‘Eat the Document’ Review: The Prototype Festival’s Musical Fugitives

This year’s edition of the festival opened with a compelling rock-influenced opera, based on Dana Spiotta’s novel about two 1970s radicals who go underground after a protest bombing goes awry.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 13, 2025 at 5:04 pm ET

The cast of ‘Eat the Document.’

The cast of ‘Eat the Document.’ PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

New York

According to its co-founder and co-artistic director Beth Morrison, the Prototype Festival is a place for music-theater pieces that defy categorization. “Eat the Document,” which opened this year’s festival on Thursday at HERE, is a case in point. John Glover’s score, which takes many of its cues from pop and rock music of the 1970s and 1990s, is like a concept album, shaped into a compelling narrative by Kelley Rourke’s smart, well-distilled libretto.

Based on Dana Spiotta’s 2006 novel, “Eat the Document” is the tale of Mary and Bobby, two radicals who go underground separately when their Vietnam War protest bombing goes awry. The action toggles between the early 1970s, following Mary as she changes her name to Caroline and tries to figure out her future, and the late 1990s, when she is living as Louise, with Jason, her 15-year-old son. Also in the 1990s, Bobby has become Nash, who runs an alternative bookstore and meeting place for a new generation of activist youths.

Different singers play the two protagonists as their younger and older selves, and the production’s eight performers embody multiple roles, reinforcing emotional resonances between the eras. Most notably, soprano Danielle Buonaiuto is both Mary/Caroline and Miranda, a principled young woman with a crush on Nash, while tenor Tim Russell is both young Bobby and the questing teenager Jason, who is obsessed with the outtakes and bootlegs of the music of his mother’s youth. All the passionate young people contrast with the older ones: Nash (Paul Pinto) is wry and a bit cynical; Louise (Amy Justman) is worn down with living her cover.

The music also binds the two eras. The first half of the show plays with their relationship in a series of vivid musical set pieces. “No More,” the opening choral anthem of protest, which could apply to either era, has a whiff of “Les Miz”; when Jason drops the needle on a precious vintage record, what comes out is the hymn-like ensemble “On Repeat,” Mr. Glover’s musical response to “Our Prayer” from the Beach Boys’ unreleased album “Smile.” There’s a critical stance as well: Caroline, listening to the song in a later scene, notes the loneliness in its sweetness—“Like slightly off, rancid America.”

The bookstore hosts a series of musical manifestos. Sissy, a ’90s radical (Natalie Trumm), performs an almost comically explosive rock ’n’ roll rant, “Unsustainable,” protesting animal cruelty; Miranda’s more insidious, a cappella number suggests that to make a difference, “you have to put yourself on the line.” Nash, pushing back against the “burn it down” enthusiasm of the young, leads a waltz, playfully proposing entertainment instead of violence as resistance to contemporary wrongs, while back in the ’70s, Mel (Adrienne Danrich) delivers “Write On,” a stirring feminist declaration. Quick plot scenes are deftly sandwiched between—and sometimes within—the songs. 

In the second half, plot dominates. The turning point comes when Louise tells Jason that she once danced in a bar with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, one of his musical heroes, and Jason starts investigating her past. After that, the music is less striking, except for the poignant duet in which Caroline turns into Louise and leaves her old life—and the promise of a reunion with Bobby—behind forever, until Jason’s probing reaches its inevitable conclusion.

The terrific cast handled the variety of vocal demands skillfully. Michael Kuhn showed off fine pop styling in “On Repeat”; in the role of hippie chick Berry, who meets an on-the-run Caroline, Ms. Trumm’s sweet soprano sounded like a totally different voice from that of her ranting Sissy. Bass Paul Chwe MinChul An supplied a savage rasp as Henry, a man in perpetual agony over the ravages of chemical weapons used in Vietnam; in one creepy number, he was backed by a male trio sweetly chanting lines like “Phosgene gas smells of new mown hay.” The septet of string quartet, drums, guitar and piano, led from the keyboard by music director Mila Henry, segued easily between rock band and classical ensemble.

Kristin Marting, who also developed the piece, directed a cohesive production. Peiyi Wong’s set—bookstore shelves hung with string lights, blending into a living room and incorporating the band—made the time transitions seamless with the aid of Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa’s lighting. Rashidah Nelson’s costumes evoked the periods—Mel’s crocheted ’70s sweater; Berry’s peasant skirt and beads; the striped button-down shirt (worn open) and khakis of Josh (Mr. Kuhn), the “hacktivist” who goes to work for the corporate enemy, devising a “franchised alternative community.”

The opera’s title name-checks the unreleased film of a 1966 Bob Dylan tour, mentioned in the novel though not the libretto. Like “Smile,” it’s one of many anchoring references to artistic arcana beloved (and hunted down) by aficionados, just as Jason hunts down his mother’s buried past—which she, like the artists, has rejected as unsuitable for release. Knowledge of the underpinnings helps, but even without it, “Eat the Document” conveys the tragedy of its protagonists’ blighted lives along with the ongoing fervor of protest by a newer, savvier generation of activists, who are perhaps too self-interested to make the mistakes of their predecessors.

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).

‘Aida’ Review: Glum Grandeur at the Metropolitan Opera

Starring Angel Blue and Piotr Beczała, Michael Mayer’s new staging of Verdi’s Egyptian classic favors monumentality at nearly every turn, but it struggles to come to fiery dramatic or musical life.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 2, 2025 at 5:19 pm ET

Angel Blue

Angel Blue PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

New York

You know you’re in trouble when a grand new production of Verdi’s “Aida” only catches fire midway through the second act, after the “Triumphal March”—when Amonasro shows up.  The Metropolitan Opera’s show, directed by Michael Mayer and unveiled on New Year’s Eve, was announced as a fit replacement for the large-scale Sonja Frisell staging from 1988: No radical updating and lots of lavish stage pictures, replete with Egyptian iconography, to delight traditionalists.  The pictures were indeed pretty, but the music-making struggled to infuse them with life.

The first sign of problems appeared early: Radamès, the Egyptian general besotted with Aida, the Ethiopian slave, launches the evening with the difficult “Celeste Aida” and tenor Piotr Beczała sang it with extreme caution rather than ardent abandon. His performance deteriorated from there, with cracks on high notes and in loud passages, and spots where he held back rather than singing out. Something was clearly amiss, and the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, made a curtain announcement after intermission that Mr. Beczała was recovering from a bad cold but wished to continue. This was an unfortunate call. The strangled sounds got worse, leaving the audience to worry about the damage this fine artist was doing to his instrument rather than concentrating on the show.

The challenge of “Aida” is to balance the monumental with the intimate, as the human emotions—love, jealousy, patriotism—of the four principal characters are mangled and crushed by the demands of a martial, priest-dominated state. Monumentality had the upper hand here. Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s forceful conducting and the massed sound of the excellent Met chorus worked in grandiose moments like the “Triumphal March” (complete with costumed trumpeters in the boxes adjacent to the stage). However, Mr. Nézet-Séguin also powered through the more personal scenes without shaping their tragedy.

Along with the ailing Radamès, this meant peril. As Aida, Angel Blue was affecting in her opening aria, but her soprano lacked the warmth and bloom to be persuasive as the conflicted heroine, torn between her love for Radamès and her longing for her homeland.  By contrast, Quinn Kelsey, as her father Amonasro, commanded the stage with the vocal authority of a true Verdi baritone; unfortunately, he has only two scenes. Mezzo Judit Kutasi, as the princess Amneris, burning with unrequited love for Radamès and fury at Aida, grew in strength and complexity all evening. Her despairing scene when she realizes that she has destroyed the man she loves was a highlight. It was much more potent than Radamès and Aida singing their subsequent death duet in the vault, which should be the opera’s most wrenching moment. Dmitry Belosselskiy was insufficiently lethal as Ramfis, the High Priest; Morris Robinson sounded garbled as the King.

Quinn Kelsey, Morris Robinson and Dmitry Belosselskiy

Quinn Kelsey, Morris Robinson and Dmitry Belosselskiy PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

Monumentality was also the production’s theme. In Mr. Mayer’s concept, early 20th-century archaeologists discover an Egyptian tomb, and the story of its people comes to life. Sets by Christine Jones and projections by the design studio 59 cleverly depicted the familiar architecture and iconography; Kevin Adams’s lighting deftly limned the transitions: As the “story” scenes began, the bright colors on the walls faded and the focus moved onto the singers and Susan Hilferty’s sumptuous costumes, most notably the black and gold regalia of the priests and Amneris’s richly copper-colored gowns, contrasted with Aida’s simple white dress.

A buried civilization also meant that there were no outside scenes on the Nile or in front of the city gates, which reinforced the theme of how the characters are imprisoned—literally in the case of Aida and Amonasro, but also metaphorically, by the macho, warlike state. Oleg Glushkov’s choreography furthered that impression: During the triumph scene, a large cadre of buff male dancers enacted a curious intermezzo of warrior bonding and battle, and in the temple scene, as Radamès was consecrated as the leader of the Egyptian army, child priests were lifted by adult ones in a ritual of continuous domination.

Like the conducting and the set, Mr. Mayer’s direction defaulted toward the grand—all too often, the principals lined up at the front of the stage with ranks of motionless choristers behind them, and the characters didn’t connect in their intimate scenes. In one imaginative beat, the archaeologists carried off their recovered plunder during the triumph scene, a subtle reminder that war is not the only form of pillage. A knife unearthed by an archaeologist at the beginning also makes a Chekhovian reappearance in the finale, giving Amneris the last word. But these small, thematic hints couldn’t compensate for the musical and dramatic shortcomings of the whole.

Ms. Waleson writes about 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).

‘Lucidity’ and ‘Tosca’ Review: Sopranos of Two Generations

Lucy Shelton plays a renowned singer with dementia in Laura Kaminsky’s chamber piece at On Site Opera; Lise Davidsen stars in Puccini’s melodrama at the Met.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Nov. 18, 2024 at 5:07 pm ET

Lucy Shelton in ‘Lucidity.’ PHOTO: DAN WRIGHT

New York

Like “As One” (2014), her much-performed first opera, Laura Kaminsky’s “Lucidity,” given its world premiere on Thursday by On Site Opera at the Abron Arts Center, tackles a fraught contemporary problem. The elderly Lili (Lucy Shelton), once a renowned singer and teacher, is slipping into dementia, cared for by her adopted son, Dante (Eric McKeever); Claire Klugman (Blythe Gaissert), a neuroscientist, is running a study on the effects of music in dementia patients, aided by Sunny (Cristina María Castro), a young clarinetist. The miseries of dementia and the struggles of family caregivers are real, but Ms. Kaminsky’s 90-minute chamber piece is tidy and formulaic, only occasionally capturing the emotional devastation of this situation. The work begins a five-performance run at the Seattle Opera on Thursday.

In David Cote’s over-determined libretto, everyone has a trauma demanding resolution. Claire, once a voice student of Lili’s, worries that choosing science over music has stunted her life. Dante, who is black, gave up his career as a pianist because of racism in the classical music business. Sunny had an abortion, putting her at odds with her religious family. Each dilemma is neatly stated and resolved.

The only believable character is Lili. As played by the 80-year-old Ms. Shelton, a superb actress and a former leading exponent of avant-garde music, Lili’s anguish, confusion and moments of clarity are intensely felt. Ms. Kaminsky’s best writing is for her, deftly incorporating Sprechstimme as a bridge for Lili as she grapples her way from speech into what remains of her singing voice. Also affecting is the integration of Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the Rock” for voice, clarinet and piano into both the story and the score.

Much of the other vocal writing is unremarkable, though Ms. Castro’s high soprano enlivens the ardent Sunny with youthful passion, and the other two singers soldiered capably through their parts. The most effective moments of the busy chamber orchestration (for violin, cello, piano, clarinet and percussion) involved clarinet solos and percussion effects, especially mallet instruments, bar chimes, and a wood block. Geoffrey McDonald was the able conductor.

This being On Site Opera, an ordinary proscenium staging wouldn’t do. Sarah Meyers, who became the company’s artistic director in January, arrayed the audience on the small theater’s stage, looking out toward the house. The characters played their scenes on the apron, among the seats, and in the balcony. The musicians were positioned on the auditorium floor, with the clarinetist and pianist occasionally coming onto the stage to step in for their singer avatars. 

This setup helped put the audience inside Lili’s fragmentary memory of her life in the theater, especially in those moments when she stepped forward into the spotlight. Cameron Anderson was the scenic consultant; Tláloc López-Watermann designed the lighting; Beth Goldenberg the costumes, with Lili’s attire, including a flower-embroidered coat for the final scene, subtly affirming her diva status.

The opera ends on a hopeful note as Lili, who was also a composer, sings her previously unperformed song, “Chosen Son,” demonstrating that music reaches into otherwise impenetrable darkness, and not just for her. Yet as anyone who has had any brush with dementia knows, happy endings are momentary, and the opera’s tidy tying up of loose ends doesn’t ring true.

Lise Davidsen in the title role of ‘Tosca.’ PHOTO: MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA

Since her debut as Lisa in “The Queen of Spades” in 2019, Lise Davidsen has become a Metropolitan Opera favorite—her opulent, powerhouse soprano a must-hear in the works of Strauss and Wagner. Last season, she ventured further afield, trying out Verdi in “La Forza del Destino” with mixed results; now it is Puccini’s turn. Last Tuesday’s gala performance of “Tosca,” commemorating the coming centennial of the composer’s death, was not her highest and best use. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was cautious and deliberate rather than energetic and dramatic, and Ms. Davidsen followed suit, going for subtlety rather than intense, fiery expression. Her ringing high notes were enjoyable, but her middle voice receded, nothing built, and climaxes slipped by unnoticed. “Vissi d’arte” was pretty, but unmoving.

Ms. Davidsen and Quinn Kelsey PHOTO: MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA

As Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, Freddie De Tommaso, making his house debut, was at the opposite extreme—all blaring tenorial noise without warmth. In “E lucevan le stelle,” Cavaradossi’s farewell to life, he even inserted some sobbing effects, like an old-fashioned Canio in “Pagliacci.” For his first Met Scarpia, baritone Quinn Kelsey fared the best of the principals, but his suave, lyrical sound made for an insinuating villain rather than a weighty, scary, libidinous one. On Site’s Ms. Meyers, who is on the Met’s directing staff, was responsible for this revival of the representational David McVicar production from 2017; her clumsy staging didn’t help. Ms. Davidsen looked alternately stiff and pouty, catching fire only as she murdered Scarpia in Act 2, and Mr. De Tommaso, left to his own devices, gesticulated and posed.

With no evidence of smoldering passion and uninhibited desire, this was a neutered “Tosca” all around.

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).

‘Ainadamar’ Review: Fascism and Flamenco at the Met Opera

Osvaldo Golijov’s work about the murder of the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca in 1936 tells its haunting story with ferociously contemporary musical style.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 17, 2024 at 5:39 pm ET

Daniela Mack PHOTO: MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA

Operagoers who think that Bizet’s “Carmen” is Spanish should be sure to catch Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar,” which had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on Tuesday and runs through Nov. 9. Directed by Deborah Colker, this 85-minute phantasmagoria plunges into the death-haunted essence of flamenco, its gritty harshness underpinning even its moments of lyricism. Mr. Golijov, who was born in Argentina, manipulates flamenco’s rhythms, wails and melismas and integrates recorded sounds to create his own ferociously contemporary musical world. The opera had its world premiere in 2003 at Tanglewood; the revised 2005 version is heard here.

Mr. Golijov translated David Henry Hwang’s English libretto into Spanish. His musical language matches the darkness of the story, which concerns the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, murdered by fascist Falangists in Granada in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War, as seen through the eyes of actress Margarita Xirgu, who performed Lorca’s works until her death in 1969. The opera, in three “Images,” shuttles back and forth in time. It begins in 1969, as Margarita prepares to go onstage in Lorca’s play “Mariana Pineda,” about a Granada folk heroine who was executed in 1831 for her revolutionary sympathies. The play’s opening ballad—“Ah, what a sad day it was in Granada / The stones began to cry”—sung by a chorus of women at the beginning of each Image, anchors the opera, linking these two political killings a century apart. Margarita recalls her first encounter with Lorca in a time of hope for Spain; vividly imagines his murder; and then, as she is dying, understands that her performances have helped keep his spirit alive. 

The opera’s dramaturgy is impressionistic rather than narrative, and Ms. Colker, directing her first opera production—she is best known as a choreographer in her native Brazil—leans into that character with a dance-centered production. Jon Bausor’s set features a hanging curtain of strings around a circular playing area; its rippling surface suggests the haziness of memory as well as the water of Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears) where Lorca was killed. Locations are not specified; we are inside Margarita’s haunted memory, with help from Tal Rosner’s soft-edged projections, Mr. Bausor’s period costumes, and Paul Keogan’s dramatic lighting.

A female chorus of 18 “Niñas” (girls), bolstered by several dancers, moves like a corps de ballet around Margarita; as Lorca sings a rhapsodic aria about the statue of Mariana Pineda that inspired him, we see a dreamy vision of four women dancing on pedestals; two solo flamenco dancers, choreographed by Antonio Najarro, offer striking images at crucial moments, as if to embody the intensity of Lorca’s verse with their exaggerated postures. For Lorca’s confession before his murder, the staging subtly suggests Christ’s Passion, a thematic thread in the opera. 

Though arresting and viscerally expressive of Mr. Golijov’s score, the production does less well by the principal characters, who are underdirected and sometimes lost in the overall imagery. Angel Blue’s plush soprano seemed out of place for the ululating wildness of Margarita’s vocal anguish; she was most comfortable in the purely lyrical, almost Puccini-esque moments. Mezzo Daniela Mack was eloquent as Lorca, handsome in an all-white suit and plaintive before the execution. Elena Villalón brought a pure, fearless soprano to the role of Nuria, Margarita’s student and interlocuter. The most electrifying vocal contributions came from Alfredo Tejada as Ramón Ruiz Alonso, the Falangist who pursues and arrests Lorca, singing the howling flamenco cante jondo. The vocally protean Niñas were affecting in styles from edgy harshness to ethereal water music—Jasmine Muhammad and Gina Perregrino were standout soloists as the Voices of the Fountain.

Led by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the orchestra is a potent force in “Ainadamar,” encompassing jagged flamenco rhythms with guitars, serene strings, and trumpet calls; there is a host of expressive percussion, from eerie vibraphones for the fountain music to folk drums and castanets. The principal singers and some of the instruments were amplified, and at times Mark Grey’s sound design favored the orchestra at the expense of the singers. Mr. Golijov ingeniously builds pre-recorded sound effects—including hoofbeats, water, the voices of praying children and gunshots—into the score; in one especially chilling series of interpolations, recordings of Falangist radio broadcasts blare out, each ending with the words “Viva la Muerte!” (Long live death!). Violence, death and apotheosis are certainly operatic staples, but “Ainadamar,” using atypical musical and theatrical modes to depict a real event that is not far in the past, powerfully excavates those conventional themes for a very different kind of impact.

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).

‘Grounded’ and ‘Indra’s Net’ Reviews: Modern War and Ancient Legend

At the Metropolitan Opera, Jeanine Tesori’s work about an American drone pilot proves eerie and emotionally resonant; Meredith Monk’s performance piece at Park Avenue Armory takes inspiration from Asian religions to affirm our interconnectedness.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 7, 2024 at 5:21 pm ET

Emily D’Angelo (center) and company in ‘Grounded.’

 PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

New York

When Jeanine Tesori’s “Grounded” had its world premiere at Washington National Opera last year, it was slack and overstuffed. For its Metropolitan Opera season-opening premiere in September, the composer and librettist George Brant wielded their red pencils to admirable effect. With 45 minutes cut from the score, the new “Grounded,” which runs through Oct. 19, is tighter, clearer and more emotionally resonant.

Based on Mr. Brant’s 2013 one-woman play about a fighter pilot who is reassigned to flying drones after she becomes pregnant, “Grounded” now delves more directly into how remote warfare undermines Jess’s sanity. Scenes were trimmed, events consolidated or resituated, and some episodes eliminated entirely; the opera now has 32 scenes instead of 46. This was particularly helpful in Act 1, which had spent too much time setting up Jess’s pivot to marriage and motherhood. The shorter version actually does a better job of establishing her attachment to her husband, Eric, and her daughter, Sam, so in Act 2, we feel what she is leaving behind as she becomes increasingly unmoored from reality. 

Consolidating the drone-warfare scenes intensifies the trauma of Jess’s new job. As a fighter pilot flying in “the Blue,” she had the community of other pilots; in Las Vegas, as an operator endlessly tracking convoys halfway around the world on a gray screen, she has only the cacophony of the supervising “Kill Chain” (five offstage male voices) in her headset, and perpetual surveillance makes her feel watched as well as a watcher. It is clearer now that the drone’s cameras show her the faces and body parts of the people she kills, helping explain her crucial act—she crashes the drone to avoid killing the target’s young daughter. In the original version, she thought the child was Sam; in the revision, she knows it isn’t, which is less psychologically interesting but more operatic.

Mezzo Emily D’Angelo has worked her way deeper into the principal role; her Jess was more potent and acute in New York than in Washington. Several singers were new to their roles: Tenor Ben Bliss brought lyricism and authority to Eric; Ellie Dehn’s bright soprano supplied a contrasting timbre as Also Jess, Jess’s dissociated self and the only other adult female in the opera; bass-baritone Greer Grimsley was a gruff Commander. Baritone Kyle Miller ably repeated his portrayal of the irreverent Sensor, the 19-year-old gamer who operates the drone camera. The Met’s much larger chorus was a shadowy, ominous presence as the Drone Squad that Jess imagines; Yannick Nézet-Séguin brought out the military bravura and eerie menace in the orchestration.

Michael Mayer’s Met-scaled production looked imposing in the house. Mimi Lien’s two-level set situates the world of war above and the home front below. Vivid LED projections by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras create the contrasts between Jess’s beloved Blue and the gray she now lives in, along with pixelations, blinding explosions, the green simulations of a control screen, and one horrifying, super-size appearance of the Reaper drone itself. Kevin Adams’s lighting delineated the abyss between the warmth of Jess’s home and the chilly drone trailer. At the end, court-martialed and imprisoned, Jess sits in a small pool of light in the darkness. Deprived of the flight suit (designed by Tom Broecker) that once told her who she was, she declares that she is free—perhaps to become something new. 

Meredith Monk in ‘Indra’s Net’ at Park Avenue Armory. 

PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

There’s a shamanistic quality to Meredith Monk, who has been creating her unique form of multidisciplinary art since the 1960s. Her aim for “Indra’s Net,”which had its North American premiere at the Park Avenue Armory in September, was to “create an immersive installation/performance work evoking both vastness and intimacy and affirming the interconnectedness of life,” an antidote to the “fragmentation, disconnection and uncertainty of contemporary life.” The title refers to a Buddhist/Hindu legend about a king who stretches a boundless net across the universe; faceted jewels at every intersection are unique yet reflect all the others.

For the 80-minute piece, staged on a circular white space in the cavernous expanse of the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Ms. Monk and seven white-clad singers from her Vocal Ensemble worked to embody those principles physically and through Ms. Monk’s distinctive wordless vocal style. One singer welcomed the others; two strolled arm-in-arm around the perimeter, seemingly in conversation; Ms. Monk started a call-and-response with one of the male singers; two others had an impassioned debate. In one extended section, individual instruments (there were 16 players) launched a six-note sequence; others took it up, as did the voices, creating a richly layered, meditative tapestry. A singer and a trumpet duetted; later, two percussionists joined a jaunty symphony of tongue clicks and clucks and got their own solo riffs—one drumming on a metal can, the other on what looked like a ping-pong paddle.

The simple, organic staging, directed by Ms. Monk, complemented the musical variety of vocal techniques, syllabic utterances and instrumental timbres. Yoshio Yabara designed the costumes and scenery; Joe Levasseur the lighting. Video shot from above and projected on a white circle behind the stage emphasized the netlike movement patterns; a “mirror chorus” of eight singers in black occasionally enriched the visual design as well as the sound. For the final sequence, orchestra members with portable instruments joined the singers on the stage, completing the interconnectedness. Even without words, some of Ms. Monk’s idea reads. But for the full effect it’s a good thing she told us what it was in advance.

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 Listeners’ and ‘Silent Light’ Review: A Cult and a Community

In Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s work at Opera Philadelphia, a group of people all suffer from hearing a mysterious hum; at National Sawdust, Paola Prestini and Mr. Vavrek’s adaptation of a 2007 film immersed the audience in the daily routines of Mennonites in Mexico.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 2, 2024 at 2:47 pm ET

Kevin Burdette (center) in ‘The Listeners.’

 PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

Philadelphia

Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek are a potent operatic team. “Breaking the Waves” (2016) and “Proving Up” (2018), their chamber operas about anguished people in impossible situations, had searing, visceral immediacy. “The Listeners,” which had its U.S. premiere at Opera Philadelphia on Sept. 25 (the world premiere was in Oslo in 2022; the work will also be presented at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the spring), ventures into similar territory with larger forces, but lacks the ferocity of those earlier scores.

“The Listeners” is about a cult. In an American suburb in the Southwest, Claire, a high-school teacher (the powerful Nicole Heaston), hears a mysterious hum that no one else does. It isolates her from her family, costs her her job and drives her mad until she finds a similarly afflicted group of people led by the charismatic Howard (the raspy-voiced Kevin Burdette), who promises a solution to their suffering. “I alone can harness the hum,” he tells them.

The opera’s sharpest moments explore how the hum affects those who hear it differently. Claire’s opening aria of misery—“an electric drill driving into my brain”—builds into a howl; the paranoid ex-soldier Dillon (John Moore) delivers a jittery rant about  “disguised cell towers” and “big dogs in D.C.”; Vince (Daniel Taylor) smokes weed to tolerate the noise. Ms. Mazzoli then ingeniously layers these voices and welds them into a murmuring chorus as Howard instructs them, “Let us all give voice to our personal relationship with the hum,” a musical demonstration of how a seductive leader can pull such a disparate group of people together and quell dissent.

A scene from the show at Opera Philadelphia.

 PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

But the Act 2 revelations of Howard’s nastier qualities, which disrupt the group, were abrupt and obvious, and Claire’s adoption of his leadership role should have been musically creepier. Mr. Vavrek’s expletive-laden libretto (based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill) was carefully set for intelligibility; Ms. Mazzoli’s orchestral writing was too smooth throughout, even with the electronic noise of the hum. We needed to feel more tension and disturbance. 

Other standouts in the large, impressive cast included soprano Rehanna Thelwell as Angela, Howard’s “second in command,” poignant in her aria of loneliness; tenor Aaron Crouch as Kyle, the hum-afflicted student who has an uneasy romance with Claire; and soprano Lindsey Reynolds as Ashley, Claire’s resentful daughter. Corrado Rovaris was the sensitive conductor. 

The neutral tones of Adam Rigg’s versatile set, subtly lighted by Yi Zhao, evoked a sun-baked, bland background for people whose torments are invisible. All the color was in Kaye Voyce’s costumes—when Claire took over at the end, everyone was in shades of pink and orange. One effective touch was to have the “confessions” of the cult members captured on live video and displayed in giant, looming projections. Director Lileana Blain-Cruz sculpted the group meditation scenes effectively; some more intimate moments—Angela’s manic first appearance; Howard’s sleaziness—were overdone. Raja Feather Kelly provided the undulating choreography for dancer Sydney Donovan, the Coyote with whom Claire finds common cause and a howl to counter the hum.

A scene from ‘Silent Light.’

 PHOTO: JILL STEINBERG

Brooklyn, N.Y.

“Silent Light” by Paola Prestini and Mr. Vavrek, given its world premiere at National Sawdust on Sept. 26, is an unusual piece of theater. Based on a 2007 film by Carlos Reygadas, it is as much an immersion experience as it is an opera, with noises, speech, cooking smells and lengthy silences carrying as much weight as the music. By submerging the audience—the space was very small—in the daily routines of members of a Mennonite community in Mexico, the creators and director/designer Thaddeus Strassberger invite us to identify with these people and comprehend the deep feelings that lie beneath their oddly placid exteriors.

The plot is bare-bones. Johan (Daniel Okulitch), a married farmer with five children, has fallen in love with Marianne (Julia Mintzer), another member of the community. His wife, Esther (Brittany Renee), knows about the relationship. Johan asks his friend Zacarias (Anthony Dean Griffey) and his father (James Demler) for advice. Esther dies, but Marianne kisses her, bringing her back to life.

Mr. Vavrek’s minimalist libretto eventually supplies some information, but the opening 10 minutes have no words or music. There’s just the sound of insects, a loudly ticking clock, and Esther and her mother (Margaret Lattimore) preparing breakfast for the family—you can smell the bacon—who sit around an unfinished-pine kitchen table. Only when Johan says grace does the music begin—the instrumental ensemble is an eccentric quintet of violin, cello, trumpet, trombone and percussion, mostly playing solos, led by Christopher Rountree. The 12 choristers, initially seated on benches and facing upstage as though they are the front row in the audience, intone a hymn with the interpolated words “The only thing we cannot do is turn back time.” 

Daniel Okulitch and Julia Mintzer

 PHOTO: JILL STEINBERG

The delivery of the sung solo music was dispassionate and formal; characters often interacted without looking at one another. Other elements filled in. Nathan Repasz, a Foley artist, supplied sound effects like crunching footsteps and the pumping of milking machines (having female choristers in cow masks being milked was an unsettling choice); there was a video clip of a young Jacques Brelsinging “Ne me quitte pas.” Bruce Steinberg’s subtle lighting shadowed Johan and Marianne as they undressed (Amanda Gladu designed the traditional Mennonite garb) and made love in an upstage pool; a rain shower deluged Esther as she fled the family car and collapsed.

The strongest musical moments were choral. A mourning hymn “There’s a city of light ’mid the stars,” set with jarringly dissonant intervals, was followed by a hypnotic choral echo of “White linens,” an aria sung by Esther’s mother, as the women washed and laid out the body. The resolution of the story seemed almost beside the point, and the clock—which Johan stopped when he first left the house after breakfast—was started again, implying that life goes on. If you entered into the community mindset, as invited by the show, presumably it was all God’s will.

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 New Philosophy of Opera’ Review: Curtain Calls

An American opera director reveals how to inject new life into an old-fashioned artform.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Sept. 13, 2024 at 11:27 am ET

A scene from Yuval Sharon’s staging of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ at the Berlin State Opera in 2019. 

PHOTO: MONICA RITTERSHAUS

Opera is perceived as the most traditional of the performing arts—its repertory ossified into a canon of 19th-century warhorses, its performance style determined by the constraints of the proscenium theater, the institutional limitations of opera companies and the tastes of the wealthy, conservative patrons who pay for it.

A New Philosophy of Opera

It’s not surprising. Operas such as Bizet’s “Carmen” and Puccini’s “Tosca,” with their exotic locales and doomed heroines, have been domesticated by opera producers into familiar, comfortable stories, performed over and over again for the initiated. 

In “A New Philosophy of Opera,” the American opera director Yuval Sharon takes the radically opposite view, arguing that the foundational characteristics of opera—collaborative, boundary-crossing, multistranded, experimental—should be embraced in all their messiness and ambiguity. “Rebirth is opera’s true power,” Mr. Sharon writes, and suggests that the art form is infinitely richer and more welcoming than that tired old image suggests.

Persuasively argued and filled with lively and approachable details, “A New Philosophy of Opera” brims with Mr. Sharon’s passion for the form. Born in 1979, he writes that his early encounters with traditional opera performances left him “oscillating between boredom and incomprehension.” It took Meredith Monk’s “Atlas” (1991) to provide Mr. Sharon with the “flash of revelation.” Loosely based on the story of a female explorer, “Atlas” is told with shrieks, stutters, coos and other wordless vocalizations. “Suddenly, hearing Monk’s voice—a singular musical imagination that felt both futuristic and ancient,” Mr. Sharon tells us, “I completely understood opera and its extraordinary potential.”

Ideas from philosophers and writers as diverse as Antonin Artaud, Thomas Bauer, José Ortega y Gasset, Carl Jung, Jacques Rancière and Simone Weil inform his thinking and are smoothly woven into the text. He invokes Weil’s assertion that “not popularization, but translation” is needed to introduce philosophy (or opera) to the uninitiated. Multipage graphics dubbed “Time-Curves” illustrate operatic history as a cyclical phenomenon, constantly reborn and reinvented. Thus, Paris in 1674—as represented by Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “Alceste” and the birth of the tragédie lyrique, a new form reflecting the declamatory style of French spoken theater—is visually juxtaposed with Houston in 1987 and the premiere of John Adams’s “Nixon in China,” one of the first contemporary operas to be based on recent history. There’s also a playlist to emphasize opera’s wildly different manifestations over the centuries, from Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” (“the oldest surviving opera score that’s still frequently performed today”) to Harry Partch’s “Delusion of the Fury,” a 1969 “ritual” performed on instruments invented by the composer.

One of Mr. Sharon’s central points is that opera loses its power when forced to conform to expectations from, for example, film. Under such restrictions, the author concedes, operatic stories can seem absurd. “When the narrative is the main event,” as it is in film, and everything else is expected to follow from it, then the mechanics of opera can “appear clunky and old-fashioned.” However, when the story “becomes one element among others that make up a less predictable composite—opera escapes the structure of conventional theater and becomes its own magic space.”

His own productions, discussed in the book, offer fascinating examples of how Mr. Sharon rethinks and recombines opera’s basic elements of text, music and theater in ways that upend expectations. He first gained widespread notice with “Hopscotch” (2015), an original “mobile opera” loosely based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. A series of 10-minute scenes, written by multiple composers and librettists, it was performed in 24 cars driving around Los Angeles. Singers and instrumentalists shared the limo space with groups of four audience members, who changed cars for each new scene. In 2022, as the artistic director of Detroit Opera, Mr. Sharon reopened the company’s theater after the pandemic with Puccini’s “La bohème”—with the opera’s four acts performed in reverse order. A staging of “The Magic Flute” (his favorite opera) at the Berlin State Opera featured the characters as marionettes, to explore the opera as “a conundrum of maturity.” 

These productions demonstrate how Mr. Sharon prizes ambiguity and multiplicity rather than offering operagoers a straight line through a piece. “A director must seize the spectators’ attention with the specificity of a strong interpretation, and at the same time leave space for their own interpretations,” he explains. “I want a production to constantly unsettle the audience and ask for continuous renegotiations of their experience.” 

For Mr. Sharon, the need to rediscover the essence of opera is not an academic exercise. In his detailed discussion of “Hopscotch,” he describes the enormous logistical challenges of the project for creators and spectators alike. The goal was to “dismantle the autopilot,” that all-too-pervasive quality of contemporary life. The lessons for the future that he draws from “Hopscotch”—which was entirely of its moment and has ceased to exist—include “opera as an adventure—consistently awe-inspiring and never-before-seen.” 

Decoupling opera from the trappings and rituals of the opera house is one way to shake things up, but how do you do it when you go back inside? Mr. Sharon offers some thoughtful principles that are available to any producer. “Exclusivity is not a virtue,” he writes. “Inclusivity is.” Yet his determination to use artistry as a means toward a less predictable and more inclusive experience will surely run up against the economic realities of opera production.

The Metropolitan Opera, which took nearly $70 million out of its endowment to balance the budgets for two recent seasons, is certainly hoping that some Sharon-style innovation will help it survive. The director will helm a new “Ring” cycle beginning in the 2027-28 season. As a warmup, he will make his house debut in the 2025-26 season with a new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” of which, he says, “I don’t think ‘Tristan’ should even be called an opera, since so much transpires that can never be expressed by the singers or production. This is what makes it the single hardest work in the traditional repertoire to stage.” I, for one, look forward to the adventure.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias.”

‘The Marriage of Figaro’ Review: Little Island’s One-Man Mozart

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo sings all the opera’s major parts in a brilliant, frenetic production on the Hudson River.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Sept. 9, 2024 at 5:42 pm ET

Anthony Roth Costanzo

 PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

New York

“The Marriage of Figaro” is the ultimate ensemble opera, so what happens when one person sings all the parts? The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is currently doing just that at Little Island’s outdoor amphitheater in a brilliantly demented 100-minute adaptation whose sheer bravado coupled with musical and theatrical inventiveness make it much more than a stunt. With its frenetic, accelerating energy and constant switching of focus, this “Figaro” exemplifies the opera’s revolutionary, topsy-turvy roots—the servants get the upper hand over the aristocracy—expressed through high comedy.  

The mayhem starts right away. With the help of a door in a movable frame, a tricorn hat, and a dress, Mr. Costanzo sings and acts both parts in the brisk duet “Se a caso madama,” switching between Figaro (bass-baritone) and Susanna (soprano) as they debate the Count’s motives in giving them such a convenient bedroom. Each succeeding scene raises the stakes. Five excellent actors play Figaro, Susanna, the Count, the Countess, Basilio and Antonio, lipsynching to Mr. Costanzo’s voice; Mr. Costanzo plays Cherubino whenever he is in the scene.

Ariana Venturi, Mr. Costanzo, Ryan Shinji Murray, Emma Ramos and Daniel Liu. PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

In the arias, you sometimes forget that the lipsynching is happening, even though Mr. Costanzo is always part of the action and executing feats of physical comedy; in the ensembles, his leaps among the vocal ranges of the characters can make a spectator feel breathless. For the frenzied Act 2 finale, he dove through six different lines, singing segments from each, and then broke out a foot-operated live looper pedal that layered them together. After his two last notes—a three-octave jump—he collapsed and was carried off on a gurney. And that was just halfway through the show.

Mr. Costanzo is surprisingly convincing in the voices of these characters—they sound different, whether it’s Figaro’s hearty “Non più andrai” or Susanna’s radiant “Deh vieni, non tardar.” The amplification helps, and eight of the 20 numbers are transposed from their original keys, though closely enough that you don’t notice. Dan Schlosberg’s typically ingenious orchestral arrangement—for keyboard, four strings, horn, and two clarinets doubling bass clarinet, saxophone and recorder—supplies its own witty commentary; he leads from the keyboard. Additional musical contributions come from seven boys from the Young People’s Chorus of New York City singing the Act 3 chorus of village maidens presenting flowers to the Countess as well as Barbarina’s plaintive search for the lost pin.

Dustin Wills’s direction makes it all work, preserving the transgressive spirit of the opera through all the cuts, musical manipulations and speedy comic pacing. A female actor (Ariana Venturi) plays the Count; a male (Daniel Liu) is the Countess; Ryan Shinji Murray, a circus artist, does flips on a trampoline as the drunken gardener Antonio. The circus/vaudeville/drag references are reinforced by quick-change set pieces (by Lisa Laratta and Mr. Wills), Mr. Costanzo’s red, clown-like Cherubino outfit by costume designer Bode, and Barbara Samuels’s lighting.

Mr. Costanzo

 PHOTO: NINA WESTERVELT

Mr. Costanzo gets a brief rest after his simulated collapse. The actors get mike headsets and vamp: Mr. Liu supplies a synopsis of what’s happened so far; he (as the Countess) and Emma Ramos (as Susanna) do a scene in French from the Beaumarchais play; Figaro (Christopher Bannow) delivers a furious soliloquy—in English, adapted from Beaumarchais—about his frustrations. The choice to have Mr. Costanzo, in a hospital gown and hooked up to an IV, appear to undergo a laryngoscopy (the images were pre-recorded) while he sings the Countess’s mournful “Dove sono” was perhaps over the top, but how many audience members have seen vocal chords in operation? It made the point—those two little structures are responsible for so much, and while the collapse was staged, Mr. Costanzo is taking a risk with his instrument. He is singing 18 performances of “Figaro” over three weeks.

Mr. Costanzo is no stranger to risk. In June, he became the general director and president of Opera Philadelphia. The company was in serious financial trouble, its 2024-25 season pared back and its trailblazing fall festival eliminated. Mr. Costanzo was able to raise $7 million to cover the debt and the first show—Missy Mazzoli’s “The Listeners,” opening Sept. 25. He also reasoned that since ticket revenue represents a small fraction of the operating budget of most opera companies (it was estimated at 8% for OP’s new season), why not cut prices and get people into the theater? With “Pick Your Price,” announced on Aug. 27, any seat for the season—a total of nine performances of three operas at the Academy of Music—could be purchased for as little as $11. Within days, most of the tickets were sold, many to buyers who had never bought an Opera Philadelphia ticket before. As of Sept. 6, the few seats remaining were all in the topmost tier, and OP was considering offering partial-view places for sale.

Mr. Costanzo is betting that the revenue lost from tickets will be made up through donations. He also calculates that if he doesn’t have to program to please the conservative patrons who purchase the most expensive tickets, he can cast a wider artistic net. His inventiveness, collaborative skills, and powers of persuasion, all on full display at Little Island—where the tickets, priced at $25, also sold out within days—will be challenged in another arena that holds the possibility of collapse, this time for real.

Ms. Waleson reviews 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 Festival Review: Between History and Fantasy

Nymphs, pirates and a wizard feature in this year’s edition of the festival in upstate New York, which offers a balanced rendition of ‘La Calisto,’ a vibrant production of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ and a premiere of the youth opera ‘Rumpelstiltskin and the Unlovable Children.’

By 

Heidi Waleson

Aug. 14, 2024 at 4:52 pm ET

Tshilidzi Ndou and Craig Irvin in ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’

 PHOTO: BRENT DELANOY/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

Cooperstown, N.Y. 

The highlight of this season’s Glimmerglass Festival, a beguiling production of Francesco Cavalli’s “La Calisto” (1651), recalled the 1990s—when the company, then headed by Paul Kellogg, did a Baroque opera every year, setting off a vogue that other American houses would follow. Its 1996 “Calisto” featured Christine Goerke, now a renowned singer of Strauss and Wagner, among the leads. This year’s staging featured a stylish orchestral realization, including a few tastefully deployed wind and brass instruments, by Rob Ainsley, now in his second season as the festival’s artistic and general director. Mr. Ainsley conducted with brio from the keyboard with the support of a sensitive continuo section.

Craig Irvin and Emilie Kealani in ‘La Calisto.’PHOTO: SOFIA NEGRON / GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

The show carefully balanced the opera’s serious and comic depictions of love. Jove disguises himself as the goddess Diana in order to have his way with Calisto, one of her virgin nymphs; Juno, Jove’s consort, is jealous; Endymion, a shepherd, is in love with Diana, who is tempted by him; Linfea, another nymph, is curious about sex. Emilie Kealani’s light, delicate soprano was ideal for the innocent Calisto, effectively contrasted with Taylor Raven’s voluptuous-toned Diana—both the real one and Jove-in-disguise. Mezzo SarahAnn Duffy, stepping in for an indisposed colleague, was poignant as the lovelorn Endymion; her tenderly passionate duets with Ms. Raven were high points in the show. Eve Gigliotti brought a ferocious intensity to Juno, who turns Calisto into a bear. Amanda Sheriff’s bright soprano and hilariously lewd acting and dancing turned the Young Satyr into a potent scene-stealer. As Jove, Craig Irvin was properly imperious, though less vocally stylish than the other singers.

Continue reading “Glimmerglass Festival Review: Between History and Fantasy”