Opera Philadelphia

Kamala Sankaram and Rob Handel’s opera takes a hard look at surveillance in an app-based world.

ByHeidi WalesonSept. 10, 2019 4:38 pm ET

New York

Subjects for immersive theater don’t get much more relevant than the insidious spread of surveillance, which is cleverly explored in the opera “Looking at You,” by Kamala Sankaram and Rob Handel, now in its world premiere production at HERE, which co-produced the work with Opera on Tap and Experiments in Opera. Audience members receive lanyard ID badges as their tickets, and are invited to sign in with their “employee numbers” to get free drinks for consumption at their cabaret-style tables; we are attending what purports to be a tech-company party. So far, so benign. But about midway through the 82-minute performance, the tablet on my table started showing images from my Facebook page. My page is pretty tame, but by the end of the show, I had to wonder what else could be found out about me. That’s the point.

Mr. Handel’s artful, well-paced libretto and Ms. Sankaram’s lively music-theater-infused score limn the tale of Dorothy, an ambitious engineer who invents an app, CheckUOut, for Rix, the tech company that she has just joined. It’s supposed to be a relationship aid, as in letting you find out right away if that cute guy at the bar is someone you should date—but it is actually a powerful data miner that instantly collects and analyzes everything the internet knows about that person. Meanwhile, Dorothy’s boyfriend, Ethan (an Edward Snowden figure), has just released 1.7 million secret documents, the product of surveillance by 13 governments.

Gradually, the opera reveals a sinister connection between these two activities: Personal data mined from seemingly harmless social media can be commercialized and accessed by all kinds of entities. This privacy invasion is taken to its logical, weaponized extreme. At the app launch, the Department of Homeland Security swoops in on the audience member chosen as the app’s demonstration target and takes him away.

It’s a serious issue, but the creators avoid didacticism, instead skillfully deploying suspense and humor in their storytelling. Ethan contacts Dorothy from his secret location by hacking her Fitbit; there are sly “Casablanca” references to go with Rix.

The excellent singers deliver solid characters: Baritone Paul An as Raj, the hyper hacker-turned-tech-mogul who sees only how cool (and profitable) CheckUOut is; tenor Brandon Snook as Ethan, who explains his actions in a poignant ballad with the refrain “You don’t know how naked you are.” Mezzo Blythe Gaissert persuasively shows Dorothy grappling with the consequences of her creation. A backup trio— Adrienne Danrich, Mikki Sodergren and Eric McKeever —are the geek engineers who groove along with Raj…until they don’t. Ms. Danrich in particular shines in a soul-inflected aria that concludes, “Because you’re white / You’re not accustomed / To being surveilled.” The accompanying piano and three saxophones sound like a much more varied ensemble; they, along with the computer-generated backup chorus that emanates from the tablets on the tables, give the whole piece an insistent bass beat and murmuring background that contribute to the overall feeling of foreboding.

Nic Benacerraf’s scenic design is dominated by seven screens, with video by David Bengali, that bombard the audience with scrolling text messages, TV news reports, Facebook posts and, most sinisterly, the bits of personal information piling up and the dots that represent the data points swirling into shapes as “the algorithm learns.” Raj’s clownish pink-shorts tracksuit, with giant pockets in a contrasting fabric for his devices, belies his single-minded, amoral pursuit of cool ( Kate Fry did the costumes). Director Kristin Marting, who helped develop the piece, and music director Samuel McCoy wove the live performers and the video into an absorbing, frightening whole.

—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).

at Here. So it begins…(again!)

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Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces Hardcover – April 17, 2020

by Andrew M. Manshel (Author)

By the 1970s, 42nd Street in New York was widely perceived to be unsafe, a neighborhood thought to be populated largely by drug dealers, porn shops, and muggers. But in 1979, civic leaders developed a long-term vision for revitalizing one especially blighted block, Bryant Park. The reopening of the park in the 1990s helped inject new vitality into midtown Manhattan and served as a model for many other downtown revitalization projects. So what about urban policy can we learn from Bryant Park?

In this new book, Andrew M. Manshel draws from both urbanist theory and his first-hand experiences as a urban public space developer and manager who worked on Bryant Park and later applied its strategies to an equally successful redevelopment project in a very different New York neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens. He candidly describes what does (and doesn’t) work when coordinating urban redevelopment projects, giving special attention to each of the many details that must be carefully observed and balanced, from encouraging economic development to fostering creative communities to delivering appropriate services to the homeless. Learning from Bryant Park is thus essential reading for anyone who cares about giving new energy to downtowns and public spaces.

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About the Author

Andrew M. Manshel for 10 years was Associate Director and Counsel at the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation and General Counsel and Director of Public Amenities to the Grand Central and 34th Street Partnerships. He now serves as Assistant Commissioner for Franchise Administration at the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Previously he was Executive Vice President of Greater Jamaica Development, in Jamaica, Queens. He is a long-time Director and the Treasurer of Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Mr. Manshel blogs about downtown and public space revitalization at theplacemaster.com.

The Glimmerglass Festival presents the world premiere of Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s ‘Blue,’ as well as a shortened version of ‘The Ghosts of Versailles’ and productions of ‘Show Boat’ and ‘La Traviata.’

ByHeidi WalesonAug. 14, 2019 4:19 pm ET

Cooperstown, N.Y.

Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson ’s “Blue,” commissioned and given its world premiere by the Glimmerglass Festival this season, is a wrenching and remarkably original opera that explores deeply personal emotional truths and gives them universal resonance. It is the tale of one family’s devastating loss—the teenage son of a black police officer and his wife is shot and killed by a white police officer—but it is actually the story of an entire community. Structured like a Greek tragedy, it skillfully uses ensembles to build a sense of ritual around the story. The characters have no names (they are the Father, the Mother, the Son) and the killing takes place offstage, between the two hour-long acts. Act I is a deep dive into the complexities of familial love and struggle; Act II shows how one violent act challenges the foundational beliefs of those left behind.

Mr. Thompson’s unflinching libretto avoids political posturing yet clearly exposes the underlying predicament. Three Girlfriends, learning that the Mother is pregnant with a boy, recoil in horror, and remind her, in a jazzy ensemble: “Thou shalt bring forth no black boys into this world.” (The Girlfriends are a cross between fairy godmothers and Fates—they offer blessings as well as warnings.) At the funeral, the Father, mad with grief, recites the terrible litany of parents to their black sons: “Don’t wear a hoodie. Don’t carry shiny objects. Don’t get a tattoo….” Yet what is interesting about the opera is how those warnings, rather than signaled, are woven into its fabric, as they are into the lives of the people it is about. Equally compelling is the treatment of religion, which dominates Act II. A source of comfort and community, it is also questioned. In the opera’s most heartbreaking moment, the Mother, standing at the casket, gives her child to Jesus with the same gentle words and music with which she handed him, as a newborn, to the Father—“Cup your hand under his head and neck.” But the Reverend, in the opera’s final moments, asks God, “How many sons do we have to give / Before you can’t hold one more?”

Ms. Tesori’s deeply affecting and disturbing music has just the right weight and gravity for the story. Arias and scenes are emotionally specific, and the various ensemble configurations—the trio of Girlfriends, who support the Mother, and one of Policemen, who are the Father’s colleagues, combine as a potent sextet at the funeral—amplify the opera’s themes. The powerful cast, headed by bass Kenneth Kellogg (Father) and mezzo Briana Hunter (Mother), captured the story’s volcanic upheavals and simple everyday-ness; tenor Aaron Crouch made the Son’s teenage rebellion absolutely believable; and baritone Gordon Hawkins brought dignity and doubt to the Reverend. John DeMain led the incisive orchestra, which embraced Ms. Tesori’s big statements. Mr. Thompson also directed, and his detailed staging, complemented by Donald Eastman ’s simple set (a bleached-out projection of a row of Harlem townhouses, a few roll-on props), Jessica Jahn ’s costumes, and Robert Wierzel ’s lighting, let the characters and the music tell the story.

***

William M. Hoffman ’s libretto still feels overstuffed with episodes and characters, and many of the numbers go on far too long. It’s nice to have a contemporary opera be a comedy, for a change, but the piece goes overboard, particularly in Act I, with broad jokes and long stretches of frenetic high jinks. There’s lots of orchestral detail, and the Mozart in-joke references blend easily with more modern bits, like the eerie ghost music, and a pretty earworm of a love quartet.

Soprano Yelena Dyachek brought a voluptuous sound and a properly sulky demeanor to the depressed Marie Antoinette. The other roles—more than two dozen—were capably filled by members of the Glimmerglass Young Artists Program. Standouts included the theatrically astute tenor Christian Sanders, as Bégearss, the cartoon villain in Beaumarchais’s opera, who has two lengthy, vehement arias about vermin, and mezzo Katherine Maysek (Cherubino), who shone in her single scene, romancing Rosina ( Joanna Latini ) as part of the aforementioned love quartet. Conductor Joseph Colaneri held it all together. James Noone ’s handsome set used 18th-century portrait iconography, and Nancy Leary ’s attractive period costumes (all white for the ghosts; colorful for the opera characters) helped delineate the different spheres of action, as did Mr. Wierzel’s lighting.

“Show Boat” (1927), by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, is a bit theatrically creaky, especially in Act II, but director Francesca Zambello ’s ebullient production, with a colorful set by Peter J. Davison, vivid costumes by Paul Tazewell, and vigorous conducting by James Lowe, helped you forget that. The denizens of the Cotton Blossom were beautifully cast— Lauren Snouffer, heartfelt as the innocent Magnolia Hawks, who learns all too soon the ways of the world; Michael Adams, sexy as the gambler Gaylord Ravenal, whom she loves; Justin Hopkins (Joe), who sang a sonorous “Ol’ Man River”; Lara Teeter, an adept comedian as Cap’n Andy; and Alyson Cambridge (Julie), whose wrenching performance of “Bill” encapsulated all the sad undertones of this show. Eric Sean Fogel ’s snappy choreography—especially the Charleston number at the end—showed off Glimmerglass’s terrific cadre of musical-theater dancers.

The season’s standard repertory offering was a serviceable production of Verdi ’s “La Traviata” (1853), directed by Ms. Zambello and conducted by Mr. Colaneri. It was lightly updated to the late 19th century (Violetta’s Act I dress, designed by Jess Goldstein, looked like a purple version of the one worn by John Singer Sargent ’s “Madame X”) and presented the story as Violetta’s flashback from the hospital where she is dying (Mr. Davison did the sets; Mark McCullough, the lighting). Amanda Woodbury was a touching Violetta; Adrian Timpau a nicely pompous Germont; and Kang Wang came into his own in the second half, bringing tenorial brightness and youthful ardor to Alfredo.

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).

Glimmerglass. Last night Ghosts of Versailles.

that Handel had traveled up the Susquehanna to its source?

Who needs England when we have Otsego County?

Otsego Lake