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The world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s searing “Fire Shut Up In My Bones”; a remarkably modern production of Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea”; a generic take on Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”

Davóne Tines as Charles Blow in ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Photo: Eric Woolsey By Heidi Waleson June 25, 2019 2:43 pm ET

Webster Groves, Mo.

Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” now in its world premiere engagement at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which commissioned it in partnership with Jazz St. Louis, demonstrates opera’s remarkable ability to get inside a character’s head. Like its source material, a searing memoir by the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, the opera goes deep, exploring the years of loneliness and confusion that resulted from a sexual assault by an older male cousin when Charles was 7 years old.

The poetic libretto by Kasi Lemmons jumps into the story with startling abruptness: The college-age Charles is speeding down a road, a gun at his side, ready to kill someone. The rest of the opera clearly plots the emotional journey to that moment: Throughout his childhood as the youngest of five brothers in a poor black family in Louisiana, he was always different (“a boy of peculiar grace”) and longed for his distracted mother’s love. Overwhelmed with guilt and uncertainty after the assault, the teenage Charles looks for help through baptism, sex with a girl, joining a college fraternity with brutal hazing rituals, and falling in love with a woman who leaves him. Only when he decides to kill his abuser—and then doesn’t—is he freed to accept himself. (The memoir explains that Mr. Blow is bisexual; the opera leaves the question open.)

Character layering deftly articulates this internal struggle. In Act I, the older Charles (the powerful Davóne Tines) shares the stage and sings with his child self, Char’es-Baby (treble Jeremy Denis). Destiny/Loneliness, sung by the remarkable Julia Bullock, is a voice in Charles’s head, tempting him to submit to his feelings of alienation and vengeance.

His environment is also richly drawn: There are the neighbors who sing the recurring barbershop-style ensemble, “Char’es-Baby, youngest of five…Such a big baby / What’s wrong with you?” and his hardworking mother, Billie (Karen Slack, a big-voiced soprano, prone to exaggeration), who threatens her philandering husband and his women with a gun, but gives Charles advice that he will finally heed: “Sometimes you gotta just leave it in the road.”

Mr. Blanchard’s attractive music is oddly lyrical and tonal for this turbulent story, more a cushion for Ms. Lemmons’s words than a voice in itself. The orchestra includes a jazz rhythm quartet, but its sound is peripheral rather than central, only appearing in occasional moments, such as the scene when Chester (Charles’s assailant, sung by Markel Reed) makes the child complicit in a theft of candy. Catchy, up-tempo numbers include a comic ensemble in a chicken-processing factory and the gospel-tinged church service. Arias like Charles’s “Tears from a walled-off place” recur, keeping his anguish at center stage. Yet it is Destiny/Loneliness’s music, with its seductive allure, that has the most impact.

The production, directed by James Robinson, with a simple set by Allen Moyer, costumes by James Schuette, projections by Greg Emetaz, and lighting by Christopher Akerlind, evokes the impoverished Louisiana town of Gibsland; five dancers, choreographed by Seán Curran, become, among other things, the confusing sexual images that visit Charles in his dreams. The assault is staged without physical contact, but the context makes clear that something bad happened. The large, excellent cast also included Chaz’men Williams-Ali, a charming rogue as Charles’s father, Spinner, and Rehanna Thelwell as Ruby, one of Spinner’s women. William Long conducted.

***

OTSL’s first-ever production of Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea” (1643) brought out the remarkable modernity of this opera, whose musical language, stripped of artifice, is direct and communicative and whose story is a vicious satire cloaked in beauty. Director Tim Albery’s production was staged in a tiled space that looked like a cross between an empty swimming pool and a morgue, with modern costumes; Hannah Clark was the designer. Mr. Albery’s trenchant English translation captured the savagery of what’s at stake as the Emperor Nerone and his mistress, Poppea, mow down all the obstacles in their path. As Nerone tells his tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, “It’s the people who need to be subjected to the chains of reason, and not me. I am the Emperor.” (He later orders Seneca to commit suicide.)

The taut, focused staging matched the incisive musical direction from harpsichordist Nicholas Kok, leader of the eight-member period instrument band that played from the rear corners of the set, and the excellent diction of the singers. As Poppea, Emily Fons’s soprano oozed sensuality; as Ottavia, Nerone’s repudiated Empress, mezzo Sarah Mesko sang through her teeth in barely repressed fury; and tenor Brenton Ryan gave Nerone a dangerous edge. (In a nontraditional choice, Nerone stabs Ottavia to death instead of merely exiling her; clearly no one is safe in his orbit, not even Poppea.) David Pittsinger sang Seneca with deep-voiced authority; Devon Guthrie’s purity of tone was just right for the innocent Drusilla; countertenor Tom Scott-Cowell brought a frantic terror to Ottone, who tries and fails to murder Poppea on Ottavia’s orders. Notable supporting singers included tenor Matthew Cairns as Liberto, the pistol-packing guard who reluctantly brings Nerone’s order to Seneca, and mezzo Michaela Wolz as the exuberant Amore, who bets on Poppea’s triumph and wins.

***

Verdi’s “Rigoletto” (1851) got a light updating in Bruno Ravella’s production. It was set in Paris in the 1880s, instead of Renaissance Mantua, so there were can-can dancers in a cabaret instead of the Duke’s dissolute court (costume designer Mark Bouman went to town on their flouncy costumes and the sinister top hats and capes of the Duke’s followers). As Rigoletto, the Duke’s jester, Roland Wood used a ventriloquist’s dummy for his nasty jibes, supposedly to separate his performance persona from his secret life as the loving and overprotective father of Gilda. He was also given a large scarlet birthmark on his face instead of a hunchback. However, Mr. Wood didn’t vocally demonstrate this duality over the course of the evening. He pummeled the music, making his large baritone seem oversized for the space. Even as Rigoletto begged the courtiers to return his stolen daughter, there was no real pathos to his performance.

Despite the opera’s updating and the idiomatic English translation by James Fenton, Mr. Ravella’s directing, apart from a few dramatic flourishes, was generic; so was Roberto Kalb’s pedestrian conducting. Tenor Joshua Wheeker was, for the most part, a mildly caddish Duke; So Young Park, a prettily innocent Gilda. Two potent low voices—Nicholas Newton’s Count Monterone and Christian Zaremba’s Sparafucile—supplied menace. And in a brief #MeToo moment, Lindsay Ammann’s Maddalena recoiled from the Duke’s brutal advances. Then it was over—she let him seduce her in the opera’s famous Act III quartet, the strongest musical performance of the evening.

—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).

Lincoln Center Theater

OTSL. Dan Swenberg in the band.

OTSL

Opera Theater of St. Louis

I was deeply sorry to read of the passing of Michael Jaffee. Michael was one of the most interesting and generous people I have had the privilege of knowing. He invited me to join the board of Chamber Music America, which he founded, on which I served with great pleasure for a decade. Not having had contact with him for years, I don’t think he ever knew I took up his instrument, the lute, later in life. Michael was a leader, a musical entrepreneur and a showman. I was so glad to have known him well.

Anthony Davis’s new work at Long Beach Opera has potent music, but it struggles to turn its ripped-from-the-headlines story into satisfying drama.

Nathan Granner as Khorey Wise, Cedric Berry as Yusef Salaam, Orson Van Gay as Raymond Santana, Derrell Acon as Antron McCray and Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff By Heidi Waleson June 18, 2019 5:39 pm ET

San Pedro, Calif.

Stories ripped from the headlines are a relatively recent operatic genre, and Anthony Davis’s “The Central Park Five,” which was commissioned by the Long Beach Opera and had its world premiere at the Warner Grand Theatre on Saturday, demonstrates how difficult they are to pull off. Other media have advantages in this area, and the Ava DuVernay Netflix miniseries “When They See Us,” released on May 31, tells the same story with more nuance and emotional impact.

The tale is harrowing: One spring night in 1989, a young white female jogger was raped, beaten and left for dead in New York’s Central Park. Five black and Latino teenagers—Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson—aged 14 to 16, who had been in the park that night as part of a larger group, were charged in the crime. The case sparked a virulent outcry from the city’s tabloids, which seized on words like “rampaging,” “wolf pack” and “wilding” to fan the flames of racial fear and distrust; the then-real-estate developer Donald Trump loudly called for the return of the death penalty. Although no physical evidence or eyewitness testimony linked them to the crime, the teens were found guilty. The convictions were largely based on videotaped confessions, elicited after hours of interrogation, that the suspects later said were coerced; they maintained their innocence at trial and subsequently. Then, in 2002, Matias Reyes, a convicted serial rapist and murderer, confessed to the crime and said he acted alone. His DNA matched that from the scene of the crime, and the five were exonerated. Each had served between six and 13 years in prison.

In early scenes, Mr. Davis and librettist Richard Wesley sketch the era’s tension between black and white New Yorkers, a toxic environment that played an important role in the case. The music—its potent, jazz-based style intricately meshed with more classical idioms and the occasional hip-hop riff—creates a kind of tapestry into which the voices are woven. However, the technique, while musically effective, is more pictorial than narrative, and often makes the characters seem like symbols rather than people. The zealous District Attorney (Jessica Mamey), Donald Trump (Thomas Segen) and the Masque (Zeffin Quinn Hollis), who represents the world of white detectives, judges, journalists and men-on-the-street, egg each other on to pursue confessions and convictions, no matter what. These three grow increasingly cartoonish and strident over the course of the opera. The five teens (Derrell Acon, Cedric Berry, Orson Van Gay, Nathan Granner and Bernard Holcomb) are presented as a musical and theatrical unit. Two are bass-baritones and three are tenors, adults reliving their ordeal in flashback, but there’s no indication as to who is who, since none of them are named until fairly late in the opera.

Mr. Davis’s music ably captures mood and atmosphere, especially in Act I, when the heavy beat and accelerating pace depict the District Attorney and the Masque steamrolling through the interrogation process: They coerce confessions by lying to the frightened teens about evidence and promising that they are just witnesses who will be allowed to go home if they give the police what they want. It is shocking, but less emotionally immediate than the television version, which emphasized the vulnerability of the teens by casting young actors and painstakingly individualizing their stories.

Opera can provide psychological windows into inner lives through music, but “Central Park Five” offered only a few such moments, like the brief duet for tenors as Kevin (Mr. Holcomb) and Raymond (Mr. Van Gay) express their fear and confusion when they are first arrested, and the agonized aria “They stole from me!” sung by Korey (Mr. Granner) when he is finally released after the exoneration. (The real Mr. Wise was 16 at the time of the crime, was sentenced as an adult, and served a longer term than the others.)

The strong cast also included an ensemble of four, with each playing multiple roles, including the teens’ parents. One especially notable moment came from mezzo Lindsay Patterson, as Yusef ’s mother, exploding in anger in the courtroom. The 15-member orchestra, conducted by Leslie Dunner, set the rhythm of the evening, from the initial soundscape of woodwind squeals and electronic growls and scratches to the bending brass lines and drumbeats that relentlessly propelled this tale of miscarried justice to its conclusion.

The bare-bones production, directed and designed by Andreas Mitisek with lighting by Dan Weingarten, only outlined the opera’s dramatic contours. Movable screens acted both as doors and as surfaces for projections, and video footage, archival and original, suggested settings like Harlem, interrogation rooms and Trump Tower. Sometimes they didn’t: It was unclear, for example, that the ensemble’s chant of “Our young men / When will it end?” was actually a street demonstration. At times, the directing went overboard. Donald Trump was played for laughs, including having him sing one aria while sitting on a golden toilet, a choice that trivialized his pernicious role as the cheerleader for conviction. And for all the story’s contemporary resonance, the opera felt like a period piece. It ends with a blandly triumphant chorus, “The world is ours”; only a projection still of a TV news report about a current #BlackLivesMatter case brought its theme up to date. It wasn’t enough.

—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).

Long Beach Opera.

Romantic jealousies and magical interventions lead to all kinds of complications in this stunning production of Agostino Steffani’s forgotten gem at the Boston Early Music Festival.

A scene from ‘Orlando’ PHOTO: KATHY WITTMANByHeidi Waleson

June 12, 2019 2:01 p.m. ET

Boston

The Boston Early Music Festival has unearthed a forgotten Baroque opera gem—Agostino Steffani’s “Orlando generoso” (1691)—and given it a splendid production, opening the festival on Sunday at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre. (BEMF is titling the show simply “Orlando.”) The Italian-born Steffani (1654-1728) made his career in service to the aristocracies of Munich and Hanover, writing numerous successful operas for their theaters. For context, in 1710 the more famous George Frideric Handel succeeded Steffani as Kapellmeister at the court of Hanover; in 1733 Handel’s own “Orlando” had its premiere in London.

Both operas (and many others) are based on Ludovico Ariosto’s 1516 epic poem “Orlando furioso,” the tale of the knight Roland, whose unrequited love for Angelica, the Princess of Cathay, drives him mad. (Angelica is not interested because she is already married to Medoro, a soldier.) Ortensio Mauro’s libretto also features the knight Ruggiero and his beloved, Bradamante (both central to Handel’s “Alcina”), plus a sorcerer, a sorceress, and a comic thief. They all wind up in Cathay, where Galafro, Angelica’s father, does not recognize her (she has been gone a long time and is in disguise), and falls in love with her himself. Romantic jealousies and magical interventions lead to all kinds of complications. It is only when Orlando, imprisoned by Galafro, finally comes to his senses that the world can be righted.

Director Gilbert Blin devised a stunning period-style show. Flats and drops (by Mr. Blin with Kate A. Noll) made quick work of location transformations and magical events, and the de rigueur flying machines, including the sorcerer’s hippogriff, were delightful. Anna Watkins’s lavish costumes delicately referred to the Chinese setting with dress shapes and top-knots, contrasting with the clothing of the Western visitors to seem foreign but not too foreign; Kelly Martin’s atmospheric lighting suggested a pre-electricity era. Mr. Blin’s directing kept things light and entertaining, and big scenes, like the sorcerer’s enchanted palace, with its automata-like inhabitants, had dramatic éclat and wit.

Steffani’s appealing music was an intriguing combination of Italian and French styles, with full-fledged da capo arias co-existing with danced minuets and chaconnes (Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière contributed the low-key, effective period choreography). Tenor Aaron Sheehan deftly captured the disintegration of the suffering Orlando. In his elaborate opening aria, describing how Glory and Love battle within him, his lengthy runs on the word “combattono” had military precision and awe-inspiring breath control; his Act III revelation in prison properly brought the opera’s antics to a contemplative halt. Two superb sopranos offered contrasting personalities: Amanda Forsythe, exquisite as the wide-eyed Angelica, and Emőke Baráth, impassioned as the martial Bradamante. The trio of countertenors—Christopher Lowrey (Ruggiero), Kacper Szelążek (Medoro) and Flavio Ferri-Beneditti (Galafro)—ably complemented them. Baritone Jesse Blumberg gave the sorcerer Atlante a lyrical spin, tenor Zachary Wilder contributed some lively physical comedy as the thief Brunello, and soprano Teresa Wakim had a brief but potent moment as the sorceress Melissa.

With music directors Paul O’Dette (theorbo) and Stephen Stubbs (baroque guitar) leading from the continuo section, and concertmaster Robert Mealy heading the top-flight orchestra, the opera’s pacing rarely flagged over its considerable length of four hours, including two breaks. And the show’s high points were unforgettable. For example, early in Act II, singing a plaintively lovely double lament for their (temporarily) vanished lovers, Angelica was accompanied by bassoon and violin and Ruggiero by oboe and cello, as fireflies darted around the darkened stage. It was one of those time-stopping moments that make BEMF’s biennial opera essential.

—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).