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The composer’s new work, which had its premiere at Houston Grand Opera in a production by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, follows a Confederate landowner and an enslaved woman in her household as they run a Union espionage ring during the Civil War.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 25, 2023 at 5:34 pm ET

Jamie Barton and Janai Brugger

PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP

Houston

In 2000, Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” launched a flurry of activity in the creation and production of new American operas. It became one of the most produced 21st-century titles and made it to the Metropolitan Opera last month. On Friday, Houston Grand Opera opened its season with the world premiere—the company’s 75th—of Mr. Heggie’s most recent work, “Intelligence.” 

Like “Dead Man,” “Intelligence” is based on a true story, this one more than a century older. During the Civil War, Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond landowner, ran a Union spy ring with the assistance of Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved woman in her household. Mr. Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar have blended historical record and imagination to fashion a tale centered on Mary Jane’s journey toward finding the truth of her traumatic past. The path is logical, but that narrative drive, full of heavy-handed foreshadowing, toward Mary Jane’s discovery—a slave auction and the forced separation of mother and child 20 years earlier—feels formulaic. The lengthy opera is an inert, mechanical structure, its characters and situations erected as plot points rather than an authentic, developing story with dramatic sweep.

The 80-minute first act is crammed with information: We meet Mary Jane, Elizabeth and Lucinda, a mysterious woman who seems to know a lot about Mary Jane. A pair of cardboard villains—Callie Van Lew, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, and Travis Briggs, a Confederate Home Guard—who embark on a romance even though Callie’s husband is off fighting for The Cause are bent on uncovering the suspected spying activities. Also in the mix are Wilson, Mary Jane’s husband, who is part of the spy operation, and Henry, Jefferson Davis’s butler, who falls in love with Mary Jane. Events include a devious plan: Mary Jane goes to work in Davis’s home, the Confederate White House, where she can surreptitiously pick up information since no one suspects that she is literate. She sets the Davis house on fire as a distraction from her activities; Elizabeth, fearing discovery of the spy ring, buries the journal that contains her codes and other secrets. The 50-minute Act 2 features murder, revelation and apotheosis. 

Michael Mayes and Caitlin Lynch

PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP

It’s a lot of material, and Mr. Heggie’s music tends to be blandly pretty, with little to distinguish one character from another. Each gets at least one obligatory aria, but Mary Jane’s opening song, a minor-key lament that establishes her ignorance about her origins, doesn’t sound all that different from Elizabeth’s declaration, “I didn’t know I could hate like this.” The copious text abounds with expressions of rage and terror, but we never hear it in the music, and Mr. Heggie’s ensembles often go on long past the moment when they’ve made their point. 

Only the singing—Janai Brugger’s lyrical soprano (Mary Jane) contrasted with Jamie Barton’s powerful mezzo (Elizabeth)—supplied some variety of tone. The sole character with any real edge is Travis, sung with verve by baritone Michael Mayes. The scene in which he threatens and fondles Mary Jane as if he had every right to do so was the one moment in the evening that made the power dynamics of slavery visceral. Caitlin Lynch’s high soprano brought a slyness to Callie; mezzo J’Nai Bridges was a cipher as Lucinda; Nicholas Newton’s sumptuous bass-baritone gave Henry authority; and tenor Joshua Blue was poignant as Wilson, whose love for Mary Jane means he will do anything for her. Kwamé Ryan was the capable conductor.

J’Nai Bridges and Ms. Brugger, surrounded by the dancers of Urban Bush Women

PHOTO: HOUSTON GRAND OPERA / MICHAEL BISHOP

One unusual element in the piece is its built-in dance component, featuring eight members of Urban Bush Women, ebulliently choreographed by Ms. Zollar, the company’s founder. One dancer played Mrs. Davis; the others were a continual presence, embodying the ancestral roots that support Mary Jane and Lucinda. In an early scene, they surrounded Mary Jane and helped her walk toward the danger of her undercover role in the Davis house; in Lucinda’s aria “Who am I?” about the horrors of the slave trade, they formed a single line behind her, representing the trafficked and exploited. In Act 2, as Mary Jane gleans more information about her past, their dances become more elaborate—and elaborately costumed—accompanied by African drumming from the pit. They also acted out Mary Jane’s culminating discovery. The spying tale fades away, and the opera concludes with uplift as Mary Jane, backed by the dancing ancestors, resolves to tell her own story. Like the rest of the opera, it’s logical, but pat. 

The design concept ingeniously evoked the opera’s multiple locations: Mimi Lien’s set, a multilevel, movable box with transparent sides, suggested hiding places and secrets, as did John Torres’s mysterious lighting; Wendall K. Harrington’s shadowy projections depicted the real (an oak tree, a bookshelf) as well as the remembered (sheets transformed into ship sails; daguerreotype portraits; slave auction posters; African fabric designs). The costumes, originally designed by Carlos Soto and realized by Clair Hummel (who also designed the dancers’ costumes), contrasted sober period authenticity for the living characters with vibrant colors and vivid details for the spirit dancers. Ms. Zollar’s rudimentary scene direction exposed the static quality of the libretto; her explosive choreography appeared to belong to a different show altogether.

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).

Kate Soper’s opera, which had its premiere at New York’s Miller Theatre last week, adapts a medieval legend about virgins used to trap unicorns; David T. Little’s work, performed by Philadelphia’s The Crossing, stems from the bygone practice of paying social outcasts to absorb the sins of the wealthy dead.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 17, 2023 at 5:31 pm ET

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Brett Umlauf, Christiana Cole, Hirona Amamiya

PHOTO: ROB DAVIDSON/MILLER THEATRE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York and Philadelphia

Kate Soper’s specialty is turning old stories on their heads, and with “The Hunt,” a sort-of chamber opera that had its world premiere at Miller Theatre on Thursday, she investigates the medieval legend about virgins used to trap unicorns. Ms. Soper wrote her own text and adapted lyrics from sources as disparate as Hildegard of Bingen and the poet H.D. Spoken sections are modern girl talk; the poetic songs have harmonies that start out sounding medieval and then stray into dissonant and alluring realms. “The Hunt” is tighter and more focused than Ms. Soper’s sprawling “Romance of the Rose,” a medieval allegory about love done at Long Beach Opera in February; it is closer in spirit to her feisty “Here Be Sirens” (2014), about another mythical trio awaiting their prey.

The three virgins—Fleur (Brett Umlauf), Briar (Christiana Cole) and Rue (Hirona Amamiya)—are sopranos; the first two double on ukulele, and Ms. Amamiya plays the violin. They have been hired as bait to enable the King to capture a unicorn. The 90-minute show is a series of similarly constructed scenes: a perky livestream update (“Day 43!”), lunch, a bawdy riddle, a sung trio, a possible sighting of the unicorn, and a solo aria. There’s a lot of material, and it takes a bit too long for the virgins to get to the show’s turning point, the realization that capturing the unicorn means killing it for the greater glory of the patriarchy. Their response: “We are not going to deliver that creature into the hands of a bunch of blood-thirsty, sword-wielding thugs just so they can mutilate it in the name of a depraved power grab that they got out of a f—ing fairy tale.” They decide instead to “spoil the bait.” 

The comic byplay is mildly amusing, but the show is about the songs. Ms. Soper has a wonderful feel for layering women’s voices, and the trios, with their arresting harmonies, are never the same, whether the selection is a dark folk song or the culminating erotic set piece. In one delicious moment, the three, having ingested a drug meant for the unicorn, create an entire edifice out of vocal noises and lip trills. The voices shine individually in solos—Ms. Umlauf’s coloratura; Mx. Cole’s darker, more vibrato-tinged sound; Ms. Amamiya’s sensual line—and the other two sometimes back up the soloist with a wordless bass line. The instrumental accompaniment provides delicate support and counterpoint: the ukulele line is rudimentary, the violin playing more virtuosic. Supertitles would have been helpful; the poetry texts were often incomprehensible. 

Ms. Amamiya and Ian Edlund

PHOTO: ROB DAVIDSON/MILLER THEATRE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

“The Hunt” was efficiently and elegantly produced. The set conflated modern and medieval: Scenic designer Aoshuang Zhang’s flat rear wall seemed prison-like until its revolving panels offered glimpses of a world beyond; Camilla Tassi’s projections included both snippets of the Cluny Museum’s “Unicorn” tapestries (the inspiration for the piece) and the virgins’ livestream. The lunches, in plastic deli clamshells, arrived through a small hatch in the wall; silent men occasionally came through with brooms to sweep the trash to one side of the stage. Terese Wadden’s clever body-concealing white gowns—a parody of virginity, as seen from a male point of view—were gradually shed, along with one virgin’s wig, to reveal more modern attire and tattoos. Aided by Masha Tsimring’s dramatic lighting, stage director Ashley Tata and music director Mila Henry deftly paced the action from blind acceptance to revolt.

***

David T. Little’s “Sin-Eater,” which had its world premiere at the Annenberg Center on Saturday, also stems from an old practice—this one real: In Wales, through the mid-19th century, poor social outcasts were paid to absorb the sins of the wealthy dead by literally eating bread and beer that had been placed on the bodies. Mr. Little’s “ritual grotesquerie,” commissioned by The Crossing, Philadelphia’s renowned new-music choir, and Penn Live Arts, considers that practice in contemporary terms, through those who absorb the worst horrors of the modern world so others don’t have to. 

“Sin-Eater” was supposed to be fully staged by the Dutch director Jorinde Keesmaat and have additional performances in Amsterdam, but funding shortfalls curtailed those plans. In the more minimalist production conceived by Donald Nally, The Crossing’s artistic director and conductor, the 24 singers were arrayed at two banquet tables, their places set with bread and wine, with a string quartet (the Bergamot) positioned in front. White catering aprons were donned and doffed, napkins waved in the air, knives pounded on the table for percussive effect. The singers sometimes ventured out of their places into the foreground and lighting designer Eric Southern supplied some dramatic color changes. Yet the theatricality of Mr. Little’s music, coupled with his original and adapted text, is so intense that it hardly needed the visual cues to have a shattering impact. 

The four-part, 70-minute work grows progressively darker. Part I, “Tell Me What You Eat,” a quote from the culinary pundit Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, which concludes, “and I’ll tell you what you are,” seems almost merry at first, with the women’s voices tripping fast and light over a bouncy bass-drum riff. The menu of a 17th-century French royal feast is comical until we get to “a tiny guillotine” and the vocal lines start to fragment. A description of “humane” butchery, including a seductive line from the women, segues into a solo tenor singing Jonathan Swift’s satirical treatise on cannibalism, “A Modest Proposal.” The chilling relationship between eating and power is clear.

Part II, “The Grotesque Body,” takes the metaphor to even grimmer places: there’s a death march to a Wilfred Owen war poem; in a meditation on horror movies and the disfiguring of women’s bodies, each of the 12 women has her own vocal line, with the highest soprano finally exploding into a shriek. In Part III, “Dirty Work,” the stories become personal and harrowing: a wrenching chorale about working in a slaughterhouse; a description of being part of a firing squad, with single words spit out on top of each other like bullets; a poignant, folky account of a pandemic worker communing with the dead in a refrigerated truck; a slashing, mechanical sequence about social-media content moderators watching torture and beheadings that turns into cacophonous vocal noise. A tiny snippet of the chorale from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is quickly buried in the din. 

One might expect Part IV, “Eucharist,” to offer consolation. It doesn’t. Nominally liturgical and evoking the Christian ritual of transubstantiation, the music grows steadily weightier as the singers take on the burdens of others, but the flowing, ominous conclusion is a text from Stephen Crane: “You say that you are holy / But there are those who see you sin.” “Tell me what you eat . . . ” returns as memory. There is no escape. 

Led by Mr. Nally, The Crossing’s uncanny ability to articulate text and weave innumerable lines into tapestries of intricate clarity, as well as throw itself into pure noise, brought the dizzying variety of Mr. Little’s settings to vibrant life. The string quartet, along with percussion played by choir members and occasional synthesizer lines, added some rhythm and color, but the voices of The Crossing built a universe all by themselves. 

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).

With Ivo van Hove’s new staging of Jake Heggie’s opera about Sister Helen Prejean’s role as an adviser to a man condemned to die, the Met continues to embrace contemporary works. 

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 3, 2023 at 5:06 pm ET

Wendy Bryn Harmer, Rod Gilfry, Joyce DiDonato, Krysty Swann and Chauncey Packer

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND

Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season on Sept. 26, a Met premiere that was symbolic on many levels. When the piece had its world premiere in San Francisco in 2000, new works were occasional events in American opera houses, sprinkled delicately, even apologetically, into seasons of standard repertory for fear of rebellion from traditional audiences. Yet this season, extrapolating from the sellout crowds that attended its productions of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” in 2021 and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” in 2022, the Met is banking on a whopping six contemporary works, one-third of the total number of productions, to bolster its generally flagging box office.

Things have clearly changed over 23 years. The rate of creation and production of new works at American houses has accelerated, particularly in the past decade, with plucky companies like Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Opera Philadelphia along with smaller, experimental outfits like the Prototype Festival and the Industry leading the way. In 2016, the first year that the Music Critics Association of North America gave a “Best New Opera” award, Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves” was selected from a rich field of 18 North American world premieres. 

“Dead Man Walking” also normalized the idea that opera could and should tackle contemporary subjects and stories. Earlier works like John Adams’s “Nixon in China” (1987) were once derisively called “CNN Operas.” By contrast, the success of “Dead Man Walking,” based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 book (also a 1995 film) about her experiences as spiritual adviser to prisoners on death row, made the controversial topic of capital punishment a fit subject for the opera house. It is the most frequently produced new opera of this century, with a remarkable 75 productions, often accompanied, with Sister Helen’s participation, by symposia and panel discussions. Its many successors include works on such up-to-the-minute topics as LGBTQ issues (Laura Kaminisky’s “As One,” Gregory Spears’s “Fellow Travelers”); police killings of black men (Jeanine Tesori’s “Blue”); and Alzheimer’s disease (Lembit Beecher’s “Sky on Swings”). In June, San Francisco Opera will present the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” which deals with the fallout from a school shooting. 

Ryan McKinny

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND

Terrence McNally’s libretto traces Sister Helen’s relationship with Joseph De Rocher, a prisoner convicted of the rape and murder of a high-school-age couple, as his last appeals fail and his execution date approaches. Much of the opera takes place within the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, and the Met’s marquee production team, headed by Ivo van Hove with set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld, created a strikingly austere environment: a blank-walled box, with a smaller cube suspended above the stage. 

No bars or shackles are visible; An D’Huys’s drab costumes blend in; and Christopher Ash’s scene-establishing projections are reserved for the outside world—a blurry but still explicit video of the crime, which is played several times, and the road that unfurls as Sister Helen makes her first long drive from New Orleans to Angola. In the prison, subtle lighting color changes and precise directing evoke the lonely horror of imprisonment and impending death that affects both principal characters. In a few of scenes, two onstage camera operators film their faces in close-up, projecting their expressions onto the upper cube and offering an additional window into their feelings. The camera also zoomed in as the lethal injection needle was inserted into De Rocher’s arm, and on the sudden widening of his eyes as the poison took effect, bookending the shock of the opening killing with a concluding one.

The production supplied some of the weight and interiority that the opera itself lacks. The libretto carries the story; Mr. Heggie’s music doesn’t create or develop characters, relying instead on a noisy, propulsive orchestra and multiple climaxes. Scenes are often too long. The insipid earworm hymn associated with Sister Helen seems at odds with her dynamic personality, as do her meandering arias; it’s hard to find De Rocher’s mix of fear and aggression in his music. When Mr. Heggie does provide a lyric tune, the moment often comes across as manipulative rather than authentic.

The top-flight cast made the most of the piece. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who first sang Sister Helen at the New York City Opera in 2002, was all coiled intensity, visibly and audibly grappling with her determination to hate the sin but love the sinner. Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, buff and tattooed, poignantly captured some of the insecurity underlying De Rocher’s macho posturing and bravado. As Sister Rose, Helen’s confidante, soprano Latonia Moore shone with Ms. DiDonato in one of the opera’s best moments, a duet about forgiveness. Susan Graham, who sang Sister Helen at the San Francisco world premiere, took on the role of Joseph’s mother, Mrs. De Rocher. Her plea for his life at the pardon hearing was acutely characterized with deliberate fumbling; even better was the final meeting of mother and son, just before his execution, when she refused to let him apologize or confess. 

Rod Gilfry, Krysty Swann, Wendy Bryn Harmer and Chauncey Packer were affecting as the parents of the murder victims. Raymond Aceto, Chad Shelton and Justin Austin had lively cameos as the prison’s warden, its condescending priest, and the motorcycle cop who stops Sister Helen for speeding and then lets her go. Yannick Nézet-Séguin let the orchestra loose with all its noise and bombast. 

The three other Met premieres this season are all vintage: Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” (1986) in a newly revised version, co-produced with four other companies; Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas,” a well-traveled Spanish-language work from 1996; and John Adams’s “El Niño” (2000), which will feature notable Met debuts by singers Julia Bullock and Davóne Tines, conductor Marin Alsop, and director Lileana Blain-Cruz. “Fire” and “The Hours” are being revived. The initiative will continue: A new $10 million gift from the Neubauer Family Foundation has been earmarked to subsidize 17 Met premieres from 2023-24 through 2027-28. Some will no doubt be brand new; others selected from the enormous wealth of new opera that has emerged over the past two decades. The Met has finally caught up, and is going all in. Rightly so. New work is the future of opera.

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).

Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O featured a triumphant world premiere about Nellie Bly’s work exposing the conditions at a 19th-century asylum, as well as a production of Verdi’s convoluted love story; director Claus Guth and tenor Jonas Kaufmann staged a gripping performance of Schubert’s ‘Schwanengesang’ (‘Swan Song’) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.

Heidi Waleson 

Sept. 25, 2023 at 5:48 pm ET

Kiera Duffy PHOTO: DOMINIC M. MERCIER

Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia’s groundbreaking Festival O notched another triumph on Thursday with the world premiere of Rene Orth’s “10 Days in a Madhouse,”staged at the Wilma Theater. Using reporter Nellie Bly’s 1887 exposé of the conditions at the insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) as a source, Ms. Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch trenchantly explore how female insanity has been used both as an operatic trope and as a way to label and control non-compliant women.

Ingeniously, the opera’s narrative runs backward, starting with Day 10: A haze of choral fragments embedded in an acoustic and electronic orchestral texture evokes the disordered mind of The Madwoman/Nellie (Kiera Duffy) until she cries “Let me out!” Over the next 90 minutes, we see and hear, in reverse, how she got to that point, with the music and text gradually reassembling into a recognizable story. Incomprehensible bits of text come together as “What time’s the boat?” This is the repeated plea of Lizzie (Raehann Bryce-Davis), locked up because of her grief over the death of her child, not insane but delirious from untreated typhus. Dr. Blackwell (Will Liverman) keeps asking Nellie the same series of questions; early in the opera, her vocal slides make us doubt her sanity, but as the evening progresses, and her delivery grows more confident, we see how he has been gaslighting her from the beginning. Electronic effects and beats are skillfully used throughout to unmoor the narrative from rationality. During Day 1, the “madwomen” stage a subtle acoustic rebellion, interrupting a forced hymn-singing session with “Let my people go”—by Day 10, such agency is impossible. 

Raehann Bryce-Davis and Ms. Duffy PHOTO: DOMINIC M. MERCIER

Director Joanna Settle and set and lighting designer Andrew Lieberman created a sinister, claustrophobic environment: The set was a wide column with a hallway through its center, the orchestra arrayed on top of it, and the characters appearing and disappearing around its shadowy edges. Faustin Linyekula’s choreography helped situate the action in the realm of the disturbed; Ásta Hostetter and Avery Reed’s drab gingham dresses for the women added to their sense of hopeless confinement. Ms. Duffy’s pure soprano, trying in vain to cut through the confusion, was a vital contrast to Ms. Bryce-Davis’s opulent, anguished mezzo; Mr. Liverman gave Dr. Blackwell a subtle, predatory edge; his leaps from baritone into falsetto and the scenes in which he waltzed with Nellie “to soothe” her were especially creepy. As the Nurse/Matron, Lauren Pearlphysically embodied the institution’s sadism; the nine-voice women’s chorus and the 12-member orchestra shone under the leadership of conductor Daniela Candillari. 

Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” has a bewildering plot—a stew of political strife and a 25-year time gap on top of the usual operatic devices of false identity, jealousy, curses and revenge—but it boils down to the love of two fierce men for a long-lost child. Opera Philadelphia’s production, which was imported from the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Belgium and opened on Friday at the Academy of Music, unfortunately emphasized the opera’s chaos and macho elements instead of its heart. Gary McCann’s set, an arrangement of concrete pillars, a glass ceiling, and monumental sculptures, had a Fascist Art Deco look, shifting the period from the 14th century to the 1930s. Fernand Ruiz’s costumes tried to have it both ways, with the men sporting Renaissance-style cloaks over their 20th-century suits and the Doge’s soldiers clad in metal armor. Laurence Dale’s static direction, along with John Bishop’s colored lighting and the aimless revolutions of the set, created uninformative stage pictures rather than illuminating the story. 

Quinn Kelsey and Ana María Martínez PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO

The singers worked hard to infuse the evening with Verdian feeling. Baritone Quinn Kelsey captured the ambivalence of the titular corsair-turned-Doge, displaying both power and lyric tenderness toward his newly discovered daughter, Maria (she is known as Amelia), and even an inclination toward peace-making. As his antagonist Jacopo Fiesco, Amelia’s grandfather, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn proved a potent match for him—bearing a grudge, but honorable in his way. The evening’s best scene was a duet in the final act, when the dying Boccanegra revealed Amelia’s identity to Fiesco, and the two old men clung to each other, suddenly finding their common humanity.

The rest of the characters felt like pawns in the game. As Maria/Amelia, Ana María Martínez’s soprano was loud and metallic, without warmth; Richard Trey Smagur’s beefy tenor stressed the aggressive tendencies of Gabriele Adorno, her lover and Boccanegra’s enemy. Baritone Benjamin Taylor brought subtlety to the villainous Paolo Albiani, who betrays and poisons Boccanegra. Corrado Rovaris’s conducting was lovingly textured rather than propulsive, and the final scene, which had Amelia, Fiesco and Adorno standing motionless as the dying Boccanegra was slowly towed offstage by the ghost of his long-dead lover (Amelia’s mother) felt interminable instead of cathartic. 

***

New York

“Doppelgänger,” which opened at the Park Avenue Armory last weekend, is a gripping work of site-specific theater. Director Claus Guth, working with tenor Jonas Kaufmann, staged Schubert’s “Schwanengesang” (“Swan Song”), a collection of the composer’s final lieder, as the last meditations of a wounded soldier dying in a World War I army hospital. Set designer Michael Levinetransformed the Armory’s vast drill hall into a multi-bed ward. The military patients and their six nurses, in uniforms by Constance Hoffman, became part of the story through movement—alternately organized and chaotic—directed by Sommer Ulrickson. Mathis Nitschke created interstitial music for Helmut Deutsch, the evening’s superlative pianist, as well as a soundscape of drones, crashes and explosions that unified the 90-minute performance. 

The production of ‘Doppelgänger’ at the Park Avenue Armory PHOTO: MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Over the course of 14 songs, Mr. Kaufmann sang and acted the soldier’s inner journey toward his impending death. In the bleak “Kriegers Ahnung” (“Warrior’s Foreboding”) he seemed solitary and invisible to the nurses; as the cycle progressed, and his character sang of love, desire, alienation, and the loss of hope, the other performers became expressions of his interior world—whether menacing him, admiring him, or carrying his bier in a funeral procession. Urs Schönebaum’s expressive lighting was a crucial part of the environment: At the conclusion of “Abschied” (“Farewell”), a seemingly jaunty song of departure, a bank of floodlights blazed out from the end wall, stopping the singer in his march to the exit. Mr. Kaufmann’s eloquent singing didn’t shy away from roughness when it was warranted; even his tight high notes conveyed a man in extremis, making the pure lyricism he brought to “Ständchen” (“Serenade”) all the more touching. With Mark Grey’s sensitive sound design, one forgot about the necessary amplification, and this march to the grave felt surprisingly, and harrowingly, intimate.

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’s production, the result of a yearslong effort to reconsider Puccini’s classic in the wake of anti-Asian violence, is thoughtful but low on passion; in New York, recitals by Julia Bullock and Lise Davidsen included obscure songs and classic repertoire alike.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Sept. 19, 2023 at 5:46 pm ET

Karen Chia-Ling Ho, center 

PHOTO: KEN YOTSUKURA

Boston

The stereotypes inherent in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”—a story built around the white imperialist male fantasy of the submissive Asian woman—have become increasingly problematic in recent years, leading several opera companies to invite all-Asian creative teams to rethink this canonic work. Following the spate of anti-Asian violence in 2021, Boston Lyric Opera convened a series of conversations, “The Butterfly Process,” to examine the piece and its ambivalent legacy; a new production of the opera, unveiled last week at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, is one result.

Directed by choreographer and activist Phil Chan, this “Butterfly” is set in the U.S. during World War II. Cio-Cio-San works as a singer in an underground nightclub in San Francisco’s Chinatown; her “wedding” to Pinkerton, a naval officer, is part of a nightly stunt at the club. Between Acts I and II, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Pinkerton goes off to war, and the pregnant Butterfly is sent to an incarceration camp (as BLO refers to it) in Arizona, sharing the fate of thousands of Japanese-Americans during that time.

This thoughtful effort, aided by some changes in the text, makes certain aspects of the story more palatable for contemporary audiences. Butterfly is an adult woman with agency, not a helpless 15-year-old being sold to the highest bidder. The lines questioning her about her age are directed to Pinkerton, who says he is 21. In the love duet at the end of Act 1, Butterfly puts on a coat rather than sheds her clothes. In the camp, she longs for Pinkerton’s return not out of hopeless love but because their son is dying of tuberculosis and she has no resources to care for him. There’s no suicide; the opera is framed as the recollections of the adult Butterfly in 1983 looking back on this traumatic period of her life.

The sets by Yu Shibagaki, costumes by Sara Ryung Clement, and lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew ably evoke the nightclub (Butterfly’s wedding attendants are leggy showgirls) and the camp with its makeshift wooden barracks and watchtower. Some of the photographs that depict Butterfly’s history are family pictures belonging to BLO’s artistic adviser and dramaturg Nina Yoshida Nelsen; three historical dramaturgs are also credited.

But making Butterfly’s relationship with Pinkerton more transactional than romantic coexists awkwardly with Puccini’s swoony music. The opera is tightly constructed as a weepie, and if Butterfly’s heart isn’t broken by love, the tragedy doesn’t really land.

Karen Chia-Ling Ho and Dominick Chenes

 PHOTO: KEN YOTSUKURA

As Butterfly, Karen Chia-Ling Ho carefully walked the line between knowingness and feeling, but there was little sense of passionate abandon and her “Un bel di” was sturdy rather than soaring. One of the best moments in the evening was the “Flower Duet,” in which Butterfly and Suzuki (the imposing Alice Chung) decorated the camp with handmade paper flowers in anticipation of Pinkerton’s arrival; the relationship between the two women felt the most real in the opera. The men were properly unappealing: As Pinkerton, Dominick Chenes’s tenor seemed muted; Troy Cook was an efficient Sharpless, more a tool than a sympathizer with Butterfly, as is usual; Rodell Rosel was a sleazy Goro (here the owner of the nightclub). Dancer Cassie Wang, depicting Butterfly between Acts 2 and 3, performed some ambiguous choreography by Michael Sakamoto. The theater has no pit, so the orchestra, led by David Angus, seemed unusually loud and brassy.

***

New York

Julia Bullock’s recital in the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room on Sept. 11 was typically unconventional—she is far more likely to headline a piece like Michel van der Aa’s multidisciplinary opera “Upload” than to sing “La Traviata.” Here, she made a strong case for widening the definition of the art song to include the work of Nina Simone along with Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf. Every song and interpretive choice in the program was intentional, focused on building that larger structure. Ms. Bullock, who supplies her own translations of lyrics, is never just focused on making pretty sounds. Rather, her distinctive, velvety lower register, her crystalline text articulation, and her commitment to her material make her a magnetic performer.

That command held sway as she constructed musical arcs. Two quiet, folk-tinged songs by the obscure singer-songwriter Connie Converse segued seamlessly into a Kurt Weill group: his mournful “Lost in the Stars” followed by a sparky, rhythmically free spoken-and-sung version of “Denn wie man sich bettet,” and then an intense “Wie lange noch?” full of suppressed fury. In John Cage’s “She is Asleep,” no. 2, her wordless vocalise paired with John Arida’s damped piano made a sleeper’s inner world feel vital. In a selection of songs written by black Americans, some of them women, ably arranged by Jeremy Siskind, her complex portrayals persuasively rejected the narrative of the helpless female so prevalent in traditional art songs. Her stylings of Cora “Lovie” Austin and Alberta Hunter’s “Downhearted Blues,” which turned the betrayed woman’s lament on its head, and Nina Simone’s “Four Women,” a chilling depiction of stereotypes of black women, created characters as powerful as any written by Schubert.

***

Lise Davidsen got a bigger stage for her Sept. 14 recital—the Metropolitan Opera House. The young Norwegian soprano has made a splash at the Met, starting with her 2019 debut as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades” and followed by a trio of Strauss roles: Ariadne, Chrysothemis, and the Marschallin. Her spectacular instrument recalls Birgit Nilsson’s—producing a blazing, metallic sound with effortless power and total control, one seemingly able to carry out the back of the auditorium and across Central Park.

Recitals are a different beast from opera, however. While Ms. Davidsen’s voice still sounded glorious and house-filling, the Grieg and Sibelius songs on the first half of the program were pretty but generic. On the second half, a quartet of Schubert hits came off better, with Ms. Davidsen capturing the dramatic pacing and scene-painting of “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and “Erlkönig” and the serenity of “An die Musik” and “Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen”—in the last, she sang softly and still filled the space. The expansive operatic potential of a Strauss group also worked to her advantage, though “Befreit” could have been more intimate. James Baillieu was the sensitive pianist.

Opera arias were also sprinkled throughout. Ms. Davidsen will sing Leonora in Verdi’s “La forza del destino” at the Met next February, but her selections from “Un ballo in maschera” and “Otello” felt undercooked. She shone, however, in Lisa’s final aria from “Queen of Spades,” and in Wagner’s grand salute “Dich, teure Halle” from “Tannhauser,” summoning the spirit of Nilsson once again.

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 its first season under director Rob Ainsley, the upstate New York opera festival counted among its offerings a riveting rendition of Handel’s ‘Rinaldo’ and a vivid staging of ‘Candide.’

By 

Heidi Waleson

Aug. 15, 2023 at 5:49 pm ET

Korin Thomas-Smith, Keely Futterer and Anthony Roth Costanzo in ‘Rinaldo’ PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN

Cooperstown, N.Y.

Starting in the 1990s, the Glimmerglass Festival pioneered baroque opera in the U.S., staging numerous titles over many summers in its ideally sized 900-seat theater. This season, in a project originally planned for 2020 but upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company mounted a riveting production of Handel’s “Rinaldo” with the renowned countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, this year’s Artist-in-Residence, as its star. Director Louisa Proske’s concept places this tale of Crusaders and sorcery in a children’s hospital, where a boy recovering from a brain operation imagines his way out of the total powerlessness of childhood and illness by adopting the storybook role of knight and rescuer. 

Streamlined by some score cuts and aided by the design team—Matt Saunders(set), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting), Montana Blanco (costumes), Jorge Cousineau (projections)—the production morphed elegantly between hospital room and fantasy land while remaining grounded in the universe of a child’s imagination. A large central window became both a portal and a backdrop for animations of the imagined world. Crusaders burst through it and used medical supplies to outfit the boy/Rinaldo (Mr. Costanzo) with their red-crossed uniform. As the captured maiden Almirena (Jasmine Habersham) lamented her fate (here she was a critically ill patient sharing Rinaldo’s room), her dancer double underwent a brain scan, with its CT images flashed on the window. To rescue her, Rinaldo and the Crusaders transformed the boy’s hospital bed into a boat and sailed off, violently buffeted by the winds (the aria is Rinaldo’s “Venti, turbini, prestate”). The elaborate storybook costumes of the villains—the Saracen general Argante and the sorceress Armida—contrasted smartly with the modern technology of the hospital; a trio of leaping black-clad dancers, choreographed by Jorrell Lawyer-Jefferson, intensified Armida’s witchiness. 

Mr. Costanzo’s distinctive, muscular sound was arresting in Rinaldo’s calls to battle, and softened effectively in laments such as “Cara sposa”; he was convincing throughout as a child. Keely Futterer was a thrilling whirlwind as Armida, ornamenting wildly and unafraid to take high notes into shriek territory. Korin Thomas-Smith (Argante) was announced as indisposed before the show. He got through his florid opening aria, “Sibillar,” with only a few wobbles in his imposing baritone, but after intermission he walked the role while his cover, Jason Zacher, capably sang from the side of the stage. Ms. Habersham was an affecting Almirena; Kyle Sanchez Tingzon displayed a powerful countertenor as Goffredo, the Crusader king, contrasting effectively with Nicholas Kelliher’s lighter countertenor as the Sorcerer. Conductor Emily Senturia’s stylish reading was much enhanced by the work of the continuo group and some excellent solo instrumentalists. 

Magdalena Kuźma and Duke Kim in ‘Romeo and Juliet’

PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN

The updating of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” by director Simon Godwin was less successful. Several arcades topped by parapets, rearranged to form the various settings, could have been from any period, except for the graffiti tags that appeared in the marketplace scene; the costumes—including outfits for a circus-themed masked ball, multicolored lamé overalls, and some sharp suits—were eye-catching rather than illuminating. (Dan Soule designed the sets, Loren Shaw the costumes, Robert Wierzel the lighting.) The directing was most successful in crowd scenes, like the killings of Mercutio and Tybalt. Intimate scenes were formulaic, and Juliet’s “Je veux vivre” was upstaged by Gertrude and some friends doing surreptitious shots from a flask. 

Duke Kim was a youthful, ardent Romeo. As Juliet, Magdalena Kuźma’s bright, flexible soprano felt too large for the theater, and she was better in the passionate intensity of the potion aria than in the tenderness and heartbreak of her romantic duets with Romeo. Joseph Colaneri’s conducting—other than the magical interlude before the balcony scene—also missed that expansive tenderness. Sergio Martinez displayed an imposing bass as Friar Laurence and Lisa Marie Rogali was a pert Stephano. 

Emilie Kealani (center) in ‘La Bohème’

PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN

E. Loren Meeker’s production of Puccini’s “La Bohème” stuck to the original period with simple but effective sets by Kevin Depinet and attractive costumes by Erik Teague. The Café Momus scene was especially colorful, thanks to some banners, awnings, and a trio of ruffled can-can dresses; the detailed directing made the horseplay scenes in the garret seem authentic. Tenor Joshua Blue was a charmingly shy Rodolfo and Teresa Perrotta a robust Mimi. Both have large, well-controlled instruments; their conclusion of the Act 3 quartet was especially moving. Darren Lekeith Drone (Marcello), Emilie Kealani (Musetta) and conductor Nader Abbassi made solid contributions.

The cast of ‘Candide’

PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN

This is the first season for Rob Ainsley, Glimmerglass’s new general and artistic director. But one of the shows was a revival of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,”originally directed by its previous leader, Francesca Zambello, in 2015. This vivid staging, which has traveled extensively, was remounted this season by its choreographer, Eric Sean Fogel. The splendid underwear-clad dance ensemble that tied the show together was a tribute to his work, and to Ms. Zambello’s decade-long project of mounting classic musicals with appropriate casting and no amplification at Glimmerglass. 

“Candide” exists in multiple versions; this one, which runs a bit long and includes some unfamiliar lyrics, emphasizes the darkly satirical nature of the source material as expressed through Bernstein’s effervescent score. Brian Vu’s light tenor made for a poignant Candide, hanging on to his optimism through episodes of war, death, flogging, betrayal, and more. Katrina Galka’s brittle coloratura soprano was perfectly suited to Cunegonde, who blithely sells herself to survive; Meredith Arwady captured the Old Lady with her booming contralto and big personality; actor Bradley Dean ably did the honors as the narrator Pangloss/Voltaire. Big-voiced standouts in smaller roles included Jonathan Patton as the pessimist Martin, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes as Candide’s friend Cacambo, and Ms. Futterer as the slave trader Vanderdendur—her high E-flat in “Bon Voyage” brought back memories of her Armida the previous night. Mr. Colaneri was the ebullient conductor. 

Brian Vu and Katrina Gulka in ‘Candide’

PHOTO: EVAN ZIMMERMAN

The weekend’s finale continued another of Ms. Zambello’s initiatives: the commissioning of operas designed to be performed by children and teenagers along with a few of the company’s young artists. “The Rip Van Winkles,” with music by Ben Morris and libretto by Laura Fuentes, is a witty, hour-long modern take on the Washington Irving story, dealing with a rural town (not unlike Cooperstown) in which the adults have blocked cell service to protect their children from the evils of constant connection to the internet. 

Performed in the company theater, with an attractive set by James F. Rotondo III, directed by Brenna Corner, and conducted by Kamna Gupta with piano accompaniment, the piece deftly showcased the young performers in music of appropriate difficulty for each age group. The catchiest number of the evening came from the ensemble of grandparents: Performed by the youngest children, bent over walkers, their disco-inspired theme song urged the nervous parents to remember that “You have to live a little while you’re a kid.” The audience of enthusiastic adults and children was a testament to Glimmerglass’s efforts to be not just an artistic powerhouse, but a centerpiece of its upstate community. 

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 this year’s festival, Monteverdi’s myth about lost lovers in the underworld takes the stage; Debussy’s Symbolist story finds orchestral triumph; Dvořák’s fairy tale takes a Freudian turn; and more.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Aug. 8, 2023 at 5:42 pm ET

Luke Harnish, Rolando Villazón, Lauren Snouffer, Luke Elmer and Le Bu PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN

Santa Fe, N.M.

This summer, the Santa Fe Opera presented Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” with a new orchestration by Nico Muhly. “Orfeo” (1607), one of the earliest operas, is typically performed with period instruments; Mr. Muhly’s resourceful version captured the tang and transparency of those instruments with the tools of a modern opera orchestra. His selection of sonorities—such as low winds and harp for continuo; a single violin for poignant moments; celesta and piano for color—always fit the moment, supported the vocal line, and never slipped into overblown Romanticism. I missed only the harsh rasp of the regal, the period organ that accompanies the character Caronte. As led by Harry Bicket, the company’s music director and an expert in early repertoire, “Orfeo” retained its 17th-century impulse in a new guise. 

As Orfeo, Rolando Villazón was less successful. The tenor’s voice has lowered and darkened in recent years, fitting the role’s baritone tessitura, but his timbre is harsh and barky. Orfeo’s music is supposed to enchant; we got histrionics instead. Lauren Snouffer had a lovely, floating sound as La Musica, who introduces the story, and Speranza, who escorts Orfeo to the portal of the Underworld; Paula Murrihy (La Messaggera) and Blake Denson (Plutone) were also standouts. 

The thoughtful production—directed by Yuval Sharon, with a visual environment by Alex Schweder and Matthew Johnson, and lighting by Yuki Nakase Link—had an ingenious solution to the living world/underworld transition. The shepherds’ chorus cavorted on and around a green half-globe. Then the globe gradually lifted, swaths of fabric unfurled beneath it, and Orfeo sang his plea to Caronte while suspended from a harness in the gloom. The gods seemed more powerful because they were invisible; the denizens of the very dark underworld had chic lighted headdresses (Carlos J Soto did the costumes).

Huw Montague Rendall and Samantha Hankey in ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN

In the production of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” by Netia Jones (director; scenic, costume and projection designer), the subtext involving the toxic clash of modernity and nature didn’t read clearly enough. This Symbolist story was set in what appeared to be a dark basement, reached by a pair of spiral staircases, with a large revolving terrarium that also served as a bed. In the first half of the opera, its grass was green; in the second, it was wilted and yellow. A stream ran along the front edge of the stage; the three principal characters, mystifyingly, had doubles who acted out their scenes upstage. Arkel, Golaud and Mélisande all received oxygen when they were ill or wounded; there were projections of computer code, scientific diagrams, and plumbing pipes; even the images of water and trees were gloomy. 

Musically, however, it was a triumph. Mr. Bicket brought marked clarity to the orchestra, reflecting the characters’ unspoken emotions through sonic detail rather than indulging in a misty, nonspecific wash of sound. Zachary Nelson was splendid as the tormented Golaud, his velvety baritone turning desperate as he tried unsuccessfully to find out the truth. As Mélisande, Samantha Hankey’s rich, bright mezzo made her more human than fey; Huw Montague Rendall was arresting in Pelléas’s awakening of feeling for her. Raymond Aceto was affecting as Arkel, the king with no power; as Geneviève, Susan Graham’s mezzo has lost luster, but she looked great in the watery green silk gown that seemed to symbolize the family’s last connection to the natural world. Treble Kai Edgar was a strong Yniold. 

Ailyn Pérez in ‘Rusalka’ 

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN

David Pountney’s production of Dvořák’s fairy tale “Rusalka” also required advance information for full comprehension. But even without that, it was theatrically clearer than “Pelléas.” Set in a Viennese psychiatric hospital, circa 1900, it explored water nymph Rusalka’s yearning for a human form and soul through a Freudian lens—the violent and confusing sexual transition from childhood to adulthood. The intriguing set (Leslie Travers) went from an orderly white room of closets and drawers to the Prince’s palace, in which glass display cases housed his other female conquests. For Act 3, when everything has fallen apart for both the Prince and Rusalka, the cases were empty and chaotically tilted. Marie-Jeanne Lecca’s Victorian costumes underlined the power of the adult women who control everything: The witch Ježibaba wore a corseted black gown, and a red riding habit, complete with tall boots and a riding crop, gave the Foreign Princess a dominatrix vibe.

The singers brought out the complexity of the characters beyond their fairy-tale identities. Ailyn Pérez was a passionate Rusalka, especially forceful in Act 3, as she asks the Prince why he betrayed her. Raehann Bryce-Davis brought a big sound and almost comical vanity to Ježibaba; Robert Watson made the Prince, for all his tenorial bluster, a weak man; and as Vodník, James Creswell—who had excellent diction—could only threaten vengeance on those who hurt his daughter, as he was trapped in a wheelchair. Mary Elizabeth Williams’s harsh timbre felt right for the imperious Foreign Princess. Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya captured the score’s jaunty folk-tinged sections along with its sweep and lyricism. 

Morris Robinson and chorus in ‘The Flying Dutchman’ 

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN

For the most part, the company orchestra sounded much more polished this season than it has in recent years, with the exception of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman.” Conducted by Thomas Guggeis, it was raucously loud throughout, with no expressive subtleties. The principal singers, all substantial Wagnerians boasting excellent range, breath control and volume, seemed to be trying to match the orchestra for sheer decibel level. As the Dutchman, Nicholas Brownlee sounded thrillingly savage as he launched his opening aria, “Die Frist ist um,” but it quickly became assaultive rather than exciting. Morris Robinson (Daland), Elza van den Heever (Senta) and Chad Shelton (Erik) were similarly afflicted. Only Bille Bruley (the Steersman) escaped that fate—his ballad is brief. “Dutchman” needs more than a little bel canto spirit; there was none to be had here.

David Alden’s ugly, updated production matched the hard-edge musicianship. Paul Steinberg’s set appeared to be built of shipping containers; the women’s chorus in the Spinning Song were working in some sort of industrial plant, dressed in protective gear (Constance Hoffman did the costumes) and moving like automatons. Other chorus scenes were chaotic in addition to being earsplitting, with sailors rolling around the stage. The Act 3 party, in which the sailors and the women try to awaken the Dutchman’s crew, was a bacchanal; strangely, everyone was facing away from the Dutchman’s barely visible ship (Maxine Braham was credited with choreography). Direction of character scenes was minimal to nonexistent. The most entertaining moments involved some zombies who periodically carted the Dutchman’s treasure on and off the stage. 

Leah Hawkins in ‘Tosca’

 PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN

Puccini’s “Tosca” was also hard to take. Designer Ashley Martin-Davis’s De Chirico-inspired sets, sensitively lighted by Allen Hahn, were fine, but his 1930s diva costumes did not flatter Leah Hawkins in the title role, and Keith Warner’s directing made Tosca a vain egotist without vulnerability and Scarpia (Reginald Smith Jr.) a leering, eye-rolling sex maniac. Joshua Guerrero’s Cavaradossi was comparatively unobjectionable; his “E lucevan le stelle” was the evening’s sole musical high point. John Fiore’s conducting—ploddingly slow in Act 1, slightly more buoyant in Acts 2 and 3—reflected the production’s overall confusion. The season runs through Aug. 26.

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 Lincoln Center, Teatro Nuovo presents two bel canto works—one, by Donizetti, featuring Christian martyrs and the other, by Federico and Luigi Ricci, a fairy godmother; upstate, a Bard SummerScape production of Camille Saint-Saëns’s historical drama captures a king’s tyranny.

By 

Heidi Waleson

July 24, 2023 at 5:52 pm ET

Ricardo José Rivera and Chelsea Lehnea

 PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO/TEATRO NUOVO

New York

There’s little opera to be had in New York City during the summer these days, so all the more reason to be grateful for Will Crutchfield’s enterprising Teatro Nuovo, which specializes in historically informed performances of bel canto works. This season brought two rarities: “Poliuto,” a tragedy by Gaetano Donizetti, and “Crispino e la Comare,” a comic romp by the now-forgotten brother duo Federico and Luigi Ricci, performed at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater last week. Both were semi-staged, with simple projections of historical set drawings for atmosphere, and the capable chorus lined up for its moments.

“Poliuto,” written in 1838 but not performed until 1848 due to censorship issues, is a terrific piece, tightly plotted in its vigorous sequence of arias, duets and ensembles. Set in Armenia in 259, Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto traces the story of the titular Roman officer and secret Christian convert (St. Polyeuktos); his wife, Paolina; and the Roman proconsul Severo, Paolina’s former beloved, whom she believed dead but who has reappeared. The action revolves around episodes of jealousy being trumped by faith, and Poliuto ultimately embraces martyrdom, joined by Paolina.

The score has the lilting rhythms and coloratura lyricism of Donizetti’s “Lucia” but also prefigures the dramatic heft of early Verdi operas. The period-instrument orchestra, positioned at audience level rather than in a pit, was authoritatively led by Jakob Lehmann—who, as was the period practice, stood in front of the ensemble and occasionally picked up his violin. Apart from some sour bassoon passages at the very beginning, the orchestra played with verve and flexibility, and Maryse Legault, the principal clarinetist, shone in a stunning solo moment that introduced the soprano.

Santiago Ballerini

 PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO/TEATRO NUOVO

The well-coached principal singers brought legato elegance and dramatic intensity to their roles. Tenor Santiago Ballerini was a splendid Poliuto, stylishly balancing his furious outbursts with his intimations of the divine, especially in his Act 2 aria. As Paolina, Chelsea Lehnea displayed a powerful, slightly wiry-sounding soprano, with pinpoint coloratura and impressive control of dynamics. Paolina was a Maria Callas role, and Ms. Lehnea appeared at times to be excessively channeling that diva’s over-the-top fervor. As Severo, Ricardo José Rivera’s stentorian baritone worked best when he was called upon to act the heavy as opposed to the disappointed lover. Hans Tashjian’s bass was oddly light for the villain, Callistene, the High Priest of Jupiter.

Comedy in opera is always harder than tragedy, and “Crispino” (1850)—about an impoverished cobbler who is turned into a doctor by a fairy godmother (La Comare)—is a series of set-piece jokes, many of them too long, rather than an integrated evening. It was vigorously led from the keyboard by Jonathan Brandani, and starred bass-baritone Mattia Venni as a hilarious Crispino, who brilliantly executed the rapid Italian patter and the subtle physical comedy of the role. As Crispino’s wife, the flirtatious Annetta, Teresa Castillo’s high-flying coloratura didn’t have quite enough variety for the length of her role—she got the biggest solo moments, including the final rondo. The potent mezzo Liz Culpepper(La Comare) and the bright tenor Toby Bradford (Contino del Fiore) made fine contributions; bass Vincent Graña (Mirabolano, a rival doctor) paired up with Mr. Venni for an exchange of patter insults that was the highlight of the evening.

***

Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Bard’s SummerScape festival also specializes in obscure operas, and this year’s offering, “Henri VIII” by Camille Saint-Saëns, which opened on Friday, is a find. Written for the Paris Opera in 1883, it is a fascinating dissection of how a tyrant gets his way. The libretto by Léonce Détroyat and Paul-Armand Silvestre presents a fictionalized account of Henri’s divorce from Catherine d’Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn that is deliberately unromantic, and director Jean-Romain Vesperini and conductor Leon Botstein deftly traced its psychological manipulations in this acute staging. Through a series of lengthy, conversational scenes—the performance ran four hours with one 30-minute intermission—we follow the steps of each confrontation to its logical outcome. Other characters may think they have the upper hand, but Henri always wins.

Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” written for the Paris Opera 16 years earlier, is similarly grounded in royal struggles over power and religion. But it foregrounds love and flawed human relationships, while “Henri VIII” has a narrower focus. Invented elements in the opera include a secret letter proving a pre-existing romance between Anne and Don Gómez de Feria, the Spanish ambassador to England, as well as two dramatic encounters between Catherine and Anne, but their purpose is to demonstrate who’s up and who’s down.

MORE OPERA REVIEWS

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Catherine, sensitively sung by soprano Amanda Woodbury, had two poignant arias—a plea to the synod that is to decide whether Henri may divorce her, and a lament for her Spanish homeland as she nears death—which made her the one marginally sympathetic figure in the piece. Bass-baritone Alfred Walker brought a gravelly weight and intensity to Henri, making it clear that the story is all about him. Mezzo Lindsay Ammann’s occasionally harsh upper register and arresting contralto extension proved highly effective for Anne, whose ambition outweighs all other considerations. Josh Lovell’s pure tenor gave Don Gómez a veneer of innocence, and the large chorus, prepared by James Bagwell, was splendid in the synod scene of Act 3, switching from a hymnlike solemnity to a boisterous freedom anthem, backing Henri as he rids himself of his wife and the dominance of Rome in a single stroke.

Tudor costumes by Alain Blanchot grounded the production in its historical era; scenic designer Bruno de Lavenère and lighting designer Christophe Chaupinsuggested a more ambiguous and shadowy world using metallic scrims, video projections of architectural elements, and a tilted platform. One high point was the transition into the synod scene: As the introductory music unfolded, light snaked along the stone tracery of a giant rose window, as though building the setting on the spot, an apt metaphor for the opera’s theme of single-handed domination.

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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At Lincoln Center, Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s adaptation of the sci-fi novel about a teenager in a crumbling world turns an arresting book into a tedious cross between a song cycle and a harangue.

By 

Heidi Waleson

July 19, 2023 at 4:58 pm ET

Marie Tattie Aqeel and the company of ‘Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower’ PHOTO: ERIN PATRICE O’BRIEN

New York

Under the leadership of Shanta Thake since 2021, Lincoln Center has taken a radical turn away from classical programming in a bid to attract new audiences. This year, its two-month “Summer for the City” lineup includes hip-hop, Korean indie rock, and traditional Cuban dance in both indoor and outdoor venues; much of the programming is free or choose-what-you-pay. The lone remnant of summers past is the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, in its final season under that name with its longtime music director Louis Langrée. Next year, the ensemble will have a new leader, Jonathon Heyward, and an identity to be determined.

On July 13 in David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center presented the first of three performances of “Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower,” dubbed an opera by its creators Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon. Running two hours and 15 minutes without intermission, this sprawling, minimally staged event was a cross between a song cycle and a harangue, riffing on themes and plot points from Butler’s celebrated 1993 Afrofuturist novel. Audience members unfamiliar with the book may well have been confused about the story, because the show’s main character was Toshi Reagon—guitar in hand, positioned on a raised platform at the center of the stage, flanked by vocalists Helga Davis and Shelley Nicole—who acted as narrator, leader, backup singer and haranguer-in-chief.

Shelley Nicole, Toshi Reagon and Helga Davis

PHOTO: LAWRENCE SUMULONG

Butler’s arresting book, set in California in 2024, unfolds in a dystopian world. Climate change has led to privation, rampant violence, and an autocratic government that is in league with corporate interests. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina and her family live in Robledo, a barricaded suburb of Los Angeles. Her Baptist preacher father urges faith and patience, but Lauren, who feels the stirrings of a new religious conviction, insists that the people need to learn to live off the land and prepare to flee. When an attack on the town leaves most of the residents dead, Lauren and two other survivors join the stream of refugees heading north; they dodge threats and gradually assemble a new community around them. One of their number, Bankole, brings them to land he owns in Northern California. They establish a commune, Acorn, and Lauren develops the tenets of her religion, which she calls Earthseed, whose principal mantra is “God is change.”

The opera invoked Butler’s ideas without capturing any of their nuance or drama. Part I, which takes place in Robledo, was a string of songs that set up the disagreement between Lauren (Marie Tatti Aqeel) and her father (Jared Wayne Gladly). Lyrics were not always intelligible, and the amplified volume, aided by a five-member instrumental ensemble that lurked upstage in the darkness, was high, but the tunes were catchy, and the gospel-infused numbers for the congregation (featuring Josette Newsam as a pink-hatted church lady) were deliberately different from Lauren’s independent pop stylings and the mild rap of her rebellious brother Keith (Isaiah Stanley). The dramaturgy, however, was limited. Nothing much happened; it was not entirely clear what role each of the 11 actors was playing; and the direction by Signe Harriday and Eric Ting had the performers mill indiscriminately around a few curved benches and make the occasional foray into the theater aisles.

The company of ‘Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower’

 PHOTO: LAWRENCE SUMULONG

After about an hour of this, Ms. Reagon broke in with a speech, citing connections between Butler’s 30-year-old predictions and actual present-day woes, including climate change, police brutality, gentrification and the dominance of Amazon, for starters. She then embarked on a strophic blues tune with the refrain, “Don’t let your baby go to Olivar,” which pounded these themes for about 15 minutes, with the audience invited to join in on the chorus. (In the novel, Olivar is a town that has been taken over by a corporation and is luring frightened Californians into slavery with promises of jobs and security. Only readers of the book would know this, however.)

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Part 2 began with the attack on Robledo. There were loud noises in the darkness, people fell to the ground, and a semicircular white cloth that had been hanging above the stage fell—that was the town’s wall. Ms. Aqeel sang the most affecting number of the evening—a wailed lament for Lauren’s lost father, adding more elaborate ornamentation with each new verse. With most of the performers playing different (though still unclear) roles, the journey north had them wandering around in the darkness with flashlights (Christopher Kuhldesigned the lighting, Arnulfo Maldonado the set, Dede M. Ayite the costumes). Songs blended together and the plot, even with a bit of narration dropped in from Ms. Reagon, had even less clarity than in the first half. The conclusion came out of nowhere, and a large community chorus dashed onstage from the audience to sing a final tune referring to Lauren’s mantra, “God is Change,” and then followed it up with a song called “Sower.”

The packed house (albeit with some defectors over the course of the evening) gave “Parable” a standing ovation; the show felt like a communal exhortation, with Ms. Reagon whipping up the crowd with simplistic tropes. It certainly attracted a young, diverse audience, one that probably won’t be clamoring for tickets when Mr. Langrée conducts Mozart’s Mass in C minor on July 25 and 26. If that is Lincoln Center’s main goal, “Parable” was a success. As an artistic offering, commensurate with the mission of a nonprofit presenter, it fell short.

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 Opera Theatre of Saint Louis reworks Scott Joplin’s creation and presents Carlisle Floyd’s classic about a community’s outsiders, while Haymarket’s production of Johann Adolph Hasse’s tragedy preserves its gender-bent precedent.

By 

Heidi Waleson

June 27, 2023 6:25 pm ET

Brandie Inez Sutton and the chorus of ‘Treemonisha’ 

PHOTO: ERIC WOOLSEY

Webster Groves, Mo.

Current interest in historical works by black composers has led to numerous contemporary performances. This spring brought two new versions of Scott Joplin’s opera “Treemonisha,” offering new context and orchestrations (the originals did not survive) for the piece, which was never performed in the composer’s lifetime. One, with additions by composer Damien Sneed and librettist Karen Chilton, concluded its run at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on Saturday.

With a new prologue and epilogue, OTSL’s production frames “Treemonisha” as Joplin’s personal story—a tribute to his young second wife, Freddie Alexander, who died of pneumonia 10 weeks after their marriage. In the new opening scenes, Joplin celebrates finishing his opera, which he hopes will establish his classical bona fides (“No more boarding houses and saloons”), as the languishing Freddie encourages him and dies. (Some creative license is taken: Freddie died in 1904; “Treemonisha” was completed in 1910.) Joplin’s grief then transports them to the opera proper, set in a Reconstruction-era rural black community, where Freddie and Joplin become Treemonisha and her close friend Remus.

The original opera’s slim plot involves conjurers trying to sell “bags of luck” to the credulous people. When Treemonisha, the only educated person in the community, stands up to them and decries superstition, they kidnap her. Remus, dressed as a scarecrow, frightens the conjurers and rescues her, whereupon the community acclaims her as their leader. The new epilogue segues to Joplin again at the piano. Ill and distraught because his classical compositions have not won him fame, he is visited by the apparition of Freddie/Treemonisha, who tells him that he is ahead of his time.

The framing sequences and Mr. Sneed’s orchestration freighted what is basically a charming period piece with a message about black aspiration that it was ill equipped to bear. The overlong prelude was full of pronouncements—“A prescient message / for the ages”—rather than human interaction, and Mr. Sneed’s music, trying to dovetail with Joplin’s, was pallid, catching fire only when it dropped in some actual Joplin tunes. His orchestration of “Treemonisha” proper was over-egged and saggy, blunting the snap and syncopations of the score. (George Manahan conducted.) Joplin may have wanted to write a grand opera, but “Treemonisha” is more of an operetta with catchy songs and brief plot segments interspersed with rousing ensemble numbers, like the ring dance “We’re Goin’ Around.”

Brandie Inez Sutton brought a slightly edgy but competent soprano to the role of Freddie/Treemonisha. Camron Gray, stepping in for an indisposed colleague as Joplin/Remus, displayed an attractive, soft-grained tenor; he was persuasive in “Wrong is Never Right,” Remus’s lecture to the conjurers, who are forgiven at Treemonisha’s insistence. Olivia Johnson, also a step-in, delivered with aplomb the aria in which Treemonisha’s mother recounts her daughter’s origins, and Markel Reed made Parson Alltalk’s call-and-response sermon a high point.

The production, with sets by Marsha Ginsberg and costumes by Dede Ayite, also tried for a modern vibe, with the realism of Joplin’s parlor and two simple cabins juxtaposed with Afrofuturist-inspired costumes for the conjurers and woodland denizens. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj’s directing was rudimentary; Maleek Washington’s choreography had more bounce and verve. 

Janai Brugger and Frederick Ballentine

 PHOTO: ERIC WOOLSEY

Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah” (1955), an established American classic, got an excellent, well-cast production at OTSL, sensitively directed by noted soprano Patricia Racette. Andrew Boyce’s handsome set was built around a raked central section with church windows that occasionally glowed from below, indicating the tyranny of the church in this isolated Appalachian town; Eric Southern did the lighting. Kaye Voyce’s costumes updated the time to the present—Susannah’s short red dress at the square dance (here a line dance, choreographed by Seán Curran) drew the disapproval of the Elders’ wives—and Greg Emetaz’s projections supplied lovely backdrops of mountains, forest, and the blanket of stars for “Ain’t it a pretty night?”

Casting black singers as Susannah (Janai Brugger) and her brother, Sam (Frederick Ballentine), also subtly underscored their outsider status in the community. With her vibrant soprano, Ms. Brugger traced Susannah’s journey from an optimistic, high-spirited young girl to a woman beaten down by the cruelty of others. “The trees on the mountain,” her folk-inspired lament, was especially heart-rending. Mr. Ballentine brought out Sam’s sympathetic side in “It must make the good Lord sad” but also his dangerous qualities. William Guanbo Su, a powerful bass, captured the duality and vanity of the preacher Olin Blitch. Elissa Pfaender excelled as Mrs. McLean, Susannah’s chief tormentor, and Christian Sanders was a gawky, effective Little Bat. Gemma New was the spirited conductor. 

Chicago

Haymarket Opera specializes in 17th- and 18th-century works, produced in historically informed style. Last weekend, it offered Johann Adolph Hasse’s “Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra” (1725) in its elegant and appropriately sized new home, the 160-seat Jarvis Opera Hall at DePaul University. In this two-character serenata, originally intended for concert rather than staged performance, Marc Antony and Cleopatra consider their futures after their defeat by Octavian at the Battle of Actium. In a series of paired arias, recitatives and two duets, the lovers, led by Cleopatra, eventually realize that their only honorable course is suicide. 

An image of ‘Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra’ at Haymarket Opera

 PHOTO: ELLIOT MANDEL

The first performers of the piece were legends: the castrato Farinelli as Cleopatra and the contralto Vittoria Tesi Tramontini as Antony. Haymarket kept the gender-reversed casting, with countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim as Cleopatra and contralto Lauren Decker as Antony, and created a full staging.

Theatrically, the show worked well. Wendy Waszut-Barrett’s mistily painted baroque-style sets evoked an Egypt as seen through 18th-century eyes, and Brian Schneider’s lighting gradually darkened as Marc Antony and Cleopatra accepted their fate. Mr. Kim, costumed by Stephanie Cluggish in a stunning gold-patterned dress, with wig and makeup by Megan Pirtle, looked every inch a queen. Chase Hopkins, the director, wisely had the performers interact naturalistically, rather than with stylized 18th-century gestures, and the portrait of their relationship deepened through the evening. Three nonsinging supernumeraries—two ladies-in-waiting, who wielded peacock fans and prepared poison for all at the end, plus a Roman soldier—also enriched the stage picture.

Musically, matters were less secure. Da capo arias require variety in their repeats to keep them interesting. Mr. Kim, ornamenting his speedy lines with abandon as the fierce, determined Cleopatra, was more skilled at this, even if his voice was steely at times. Ms. Decker found less to play with in her more legato, lover’s role, and her imposing contralto needed more shaping. The 12-member orchestra of strings and continuo, led by Craig Trompeter, the company’s founder and artistic director, could have pushed them toward more varied expression.

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).