking garage. His distinctive stamp continues: The company’s 2021-22 season includes “Bliss,” a performance art piece that repeats the same three minutes of “Le Nozze di Figaro” for 12 hours, “La Bohème” staged with its acts in reverse order, and the first production of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X ” since its 1986 premiere.

By those standards, the company’s most recent offering was almost conventional: “Blue” by composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson, presented last weekend at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre. This searing 2019 work is the story of a Black police officer’s family struck by tragedy when their son is killed by a white police officer. Several productions of “Blue” were planned to follow its premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival but fell victim to the Covid-19 pandemic, so this was the work’s second staging. The venue choice of the 6,000-seat, open-air amphitheater, better known as a home for large-scale, nonclassical concerts, was in part for Covid-era safety reasons, but also an effort to make the work feel more accessible to residents of this majority-Black city who might not gravitate to a traditional opera house. (The socially distanced audience was kept to about 1,300 people.)

Director Kaneza Schaal embraced the vastness of the stage and the space, tapping into the intimate opera’s grander Greek tragedy aspects—it is the story of a family, but also of a community. Three long ramps projected from the stage into the audience; translucent hanging panels at the rear of the stage left the river, and its passing boat traffic, partly visible. Eight dancers, performing in the angular styles of Krump and Detroit Jit, physicalized the emotions of the characters; a live video feed occasionally picked up a dancer or a singer and expanded that image onto the panels. The funeral cortège arrived through the audience. Stage pieces were deliberately small and makeshift—a few chairs; tables and boards quickly assembled and disassembled to evoke a bedroom, a bar, a funeral bier—to keep the focus on the people.

Amy Rubin designed the set; Jessica Jahn the costumes. Joshua Higgason’s projections were mostly abstract, giving the figurative ones—for example, a sea of Black men holding up their arms in surrender—extra punch. Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lighting helped focus attention in the large space.

The grand stage had one big drawback. Amplification was necessary, and MOT employed L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology, with sound design by Mark Grey. I saw the first act from a side rear section of the amphitheater, where the sound felt distorted and the text was almost completely incomprehensible, especially in the higher ranges of the female singers. Supertitles were available via smartphone—if you saw the note in the program and scanned the QR code to get them. I hadn’t, and that was a huge disadvantage, since Mr. Thompson’s wrenching libretto is fundamental to the experience of the piece.

The second act, seen from a closer, more central seat, with the titles, was an improvement. More of the text was intelligible, and I got a sense of the sound system’s possibilities: For example, when a singer walked up the ramp closest to me, her voice moved with her. However, the amplification still made loud, intense singing harshly overpowering and the ensembles lost their rich harmonic texture. The vocal/orchestral balance favored the voices, resulting in a loss of instrumental nuance, and many of the tender subtleties of the opera did not come through.

Still, “Blue” retained the power I felt in 2019, and new moments in the work jumped out. With male voices shown to better advantage by the sound system, bass Kenneth Kellogg (The Father) was even more potent than he was at Glimmerglass, particularly in the first scene of Act 2, as he railed at The Reverend ( Gordon Hawkins ) in a nihilistic fury after the killing of The Son ( Aaron Crouch ). I also loved the final scene: After the rage, the mourning and funeral, we get a flashback to a family meal. The father-son conflict flares, but is soothed by The Mother (Krysty Swann), who playfully lists all the foods she’s prepared “for my boys” in a rhythmic blues. Her line, “The food of our ancestors, putting its arms around us,” encapsulated the opera’s underlying theme about the endurance of love and community, even as they coexist with terrible loss. Ms. Schaal made that loss clear: The parents exit together, leaving The Son alone with a giant projection of an empty silhouette.

The strong cast included Kimwana Doner, Nicole Joseph and Olivia Johnson as the Girlfriends (their dirge in Act 2 was haunting); Camron Gray, Edward Graves and Christopher Humbert Jr. as the Policemen. Conductor Daniela Candillari, positioned with her 30-member orchestra behind the singers, did admirable work keeping everyone together and pacing the show. It was all the more frustrating that the sound system couldn’t deliver their vision.

—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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This year’s festival moved outdoors due to Covid-19 and included ‘The Magic Flute,’ ‘Gods and Mortals,’ ‘Il Trovatore’ and ‘The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.’

By Heidi Waleson

Aug. 18, 2021 1:37 pm ET

Cooperstown, N.Y.

Francesca Zambello, the general and artistic director of the Glimmerglass Festival, knows how to improvise. With Covid-19 restrictions on live performances and gatherings still in flux as she planned her summer season, she shifted the operation outdoors onto the lawn next to the company’s theater. There was a large, uncovered stage with an elaborate amplification system ( Andrew Harper did the sound design), socially distanced “squares” of lawn, each accommodating up to four patrons, and a semicircle of more expensive, partly enclosed “boxes” beyond them. Performances went on at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., rain or shine; attendees were encouraged to bring much-needed sunscreen, hats, umbrellas and lawn chairs.

Each of the six productions—three operas, two concerts, and a play with music—ran a maximum of 90 minutes, with no intermission. The operas were trimmed, slightly reorganized, and performed with tiny choruses. Orchestrations were adapted for smaller forces, and the orchestra played live inside the theater, its sound piped out to the stage and the lawn. While not the ideal way to experience opera, Glimmerglass on the Grass, as the season, which ran July 15-Aug. 17, was branded, , proved an enjoyable, more casual experience, revised to work in an unsettled time.

I had planned to catch five of the six offerings during the final weekend; unfortunately, “Songbird”—Offenbach’s comedy “La Périchole” reimaged with a 1920s New Orleans jazz sound—was scrubbed due to lightning on Friday evening, only the second cancellation of the 28-performance season. Of those I saw, “The Magic Flute” and “Gods and Mortals,” a concert of Wagner arias, were the most successful.

The adapted “Flute”—with a witty English translation by Kelley Rourke and a deft, transparent orchestration by Joseph Colaneri, the festival’s music director—compressed much of the dialogue and some of the action into a narration spoken by bass-baritone Eric Owens in the character of Sarastro. A handful of musical numbers were jettisoned, and the Three Ladies doubled as the guardian Spirits, necessitating a bit of plot revision, but the result was fleet and entertaining, foregrounding the piece’s human interactions rather than its grander pronouncements. NJ Agwuna’s lively direction fit neatly into Peter J. Davison’s festival unit set—a copse of tree trunks at stage right, an array of colored lightbulbs above—and Christelle Matou’s handsome, sculptural costumes made a clear visual statement. Daylight for all the shows meant that lighting was limited to occasional flashing effects.

Apart from Mr. Owens’s fatherly Sarastro, “Flute” was cast with capable, bright-voiced members of the company’s Young Artists Program. Helen Zhibing Huang’s clear soprano made her an enchanting Pamina; Emily Misch ably navigated the Queen of the Night’s coloratura; Michael Pandolfo was an amusing Papageno; and Kameron Lopreore, who stepped in at the last minute as Tamino, acquitted himself well. Victoria Lawal, Ariana Warren and Maire Therese Carmack were a fiery trio of Ladies.

Glimmerglass normally does very little Wagner, so “Gods and Mortals” was a chance to showcase three impressive young dramatic voices in this repertory. Tenor Ian Koziara and soprano Alexandria Shiner, who were supposed to headline last summer’s canceled “Die Feen,” sang appealing numbers from that obscure early piece and teamed up for heavier work as Siegmund and Sieglinde (“Die Walküre”). While it’s tricky to assess Wagnerian prowess with amplification, both displayed robust, attractive voices with easy power and excellent breath control. Ms. Shiner’s thrilling vocal range in “Traft ihr das Schiff,” Senta’s ballad from “Der Fliegende Höllander,” and Mr. Koziara’s yearning “Dir töne Lob,” from “Tannhäuser,” were also highlights. Mezzo Raehann Bryce-Davis made an arresting Fricka spitting out her disdain for her husband in “So ist den aus” from “Walküre,” and a furious, vengeful Ortrud in “Entweihte Götter” from “Lohengrin” A sextet of Young Artists supplied a diverting “Ride of the Valkyries,” and veterans Mark Delavan (“Höllander”) and Mr. Owens (“Ring”) ably rounded out the show, but the young soloists were the stars, and Mr. Colaneri’s orchestral accompaniment supported them splendidly.

Ms. Bryce-Davis was also the star of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” The opera was reordered to start with Azucena’s story—the murdered mother, the baby tossed in the fire—and Ms. Bryce-Davis sang the role with richness and pathos. However, this blood-and-thunder piece suffered from being abridged. The succession of high-voltage arias, with little rest in between, felt relentless, and the amplification exacerbated some pitch issues for Latonia Moore (Leonora), while pushing the sound of Gregory Kunde (Manrico) and Michael Mayes (Count Di Luna) into stentorian territory and sending Mr. Colaneri’s orchestra into audio overdrive. Ms. Zambello and Eric Sean Fogel collaborated on the efficient directing; Ms. Matou’s costumes featured traditional Romani looks, although the program and English supertitles referred to Azucena’s band as nomads.

“The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” a 70-minute play by Sandra Seaton, commissioned by the festival, made a worthy effort to bring attention to the now-forgotten story of the National Negro Opera Company and its founder, Mary Cardwell Dawson. However, the clunky script was mostly a scenery-chewing opportunity for mezzo Denyce Graves. As Dawson, she agonized about whether to move an outdoor concert threatened by rain into a segregated concert hall or cancel and face financial disaster; coached three young singers (Victoria Lawal, Mia Athey and Jonathan Pierce Rhodes ) through scenes from “Carmen”; and lectured them about the difficulties of life as Black singers. Ms. Graves thankfully dropped her diva act for a heartfelt final song (by Carlos Simon ), and the “Carmen” performances were agreeable. Kevin Miller was the versatile music director and onstage pianist, Kimille Howard directed, and Jessica Jahn supplied the World War II-era period costumes.

—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 Sante Fe Opera’s scaled-down summer season includes one world premiere and three classics, performed and produced to varying degrees of success. 

By Heidi Waleson

Aug. 10, 2021 4:46 pm ET

Santa Fe, N.M.

With its open-air theater, Santa Fe Opera had a big advantage in the return to in-person performance this summer. Still, evolving pandemic restrictions and related international travel issues meant this season featured four operas instead of the usual five; last-minute cast changes; production adaptations, including offstage choruses for two shows; reduced audience capacity; and masks required on the theater grounds. Under the circumstances, it was commendable that the company produced a relatively normal-looking opera festival. 

Composer John Corigliano and librettist Mark Adamo labored for a decade over “The Lord of Cries,” this season’s world premiere, and it showed—though not in a good way. Mr. Adamo’s mash-up makes Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula a 19th-century manifestation of Dionysus in Euripides ’ “The Bacchae”; he is on a mission to force the repressed Victorians to acknowledge and embrace their deepest, most forbidden desires—“the beast within.” Plenty of juicy potential, one would think. But with its didactic, convoluted libretto, full of annoying rhymes and repetitions; its stock characters; and its music that never rises above pastiche, the opera was overworked and inert.

The only sparks in the evening came from countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (Dionysus/Dracula), who commanded attention at every appearance with his insinuating, chromatic vocal line and some spectacular costumes by Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko. But there wasn’t enough of him. Dionysus/Dracula has been wreaking havoc in London with the aid of three witchy attendants ( Leah Brzyski, Rachel Blaustein, Megan Moore ). He claims ownership of the ruined Carfax Abbey, but John Seward ( Jarrett Ott ), the moral and upright head of the Carfax Asylum, resists him. Jonathan Harker ( David Portillo ) has already been driven mad; Harker’s wife, Lucy ( Kathryn Henry ), and Seward harbor suppressed passion for each other. Lucy and Seward each have long, explanatory arias about why duty trumps desire, but the opera doesn’t make us feel their urges or their connection. And when Seward finally surrenders to his inner beast—tricked into thinking he is killing the Count, he murders Lucy—it seems, to the modern viewer, like a high price to pay for loving someone else’s spouse.

Dionysus’ attendants had an arresting musical signature—a dissonant trio with one very high voice and one very low. Other characters were generic. As Seward, Mr. Ott’s attractive lyric baritone was forced into less congenial stentorian territory; as Lucy, Ms. Henry popped out some disconnected high notes and sang a lullaby to her demented husband (a nod to “The Rake’s Progress,” perhaps). Mr. Corigliano relied on instrumental flourishes for effect: In Harker’s mad scene, for example, the orchestra mirrored his scattered mind with a skittering piccolo, followed by Wagnerian brass, and a syrupy violin solo. Numerous moments invoked other pieces—the opening chorus of frightened Londoners recalled “Sweeney Todd.” Showy dramaturgical devices fell flat: The spoken role of a newspaper correspondent felt like an expository shortcut, and a scene that layered multiple stories, including the arrival of a haunted ship, was incomprehensibly chaotic. Mark Grey supplied a sound design for the amplified voices, as specified by the composer.

Adam Rigg’s set—walls plus rows of Victorian lampposts, lighted in shades of pink and red by Pablo Santiago —was bland and claustrophobic. James Darrah’s directing mirrored the static quality of the opera. In the culminating scene of Act I, supposedly a Dionysian ritual, the possessed women of London just pawed demurely at a couple of animal carcasses. They didn’t even pull out any entrails. Johannes Debus was the valiant conductor.

Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” deals more coherently with the supernatural, and director Netia Jones, who also designed the sets, costumes and projections for Santa Fe’s production, effectively conjured a shadowy black-and-white world with help from lighting designer D.M. Wood. Pandemic precautions meant no boys’ chorus for the fairies, but her solution—an unseen adult female chorus, and masked dancers with elaborate headdresses (rabbit ears, branches, a top hat) who popped up through holes in the raked platform—was almost as creepy. Tytania’s bed was a midcentury-modern leather chaise; a grand piano was wedged against a large, leafy tree, suggesting the closeness of the mortal and fairy worlds. The tree, alas, blocked the view from my house-left seat of some crucial projections on a giant black disc. https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Iestyn Davies and Erin Morely faced off fiercely as Oberon and Tytania; of the solid quartet of Athenian lovers, the mellow soprano of Teresa Perrotta (Helena) stood out. Nicholas Brownlee was an amiable, less-pompous-than-usual Bottom; Kevin Burdette was an amusingly long-suffering Quince. His oversize striped suit was also funny; the costumes were generally splendid, from the English school uniforms for the lovers to Tytania’s black-flecked white gown. Reed Luplau, an acrobatic Puck, also did the athletic fairy choreography. The orchestra sounded elegant, sculpted by conductor Harry Bicket, who brought out every detail and musical joke in the opera’s diaphanous sound world. 

Mr. Bicket’s work also stood out in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” —other than “Deh vieni, non tardar,” sung with ardor by Ying Fang (Susanna), the buoyant ensembles were that evening’s most satisfying vocal moments. The staging, devised by Laurent Pelly but directed by Laurie Feldman, was pedestrian, and I didn’t get the point of Chantal Thomas’s set, which had a clockwork theme, or the dull 1930s period costumes by Mr. Pelly and Jean-Jacques Delmotte.

Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” is naturalistic, but director Alessandro Talevi, set and costume designer Gary McCann, and lighting designer Rick Fisher, seemingly taking their cue from its “dreamy” heroine, Tatyana—who falls in love with the proud Onegin—staged her story as a series of nightmares. The large, masked chorus sang convincingly from risers outside the audience area, while on stage their dancing avatars sported animal-themed Venetian carnival masks. They were benign in the harvest dance of the first act, entering the Larin country house (which had a few trees inside). But for Tatyana’s name-day party they became aggressive, and in Act III, as a glittering high-society clique, they tormented Onegin, who has returned from years abroad after killing his best friend, Lensky, in a duel. The effect, while striking (Athol Farmer did the evocative choreography), took the focus off the sad and very human tale of the ruin of several lives. 

Sara Jakubiak was a serviceable, if rather depressed, Tatyana; her “Letter” aria was short on temperament. Lucas Meachem made a forbidding, repressed Onegin. His opulent baritone exploded imposingly in the last act, when Onegin decides—too late—that he adores Tatyana after all. Tenor Dovlet Nurgeldiyev was a lively, poignant Lensky; James Creswell was a warm Prince Gremin. Conductor Nicholas Carter settled down after some early coordination issues with the stage. His interpretation lacked emotional depth, but so did the production.

—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).

For all its romance, Bard SummerScape’s indoor production of Ernest Chausson’s rarely performed opera resembles an action movie with an underlying message: Don’t let a girl into the boys’ club.

By Heidi Waleson

Updated July 27, 2021 4:21 pm ET

Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Some American festivals moved their staged operas outdoors this summer, but Bard SummerScape mounted this year’s repertoire rarity, Ernest Chausson’s “King Arthur” (“Le Roi Arthus”), inside its Sosnoff Theater as usual. Audience members were required to show vaccination certificates or negative PCR test results and to wear masks while in the building. There were more empty seats than in past years, but it felt strangely normal to be part of an indoor theater audience—sitting next to strangers, passing at close quarters in the aisles, and chatting with friends during the two intermissions of the unabridged show—even though the last time I did that was in March 2020. 

Chausson’s opera, first performed in 1903, richly deserves to be rescued from obscurity. It boasts some familiar elements, starting with the story—the love triangle of King Arthur, his queen (here called Genièvre) and Lancelot. Musical and thematic echoes—Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande”—abound. But finally, Chausson’s highly colored, forthright musical voice is his own. In the composer’s shapely libretto, paced for dramatic impact, the desires and motives of the characters are clear, and while seduction and desire are part of the musical mix, Chausson doesn’t push harmonic boundaries or dissolve into sensuality and ambiguity as Wagner and Debussy do. “King Arthur,” for all its romance, is more of an action movie with an underlying message: Don’t let a girl into the boys’ club. 

The opera’s first scene is all blaring trumpets and celebration of Arthur’s victory over the Saxons, but two brief asides hint at trouble: Mordred spits out his jealousy of Lancelot, Arthur’s favorite, and Genièvre sets up a tryst as she hands her lover a chalice. In the next scene, Genièvre and Lancelot luxuriate in their secret passion. But everything falls apart quickly: Mordred surprises the lovers, Lancelot wounds but fails to kill him, and Mordred reports what he knows. With the transgression revealed, the rest of the opera is about Lancelot’s struggle between love and honor, with Genièvre trying every possible persuasion to keep him, and Lancelot serially succumbing to her blandishments and then changing his mind. (Honor wins.) Ominous choirs of low brass instruments replace brilliant trumpets as a prevailing orchestral motif. Meanwhile, Arthur, troubled by the disintegration of his Round Table and his splendid, hard-won order, calls on Merlin for answers. “We were blind,” the wizard tells him. “We placed too much faith in the virtue of men.” 

The fine cast featured baritone Norman Garrett as an affecting, mellifluous King Arthur and mezzo Sasha Cooke ferociously defending her turf as Genièvre. (I was not entirely convinced by her suicide, but self-strangulation with one’s hair is problematic in any case.) Matthew White’s Lancelot was captivating—the heroic tenor beleaguered by guilt and doubt. His death scene, which he sang lying flat on his back in a pool of light, mourning his wasted life, was especially arresting. Baritone Troy Cook was persuasive as Merlin, the adult in the room. Two poignant tenors eloquently supplied some of the Wagnerian touches: Andrew Bidlack, as Lancelot’s squire, Lyonnel, kept watch over the lovers like Brangäne in “Tristan”; Andres Acosta, as the Laborer, sang a folk-like tune at the start of Act II, lightening the texture as the Sailor and the Shepherd in “Tristan” do. The role of Mordred is small, but Justin Austin’s lively stage presence, which included a very realistic duel with Mr. White, was a highlight. The Bard Festival Chorale ably changed modes from the celebratory cacophony of the opening to the grand serenity of the opera’s mystical conclusion, dispatching Arthur into the next world to await rebirth. Leon Botstein was the vigorous conductor. 

The production looked low-budget with its blocky, unadorned set pieces (designed by Matt Saunders ) and heraldic outfits for the knights (designed by Kaye Voyce ) that could have been drugstore Halloween costumes. Still, it worked. The Round Table became a platform for subsequent scenes—decorated with fur rugs and flowers for the love nest, for example. It was symbolically shattered into pieces for the internecine battle of Act III, and then cleared away altogether for the final scenes, suggesting the possibility of a clean slate. 

Louisa Proske’s directing illuminated the personal interactions at the heart of the opera, as did Scott Zielinski’s lighting design, zeroing in on important moments and creating atmosphere. The production struck an elegant balance between the human and the mythic. As Mr. Garrett, stripped of Arthur’s armor, weapons and crown, mounted the stairs toward a descending white disc, with the white-clad chorus praising the enduring power of his idealism, the memory of the earlier scenes, and the messiness of real life with human beings, remained, a reminder that the next utopian plan should take that messiness into account.

—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).

In Opera Parallèle’s remount of Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer’s fact-based opera, the story of a perilous mountain expedition is presented using sophisticated animation. 

By Heidi Waleson

July 19, 2021 5:39 pm ET

“Everest,” an opera by Joby Talbot and Gene Scheer, made a powerful impression at its Dallas Opera world premiere in 2015. A taut, absorbing depiction of a real, ill-fated expedition to the summit of Mount Everest in 1996, the piece zeroes in on three climbers— Rob Hall (the expedition’s leader), Doug Hansen and Beck Weathers —and Jan Arnold, Hall’s pregnant wife back home. It explores their connections but mostly their profound isolation in the face of the raging blizzard that will cost Rob and Doug their lives.

Opera Parallèle, the home company of conductor Nicole Paiement, who led the premiere, has remounted the piece as a digital graphic novel, which is now available on demand from the Dallas Opera’s new streaming channel (rental $19.99; no subscription required; available through Jan. 16, 2022). This ingenious production focuses the action even further on that isolation, as well as on the hubris that prompts humans to challenge the unforgiving natural world, and the porous border between life and death.

Directed by Brian Staufenbiel, with the work of illustrator Mark Simmons and director of photography David Murakami, the film is laid out to look like a book, with multiple panes per page, floating in a black, starry background of seemingly infinite space. Black, white and shades of blue dominate the visual palette, depicting the mountain and a blank-eyed chorus of the dead—representing the hundreds of climbers killed over decades of attempts at the summit—that surrounds the living characters. Only the living humans are drawn in warm colors. They are animated in a lifelike manner, their faces made mobile with technology that reproduced the expressions of the singers as they recorded their parts in a studio. That color and movement embodies the living characters’ hope of survival but also their frailty, since the chilly, block-like backgrounds; the stiff, looming chorus; and the steady, inexorable pacing of the rest of the animation all point to a bad outcome.

This visual environment and tempo complemented the music, which balances the hopeful solo voices against the storm that rages in the orchestra and the eerie, echoing constancy of the chorus that counts out the time—“2:59. 3:12. 3:21”—with every minute making a safe descent less likely. The vocal characterizations are distinctive: Nathan Granner’s poignant tenor expresses Rob’s adventurous spirit, his sense of responsibility for his clients—rather than leaving the ailing Doug behind, he drags him along and finally dies beside him—and his love for Jan. Baritone Hadleigh Adams ably conveys Doug’s fundamental weakness; mezzo Sasha Cooke makes Jan, patched through to Rob as he dies on the mountain, a heartbreakingly stalwart companion. Bass Kevin Burdette embodies Beck’s life force as he hallucinates a backyard barbecue and his daughter, Meg (Charlotte Fanvu); her appearance draws him back from death and prompts him to save himself.

The chorus part was performed by a quartet of singers, their voices skillfully expanded into a larger ensemble through multitrack recording. The big orchestra called for in the score was represented by a digital soundtrack created by engineer Magnus Green in collaboration with Ms. Paiement, who also conducted the singers. It was efficient, and supplied the necessary momentum and background, but the richness and variety of the acoustic instrumental sound was missing, flattened into a more generalized, electronic timbral effect. Drawing and animation successfully rendered the story of “Everest” through a new lens; however, compressing its orchestral music into one dimension, while appropriate for the medium and certainly cost-effective, felt like a loss.

—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 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).

Three virtual walking tours from On Site Opera explore Black music and history in New York; the Tulsa Opera pays tribute in song to the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

By Heidi Waleson

May 5, 2021 5:39 pm ET

New York

In normal times, On Site Opera stages works in locations that relate to their subject matter. With “The Road We Came,” an ambitious project designed for abnormal times, the company has instead used music and technology to illuminate the rich history that is buried in familiar places. Three self-guided walking tours trace the experience of Black people in New York, starting in Lower Manhattan in the 17th century; moving north to Midtown in the late 19th century; and then up to Harlem in the 20th century. Each of the 16 tour stops has a narration by historian Eric K. Washington and a short film by Ryan and Tonya McKinny in which bass-baritone Kenneth Overton, accompanied by pianist Kevin J. Miller, sings music by (mostly) Black composers. Accessed through a dedicated app, the tours are $60 each; all three are $165. 

These fascinating journeys can be taken virtually or in person; I walked the Lower Manhattan route on a windy Friday afternoon. It’s a hike—3.1miles, according to the app—and it took two hours, rather than the estimated 90 minutes, to do the walk and take in all the filmed and recorded content at each of the five stops. The tour begins at the African Burial Ground on Duane Street, a somber monument in water and stone to the thousands buried there between the 1690s and 1794; Mr. Overton’s rendition of William Grant Still’s plaintive “Grief” is a fitting accompaniment. The next site, a plaque in Tribeca marking a stop on the Underground Railroad, gets a fiercer song: “Oh Say, Do You Hear? (Abolitionist National Anthem),” with E.A. Atlee’s graphic text about whipped and bloodied bodies set to the tune better known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 

The tour continues north through Greenwich Village, zigzagging to Astor Place and into Chelsea. It was illuminating to learn about Henry and Sarah Garnet, a prominent Black abolitionist couple (he a minister and orator; she an educator), outside their house on MacDougal Street, and Mr. Overton’s haunting performance of Wallace Willis’s “Steal Away” stayed with me along the next leg of the walk. Who knew that the Wanamaker’s department store, which once stood opposite Cooper Union, had an all-black employee chorus? Or that Sarah Garnet’s three-story school, built in 1870, still stands on 17th Street, albeit with a peeling façade and gated windows? For this location, Mr. Overton, wearing one of many colorful, African-patterned jackets ( Jessica Jahn designed the costumes), stood like a greeter at its door, singing the spiritual “De Gospel Train” with its appropriate refrain, “Get on board, little children.” 

I took the Midtown Manhattan tour virtually, losing the immediacy of those physical sites and the disturbing sense of how history gets paved over. On the plus side, it is easier to appreciate the films, as well as Mr. Washington’s absorbing commentaries, without the extraneous light and noise of the street. The tour explores the history of the vanished West Side Black neighborhoods, like San Juan Hill, along with the growth of mainstream audience interest in the work of Black performers, heard at Carnegie Hall, and in the Eubie Blake musical “Shuffle Along,” which opened in 1921. The most stirring moment is Mr. Overton’s performance—in front of the Metropolitan Opera House—of “Peculiar Grace,” from Terence Blanchard’s 2019 opera, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” This affecting aria depicts a gay Black boy’s yearning to leave his home in the South and be “finally free.” “Fire” is slated to open the Met’s 2021-22 season, its first-ever opera by a Black composer.

The Harlem tour, the most geographically compact, traces the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance with visits to landmarks like the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the house where Langston Hughes lived in his final decades. I was intrigued by the two row houses on West 131st Street which briefly (1914-19) served as the home for the Music School Settlement for Colored People: Its director of music was John Rosamond Johnson, who, with his brother, the poet James Weldon Johnson, wrote “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” often called the “Black National Anthem.” That piece was featured on the Midtown tour; here, Mr. Overton offered a quieter composition by the brothers, the soulful “Since You Went Away,” taking off his fedora, seemingly as a sign of mourning. 

Hughes’s close collaboration with the composer Margaret Bonds is celebrated in the evocative “Three Dream Portraits”; Mr. Overton also performs striking settings of Hughes’s poems by Florence Price and William Grant Still. The tour concludes on Strivers’ Row, at the home of James H. Williams who, as “Chief” of the red cap porters of Grand Central Terminal, hired Black, college-educated men. Fittingly, the optimistic final piece, “Night Song,” with a text by the Harlem Renaissance poet Clarissa Scott Delany, is by H. Leslie Adams —a living composer. 

***

Tulsa Opera’s “Greenwood Overcomes,” a live concert with an in-person audience at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, commemorating the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by celebrating Black resilience and artistry, was a laudable undertaking. (The May 1 livestream is available through May 31 on the company’s site. A higher quality recording will be available May 19.) It featured music by 23 living Black composers, including eight world premieres, four of them commissioned for the event, performed by an all-Black cast of eight singers with piano accompaniment by the valiant Howard Watkins, who co-curated the project with the company’s artistic director, Tobias Picker. 

While overlong at two hours, with 30 numbers and no intermission, the concert had numerous high points. My favorites were the two performances by the superb young bass-baritone Davóne Tines, arresting in “After Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”—Tyshawn Sorey’s chilling deconstruction of the spiritual, which stretches out the cadences of the familiar text and pares the accompaniment down to a death march. Mr. Tines also gave a storyteller’s intensity to the most gripping of the commissions: “There Are Many Trails of Tears” from Anthony Davis’s forthcoming opera “Fire Across the Tracks: Tulsa 1921.” 

Also memorable was Issachah Savage, who channeled his lavish, buoyant tenor into directness and simplicity for H. Leslie Adams’s “Prayer,” and gave Nkeiru Okoye’s “A Kiss on the Forehead,” one of the world premieres, an easy, expansive sincerity. Leah Hawkins brought a rich soprano and considerable charm to “Liza” and “Nobody’s Business (But Me Own)” by Peter Ashbourne.

The sheer number and variety of composers was also impressive. I liked Quinn Mason’s dreamy “Eclipsed World,” sung by tenor Noah Stewart ; the serene lyricism of Kathryn Bostic’s “State of Grace,” sung by mezzo Krysty Swann ; and Melanie DeMore’s consoling “Sending You Light,” sung by mezzo Denyce Graves. Mr. Watkins got a solo moment in the spotlight with the poignant “Billie’s Song” by Valerie Capers. Not everything came off well: Bass Kevin Thompson seemed stiff and uncomfortable with the rhythms of Tania León’s lively “Mi Amor Es,” while James Lee III’s “Songs for the People,” another commissioned work, sung by Ms. Graves, had an old-fashioned vibe in both setting and text—a poem by Frances E.W. Harper about how the world needs music. It was also a miscalculation to have soprano Leona Mitchell, who was born in Oklahoma, sing four songs: Hearing what remains of her once-glorious soprano, now past its prime, was hard. Finally, most of the repertoire was chosen for uplift, which grew wearying in such a long program. Some more challenging fare would have been welcome in the mix. 

—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).