AndyManshel.nyc

The director makes his Metropolitan Opera debut with a bleak, powerful production of the 18th-century classic.

By Heidi Waleson

May 8, 2023 6:03 pm ET

Peter Mattei and Adam Plachetka

 PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

New York

This final month of the Metropolitan Opera season features two Mozart production premieres with some high-profile debuts. On Friday, director Ivo van Hove and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann bowed with the first one, a blistering “Don Giovanni.” Directors accustomed to the theater world are often stymied by the demands of opera, but Mr. Van Hove, best known in New York for Broadway productions including the recent dark, video-heavy “West Side Story,” reveled in them, and Ms. Stutzmann, a singer before she turned to conducting (she is currently the music director of the Atlanta Symphony), paced the evening for maximum dramatic effect. (She will also conduct the new “Die Zauberflöte,” directed by Simon McBurney, which opens on May 19.)

Mr. Van Hove’s penchant for grimness was in force. Set and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld built a colorless, unadorned world, the kind of place where Don Giovanni, an amoral user of others, wields his power with impunity. The multilevel set, constructed as if from architectural blocks, was all flat walls around arched windows and simple staircases; the central structure (of three) rotated so slowly between scenes that the slight change in perspective seemed to happen by magic. With its lack of specificity, the set easily served as all of the opera’s many locations, putting the focus on the characters. Modern costumes in neutral colors by An D’Huys—sharp suits for Don Giovanni, Leporello and Don Ottavio; a long black slip dress for Donna Anna; a severe, knee-length gray number for Donna Elvira—also kept the attention on action and subtext.

To that end, Mr. Van Hove’s detailed, intentional directing made the characters and their motivations and interactions leap to the fore. “Don Giovanni” can feel like a string of unconnected solo turns. Here, they formed a narrative—a group of people struggling in different, sometimes conflicting, ways against evil that hides beneath privilege and charm. At the center was Peter Mattei, a handsome, poisonous Don Giovanni, vocally resplendent and offhandedly violent, who shoots the unarmed Commendatore dead and nuzzles Zerlina’s neck with equal, careless suavity. Each scene became another adventure in the effort to stop him, fruitless until fate came calling at the end.

Alexander Tsymbalyuk (on floor), Federica Lombardi and Ben Bliss PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

Arias were more than just familiar tunes, and the effect of each on its intended recipient was explicit without upstaging the singer. There was the increasing disgust and pain of Donna Elvira (Ana María Martínez) as she was subjected to the catalog of Don Giovanni’s conquests, performed matter-of-factly by Leporello (Adam Plachetka) with a little black book for documentation. Don Ottavio (Ben Bliss), often a wimpy background figure, became a real person, straightening his fashionably skinny tie and trying to take control of the situation in his “Il mio tesoro” and then sulking as Donna Anna (Federica Lombardi) asserted herself and put off their wedding in “Non mi dir.” For Don Giovanni’s party at the end of Act 1, the onstage musicians and dancers stared at the floor, creating a creepy see-nothing atmosphere that allowed the Don to pursue and assault Zerlina (Ying Fang). (Sara Erde was the choreographer.) Quite a few characters brandished guns at strategic moments. 

Mr. Van Hove’s take on the supernatural conclusion was one of the best solutions I’ve seen to this staging challenge. There’s no statue: The murdered Commendatore (the scarily potent Alexander Tsymbalyuk), who has already appeared in the cemetery, arrives for dinner in his blood-stained shirt; the Don recoils as if electrocuted whenever the Commendatore touches him. The set pieces revolve to show blank walls, and as Giovanni resists his fate video projections (by Christopher Ash) appear. What at first look like abstract squiggles are naked bodies writhing in hell. With the Don dispatched, the final scene in which the remaining characters recite the moral of the tale—the libertine is punished—tops it. The blank walls revolve away to show the windows and staircases we saw earlier, but they are now festooned with curtains and colorful flower boxes and bathed in a warm, golden light. It is a real street, livable now that the dark energy of Don Giovanni is gone. 

A scene from ‘Don Giovanni’ 

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

The singers exuded vocal authority that matched Mr. Van Hove’s directing. Mr. Mattei’s ability to switch from a brutal castigation of Leporello to a honey-tinged serenade showed the layers of Don Giovanni’s malignancy. Mr. Plachetka’s imposing Leporello seemed cornered into complicity. (His costume and demeanor read Mafia hitman.) Ms. Lombardi’s opulent soprano, pouring out Donna Anna’s youthful distress, made a striking contrast with Ms. Martínez’s steelier timbre for Donna Elvira’s despair born of experience. Mr. Bliss’s gorgeous tenor made for an ardent and bossy Don Ottavio; he also incorporated attractive ornaments in the repeats of both his arias. Ms. Fang’s pure soprano and Alfred Walker’s brash bass-baritone and precise diction brought the embattled couple Zerlina and Masetto to life. 

The orchestra sounded unbalanced in the overture and occasionally disjointed later in the evening, but overall, Ms. Stutzmann led a propulsive, dynamically shaded performance. Her crisp tempi allowed no indulgence and Jonathan C. Kelly’s tangy fortepiano accompaniments lent buoyancy to the recitatives; as a result, Mr. Van Hove’s dark interpretation of the piece never felt heavy-handed. Mozart called “Don Giovanni” a dramma giocoso, a hybrid 18th-century form that mixes serious and comic styles, in this case with satirical intent. Ms. Stutzmann ensured that the “giocoso” element bubbled through the musical performance, creating an intriguing, multifaceted portrait of a sexual predator on the loose, and demonstrating how easily he avoids paying the price for his crimes for so long. 

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).

Directed by Tomer Zvulun, the company’s production of Wagner’s epic lacked a strong overarching concept; in New York, British tenor Allan Clayton delivered a stirring recital at the Park Avenue Armory.

By Heidi Waleson

May 3, 2023 3:42 pm ET

Joseph Barron in ‘Das Rheingold’ PHOTO: KEN HOWARD

Atlanta

In his 10 years as general and artistic director of the Atlanta Opera, Tomer Zvulunhas worked assiduously to put the company on the map by increasing its budget, expanding its performance schedule, and staging nonstandard repertory titles in alternative spaces. His ingenious solution to the in-person performance challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic was to mount operas in a circus tent, with the singers behind plexiglass, and to create a streaming video channel for these and other projects. This season, Atlanta embarked on a major test of any opera company’s artistic, production and financial mettle—Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, directed by Mr. Zvulun. The first opera of the tetralogy, “Das Rheingold,” opened on Saturday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center; “Die Walküre” is scheduled for next year. 

Any “Ring” production needs to grapple with the fact that this very human tale about power, love and flexible moral codes is enacted by a mix of gods, giants, dwarves, water nymphs and mortals. Magical elements abound, and the finale is the end of the world. Modern productions run the gamut in their efforts to find coherence, but it was hard to discern an overarching concept in this “Rheingold,” which mixed fantasy and modern imagery and relied heavily on projections rather than built scenery, all designed by Erhard Rom. Some of the projected scenic solutions—such as the rocky cave walls and mining technology accompanying the descent into Nibelheim, the giant glass skyscrapers for Valhalla, and the rainbow bridge—were striking and effective. 

Company members as gods ascending to Valhalla

 PHOTO: KEN HOWARD

Mattie Ullrich’s costumes seem to have been designed for a fantasy videogame and had a homemade, school-play look: long robes, glitter, a golden breastplate for Wotan, bizarre elaborate headdresses with curling animal horns and/or tinsel coronas, and lots of facial hair for the giants and the dwarves. The opera is talky, and Mr. Zvulun’s direction was often static. Even explicitly active moments got shortchanged: When Fafner murdered Fasolt by hitting him with a rock, it happened behind a wall. Robert Wierzel’s lighting helped create some atmosphere. 

The singers, an accomplished group, made a positive impression. Greer Grimsley, a veteran Wotan, sang the role of the king of the gods with authority although his bass-baritone sounded worn and leathery. Richard Cox brought a sly forthrightness to Loge, the trickster on whom the gods rely to get them out of trouble; he was a magnetic storyteller. Elizabeth DeShong brought richness and verve to Fricka; Jessica Faselt’s big, bright soprano created a lively Freia. Cadie J. Bryan, Alexandra Razskazoff and Gretchen Krupp made a powerful trio of Rhinemaidens, even in their offstage lament at the end.

Zachary Nelson

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD

As Alberich, baritone Zachary Nelson was tentative in his opening scene with the Rhinemaidens (an ill-fitting prosthetic paunch made the character more ridiculous than usual). But he gained authority and nuance in the Nibelheim scene as Alberich, grandly overconfident with his new power, threatens Wotan and Loge with the destruction of the gods. And in the final scene he brought a vicious bitterness to his curse on all who hold the Ring. Bass Kristinn Sigmundsson was a penetrating Fasolt; Daniel Sumegi a gravelly Fafner. Joseph Barron and Adam Diegel were solid as Donner and Froh; Julius Ahn was a plaintive Mime; Ronnita Miller sounded steely rather than mysterious and earthy as Erda. 

Wagner’s orchestra is a central character in his operas, but it did not pull its weight in Atlanta. The flaccid conducting of Arthur Fagen, the company’s music director, sapped the opera’s dynamism and dramatic tension. The orchestra often sounded subdued in places where it should swell and fill the space—by contrast, the anvils were ear-splittingly loud—and there were several missed solo notes in the brass. “Die Walküre” is longer and harder: The company will need to up its game. 

***

New York

Last year, the British tenor Allan Clayton made an indelible impression at the Metropolitan Opera as the unhinged protagonists of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet” and Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes.” His North American recital debut at the Park Avenue Armory last Thursday doubled down on that persona: the fierce, steely sound that could—and sometimes did—easily overwhelm the small Board of Officers Room, the slightly rumpled appearance, the wild eyes. Mr. Clayton played a character throughout, whether it was the suicidally bereft lover of Schumann’s “Kerner Lieder” or the scarily fatalistic preacher of Priaulx Rainier’s unaccompanied “Cycle for Declamation,” on texts by John Donne. Even the Britten folk-song arrangement, “Sally in our Alley,” had a slyly dangerous edge. Pianist James Baillieu deftly mirrored Mr. Clayton’s precise stylings and diamond-acute articulations, creating Schumann’s pounding rain and the simple, haunting flourishes following each verse in Britten’s “I wonder as I wander.” The Armory’s recital series, now in its 10th year, has become an invaluable place to hear unconventional singers and programs. Next up: Julia Bullock in September. 

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).

Heartbeat Opera gives ‘Macbeth’ a spare, putatively feminist reinterpretation and stages ‘Tosca’ as a production put on in a fundamentalist theocracy

By Heidi Waleson

April 18, 2023 6:02 pm ET

Lisa Algozzini Photo: Russ Rowland

Heartbeat Opera, which specializes in rethinking classic titles for contemporary audiences, opened its first fully staged new productions in 3 1/2 years at the Baruch Performing Arts Center last week. The company has undergone changes. Its two founding artistic directors, Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske, left last year for posts at, respectively, Signature Theatre in Virginia and Oper Halle, Germany, and Heartbeat is now helmed by its musician co-founders, Jacob Ashworth and Daniel Schlosberg. 

Back in spring 2020, a few months after the Covid-19 pandemic had shut down in-person presentations and opera companies were scrambling to find alternatives, Heartbeat previewed bits of “Lady M,” its adaptation of Verdi’s “Macbeth” by Mr. Ashworth and Mr. Heard, on Zoom. Mr. Schlosberg’s weirdly creepy six-musician arrangement and a homemade video component made for a tantalizing tidbit. But staged in its fully realized, 90-minute form, now directed by Emma Jaster instead of Mr. Heard, “Lady M” is perplexing. 

Isaiah Musik-Ayala Photo: Russ Rowland

The adaptation has only three principal characters—Macbeth, Lady M and Banquo—plus three Sisters, who represent the witches, the chorus and everyone else. There are scene rearrangements and cuts, plus interpolations of spoken English text from the Shakespeare play. The most significant revision comes at the end: Macbeth’s final aria and his death are eliminated. Instead, we get Lady M’s sleepwalking scene, followed by the repositioned “Patria oppressa!” normally sung earlier by the chorus of Macbeth’s tormented subjects but here by the three Sisters and—Lady M. It is the only real clue to the renaming of the opera. Are we supposed to gather that she is sorry and is joining with those she has oppressed to make amends? What happened to her husband, the tyrant? Not clear.

The director’s note suggests that this is a feminist reinterpretation, but the rest of the staging fails to illuminate that concept. It is basically modern dress (costumes by Beth Goldenberg), with a single rectangular block serving as a bed, a table, and (perhaps) a coffin; the most interesting element is the lighted halo that serves as a crown (scenic design by Afsoon Pajoufar). A backdrop of hanging strips makes Camilla Tassi’s projections hard to see. Ms. Jaster’s direction is inscrutable—one choice was to have Lady M spend the sleepwalking scene Windexing the table (now glass topped, with Macbeth underneath it). Having the three Sisters (Samarie Alicea, Taylor-Alexis Dupont and Sishel Claverie) serve as the chorus as well as the witches, with no costume changes, was also confusing.

Sishel Claverie, Taylor-Alexis Dupont and Samarie Alicea Photo: Russ Rowland

Mr. Schlosberg’s arrangement—violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion, guitar and electronics, which he led from the piano—didn’t help matters. Amplified and raucous in a live setting, it relentlessly called attention to the ugliness of the story. The bass clarinet and the trombone, which are inherently comical instruments, sometimes even undermined the seriousness of the plot; and the poor violin was unable to tip the atmosphere toward lyricism. Still, the manic activity of the band, with much instrument-switching going on, was livelier than what was seen onstage.ies on the business of life.PreviewSubscribe

The singers made the noise level in this small theater even harder to bear. Lisa Algozzini has the dramatic soprano capacity for Lady M, but she offered no subtleties of expression, and Kenneth Stavert shouted his way through Macbeth. Bass-baritone Isaiah Musik-Ayala displayed a welcome warmth of timbre as Banquo, but his role is small. Ms. Alicea, who had lost her voice and was unable to sing, acted while Victoria Lawal sang some of her music from the orchestra, adding to the general weirdness. 

Christopher Nazarian, Masih Rahmati, Reza Mirjalili, Chad Kranak and Joe Lodato Photo: Russ Rowland

Heartbeat’s “Tosca” was more coherent, though one had to read the program note in advance to understand director Shadi G.’s concept: A theater group in a fundamentalist theocracy is putting on the Puccini opera. It becomes a protest as the performers gradually flout the state’s morality rules governing the performance, which include mandated hair coverings for women as well as prohibitions against men and women touching, or a woman killing a religious authority onstage. 

The production is clever. Two undercover policemen watch from the shadows and occasionally shout at the performers or hustle them offstage. Their menace is subtle but palpable—the torture scenes take on new relevance— and by Act 3 they have become part of the execution squad, leaving us to wonder if the “actor playing Cavaradossi,” as he is listed in the program, is actually shot dead at the end. With each act, the costumes (by Mika Eubanks) acquire more modern elements, and the Act 3 rooftop overlooks downtown Tehran (the scenic design is by Reid Thompson). The performers, changing the set after Act 1, sing a Farsi poem set to the Chilean protest tune known in English as “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”; later, it is repeated as a solo in lieu of the shepherd’s song at the beginning of Act 3, accompanied by a kamancheh, an Iranian bowed string instrument. Tosca’s final act of defiance is to leap atop a graffiti-scrawled wall and tear off her headscarf. Significantly, she doesn’t jump. 

Mr. Schlosberg’s orchestral arrangement—three cellos, bass, flute, horn, trumpet and piano—conducted by Mr. Ashworth, sounded a bit scrappy, but it got the job done. Trimmed to 100 minutes, the score is moderately cut, most notably eliminating Cavaradossi’s “Recondita armonia” and the chorus parts—other than a pre-recorded, men-only ensemble that thundered the “Te Deum” at the conclusion of Scarpia’s “Va, Tosca!” Anush Avetisyan was a fiery Tosca, Chad Kranak an ardent Cavaradossi, and Gustavo Feulien an ominous Scarpia, though less disturbing than the “real” secret police. 

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 composer’s second opera at the New York institution is a visceral, jazz-influenced work about the closeted bisexual boxer Emile Griffith, who killed his opponent in a 1962 fight.

Ryan Speedo Green

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

April 12, 2023 5:55 pm ET

New York

After its huge success with the New York premiere of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” in 2021, the Metropolitan Opera moved quickly to get Mr. Blanchard’s first opera, “Champion,” on the schedule; it opened on Monday. “Champion,” which had its premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2013, is tighter and less abstract than “Fire”; it is a propulsive and percussive score firmly rooted in the composer’s jazz idiom. The production has been expanded to fill the Met’s much larger stage, and the orchestra, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, supplies some lush effects, but it’s the rhythm quartet, led by drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, that drives the evening.

“Champion” is based on the true story of Emile Griffith, a champion boxer in the 1960s from the Virgin Islands and a closeted bisexual. In a 1962 title bout in New York, he killed his opponent, Benny Paret, who had taunted him at the weigh-in with homophobic slurs. Michael Cristofer’s libretto deftly outlines and deepens the tale: The elderly Emile (Eric Owens), who suffers from dementia and is still haunted by both the killing and guilt about his sexual identity, conjures up the turbulent odyssey of his younger self (Ryan Speedo Green). Structural fragmentation and repetition in the piece poignantly reflect Emile’s dementia—the clipped, often rhyming, text, insistently set; the flashes of clarity; the punctuation by the boxing announcer and the bell; and Emile’s frequently repeated line: “In my head, it happens fast. / Something good / Turns into something that don’t last.” 

Mr. Blanchard’s music gives the story’s episodes a visceral intensity. A Caribbean carnival call-and-response chorus, accompanied only by drums, dispatches Emile from his island home to make his fortune in New York; an ensemble of overlapping voices urges Emile to “stay in the game” during the Paret fight. Sometimes the vocal parts are more rhythmic than melodic, as when Emile’s ambitious mother, Emelda (Latonia Moore), narrates his transformation from gentle hat-maker to prizefighter in a speedy, rap-like extravaganza, “Tarzan knows which tree to climb.” 

Latonia Moore

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

When he does write melodies, Mr. Blanchard’s style is unpredictable. The line of Young Emile’s musing aria, “What makes a man a man,” is questioning and inconclusive, appropriate for his unresolved question of whether love makes a man strong or weak. The skillful dramaturgy alternates these types of scenes. In Act 2, a fast-paced sequence has reporters badgering Emile with the same banal questions—how does it feel to win the fight? To be the champ? To kill a man?—after each win. Then the chaos retreats, and Howie Albert (Paul Groves), Emile’s manager, expansively explains that “the truth don’t fit in a three-inch column.” 

Mr. Green (center), Paul Groves (purple jacket) and Ms. Moore (right)

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

James Robinson and Allen Moyer, who directed and designed the original production in St. Louis, have effectively scaled up the show for the Met with a large boxing ring and a big chorus. Montana Levi Blanco’s eye-catching costumes encompass St. Thomas carnival stilt-walkers, New York drag queens and flashy 1960s nightclub denizens; Greg Emetaz’s scene-setting projections and videos establish the crowd of Madison Square Garden fight fans and Emile’s Long Island apartment complex; Donald Holder’s sensitive lighting limns the difference between splashy public moments and solo musings. Camille A. Brown, who created the show-stopping step dance for “Fire,” supplies compact cameos here, like a group of boxers warming up and sparring at a gym. The fatal fight itself was staged with heart-stopping verve.

Mr. Green and Mr. Owens, in splendid voice, made a powerful team; one could discern the deep-seated insecurity both in the vibrant excitement of the younger Emile and in the pathos of the older one. The roots of that insecurity are disturbingly explained by a child Emile (Ethan Joseph), who appears in a still more distant flashback, forced by his strap-wielding, fundamentalist cousin Blanche (Krysty Swann) to hold cinder blocks above his head in order to drive out the devil. As Emelda, Ms. Moore was game, if not entirely secure, in her rhythmic numbers in Act 1; she sounded more comfortable in her dreamily lyrical Act 2 aria, accompanied only by plucked string bass, about her sad past. 

Eric Owens and Mr. Green

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

Mr. Groves brought humanity to Howie, especially in the scene where Emile’s early dementia becomes apparent. Stephanie Blythe had an all-too-brief bluesy cameo as Kathy Hagen, the foul-mouthed proprietor of the gay bar where Young Emile goes looking for company and solace. A distinctive moment for Brittany Renee, as Emile’s wife, is an imploring duet with Emelda, begging Young Emile to come home as he goes to Kathy’s bar for the last time (he is assaulted by gay-bashing thugs outside). Other notables in the cast included Chauncey Packer as the kind Luis, Emile’s adopted son and caretaker; and Eric Greene, playing both Benny Paret, who haunts Emile, and Paret’s son, who helps Emile find peace at the end of the opera. 

As was the case with “Fire,” the capacity opening-night crowd seemed unusually young, diverse and enthusiastic. The Met, noting how well pieces like “Fire” and “The Hours” did at the box office, has declared its intention to devote a substantial percentage of its season to contemporary works, starting with 2023-24. With original voices like Mr. Blanchard’s to draw from, that should be no hardship for its audience. 

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).

Appeared in the April 13, 2023, print edition as ‘A Composer’s One-Two Punch’.

A performance comprising three works by artists including Anna Deavere Smith and John Luther Adams received a technically spectacular production at Lyric Opera of Chicago; at Chicago Opera Theater, an opera about the brilliant British mathematician proved a labored telling of a tragic story.

Gordon Hawkins as Preacher Man, Issachah Savage as Curtis Toler, and Jeff Parker as Arne Duncan

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

By Heidi Waleson

March 27, 2023 5:29 pm ET

Chicago

For the world premiere of “Proximity,” a suite of three new American operas, which opened Friday, Lyric Opera of Chicago boldly enlisted a group of creators who were almost all new to opera and the visionary director Yuval Sharon, known for his unconventional approach to the form, who was charged with wrangling their work onto the stage. Each piece tackles a hot-button contemporary subject. “The Walkers” by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Anna Deavere Smith explores gun violence; “Four Portraits” by Caroline Shaw and Jocelyn Clarke looks at loneliness exacerbated by technology; “Night” by John Luther Adamsand John Haines is about climate change. 

To emphasize the operas’ interrelationships, Mr. Sharon alternated scenes of the first two pieces throughout the evening and concluded the first act with the single scene of “Night.” The juxtaposition of different musical languages was surprisingly smooth—conductor Kazem Abdullah had a lot to do with that—but it was the polished, high-tech production, designed by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras, that unified the operas and kept the piece afloat as a theatrical evening even as its component parts varied in their effectiveness. 

As she does in her plays, Ms. Smith fashioned her libretto from interviews, often used verbatim. For “The Walkers,” she started with Chicago CRED, an organization that works with young people to reduce gun violence: Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of its founders, and Curtis Toler, a former gang leader who is part of its team, are characters in the opera. She deftly weaves their words and feelings into a fictional story of gang confrontation, while Mr. Roumain’s music, with its hip-hop rhythms and a trap set in the orchestra, vividly evokes the powder keg created by groups of posturing teenagers feeding on historical animosities and easy access to weapons. In this unsentimental, up-to-the-minute urban scenario, the liveliest posse leader is Chief’s Daughter #1 (Kearstin Piper Brown), fierce in a long pink wig and bright, skin-tight attire (Carlos J. Soto did the costumes), who gets wrongly accused by a rival group of shooting a child. 

Zoie Reams as Sibyl

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

Other standout performers included Issachah Savage as Toler—his aria wondering if his methods are really working was especially poignant; Norman Garrett as Bilal, a gang member newly released from prison; Ron Dukes as Chief’s Son #1; and young members of Uniting Voices Chicago. The most powerful performance came in the final scene, with Whitney Morrison as Yasmine Miller, a real person, recounting the killing of her toddler son, Sincere, shot through their car window as they were driving to a laundromat. Mr. Roumain’s setting of her colloquial speech is operatic but without artifice; the repeated words “he didn’t, he didn’t . . . make it” become the mantra that any mother might hear over and over in her memory.

“Four Portraits” is more abstract, depicting a couple—A (countertenor John Holiday) and B (baritone Lucia Lucas)—divided by technology. Ms. Shaw writes most persuasively for chorus, and here eight singers created a haunting cacophony of overlapping words, most of which were incomprehensible without the supertitles. In the best scene, “The Train,” they are B’s fellow passengers on public transportation, separate yet sometimes mysteriously coalescing into an ensemble. Mr. Holiday’s distinctive timbre was often drowned out in the chaos; Ms. Lucas’s voice sounded harsh in her Scene 3 aria about loneliness, as she drives a car accompanied only by a GPS (Corinne Wallace-Crane, processed to sound like multiple voices). The principals’ ill-fitting gray costumes did them no favors.

The company of ‘Proximity’

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY

“Night” was just obscure. Both the opaque text, in which a Sibyl sees the end of the world, and Mr. Adams’s music, for a soloist (Katherine DeYoung) and chorus, built on a repeating downward pattern, were oracular rather than gripping. 

The ingenious production rescued “Night” and helped weld the other two pieces together. The arced, quarter pipe-shaped set was illuminated from within by a changing panoply of brilliantly conceived LED images, ranging from Google Earth views of Chicago to streaks of colored light that resolved into landscapes, and, for “Night,” a glittering starscape. Along with this visual opulence, its tempos expertly calibrated to match the music, we got occasional closeups of singers, and the larger-than-life view of Ms. Morrison’s face made Yasmine Miller’s bleak anguish personal. 

***

On the same weekend, at the Harris Theater, Chicago Opera Theater presented the world premiere of “The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing” by Justine F. Chen and David Simpatico, the tale of the brilliant mathematician who broke the Nazis’ Enigma code during World War II, was prosecuted, convicted and subjected to chemical castration under Britain’s draconian anti-homosexual laws in 1952, and died, by suicide, at the age of 41 in 1954. It’s a tragic subject, but labored storytelling and pedestrian vocal writing make the opera’s dramaturgy sag, particularly in the interminable final scene, which insists, unpersuasively, that Turing has performed some kind of mathematical soul transmigration. 

The most interesting musical moments include what the creators term “chat clouds”—transition episodes in which chorus members recite random words, some of which eventually rise to the aural surface. The Bletchley Park scene features a lively ensemble, with Turing as a kind of lounge singer backed up by a music-hall sextet of cryptographers working to break the code.

The opera was solidly cast and produced, although the hard-working baritone Jonathan Michie could not quite make us feel for Turing and his insistence on being himself, no matter the cost. Tenor Joseph Leppek was lyrical as Turing’s great love, Christopher, who died at age 18; Taylor Raven’s sonorous mezzo and Teresa Castillo’s high soprano supplied some vocal contrast as Joan Clarke (Turing’s cryptographer colleague who is game for a marriage of convenience) and Sara, his mother. Lidiya Yankovskaya ably led the chamber orchestra. Benjamin Olsen’s clever design placed the chorus in an aerie above the playing area, masked by a scrim that provided a projection surface for the “chat cloud” words; below, director Peter Rothstein marshaled his cast amid changing set elements like Turing’s code-breaking machine, his bed, and his poison-littered kitchen table. Nora Marlow Smith’s costumes evoked the period; Paul Whitaker’s lighting enhanced the story’s ominous mood. 

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 the Seattle Opera, filmmaker Roya Sadat directs a timely but trite adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel, with music by Sheila Silver and a libretto by Stephen Kitsakos.

Maureen McKay and Karin Mushegain

PHOTO: SUNNY MARTINI

By Heidi Waleson

March 6, 2023 5:27 pm ET

Seattle

‘A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by composer Sheila Silver and librettist Stephen Kitsakos, which had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera recently, turned out to be more timely than its creators anticipated. Set in modern Afghanistan and based on the 2007 novel by Khaled Hosseini, the opera unfolds against the backdrop of several tumultuous decades of Afghan history, beginning in 1974, five years before the Soviet invasion, and ending in July 2001 with the country firmly in the grip of the Taliban. The story is about two women brutally subjected to Afghanistan’s patriarchal religious tradition, but both the book and the opera were written during the two decades of U.S. military presence in the country, when women were allowed to be educated and hold jobs. As the opera’s first production meetings were under way in 2021, however, the Taliban reasserted control, making the work’s themes immediate rather than historical. 

Mr. Kitsakos’s text deals efficiently with the complicated tale. Act 1 introduces Mariam, the illegitimate, uneducated daughter of a wealthy businessman, who at age 15 is forced to marry Rasheed, a much-older shoemaker, after her mother dies by suicide. Unable to bear the child her husband wants, she becomes his abused drudge, obliged to wear a burqa outside the house though many other women do not. 

In Act 2, many years later, she crosses paths with Laila, the 14-year-old daughter of her neighbor Hakim, a teacher. Laila, modern and educated, is romantically involved with Tariq, another teenager. It is 1992, and Kabul is now under constant bombardment by warring factions. Tariq and his family flee, and when Laila’s house is destroyed and her parents killed by a bomb, she is rescued by Rasheed, who sees her as another potential mother for his much-desired son. Secretly pregnant and persuaded that Tariq is dead, she agrees to marry Rasheed, despite Mariam’s fury. But when she gives birth to a girl, and becomes a new target for Rasheed, the two women develop a mother-daughter bond. In 1996, with the Taliban in control, their escape attempt is thwarted. Five years later, when Rasheed murderously attacks Laila, Mariam kills him with a shovel; instead of running, she stays behind and confesses to the crime so that Laila and her children can flee with Tariq, who is not dead after all. 

With so much time, plot, and the separate trajectories of the two central protagonists to cover, the opera’s dramaturgy starts to sag over its two 80-minute acts and the all-important emotional bonding of the two women, arriving late in the game, is more told than felt. There are plenty of arias, especially for the lonely, unhappy Mariam, and some lively ensembles—one for the three spiteful wives of Mariam’s father, another for women gossiping in the marketplace—but the music, though tuneful and vocally adept, is illustrative rather than gripping. 

Ms. Silver, who studied Hindustani music intensively in India, says that sections of the score are rooted in the scalar patterns of individual ragas; a nonspecialist ear can hear some of that influence in the vocal parts, particularly the occasional passages of repeated alternating notes. The inspiration is more obvious in the orchestration, with its drone underlays and the addition of some traditional instruments: The bansuri, a bamboo flute with a hauntingly breathy sound, sometimes paired with the celesta here, offers a distinctive color in mournful sections; tablas (hand drums) supply vigorous energy. 

Roya Sadat, the director, is an Afghan filmmaker best known for her 2017 feature “A Letter to the President,” which depicts a woman who kills her abusive husband in self-defense. Her adroit staging, with sets by Misha Kachman, costumes by Deborah Trout, and lighting by Jen Schriever, reflects some of the complexity of Afghan society and its changes over the years, including Western, cosmopolitan attire coexisting with headscarves and burqas in an outdoor marketplace. Dress is no predictor of liberalism, however: Both Rasheed and Mariam’s father wear business suits at her hasty wedding. The sets are on a turntable, allowing for easy alternation between Hakim’s house, with its bookshelves and sofa, and Rasheed’s more traditional interior, with its floor pillows. Cutouts of the mountains surrounding Kabul hang above, and the lighting stresses the city’s earth tones. 

Mezzo Karin Mushegain brought a grounded expressivity to Mariam; Maureen McKay’s soprano supplied a brighter timbre for Laila, though the vocal part occasionally verged into shrieky terrain. John Moore’s honey-tinged baritone slipped easily into appropriate roughness for the brutal Rasheed; tenor Rafael Moras was a passionate Tariq. Standouts among the supporting singers included Tess Altiveros, doubling as Mariam’s mother and a market woman; Ashraf Sewailamas a sympathetic Hakim; and Andrew Potter, whose distinctive height and booming bass made him instantly notable as a mullah, a soldier and Sharif, who deceives Laila about Tariq’s death. Viswa Subbaramanwas the astute conductor. 

The timing of this world premiere has certainly called attention to current conditions in Afghanistan, particularly as they relate to women and girls, yet the piece itself finally feels artificial and old fashioned, with all the complexities inherent in the region stripped away. Mariam gets her apotheosis—bathed in brilliant white light, she sings an aria rejoicing in her sacrifice as she awaits her execution—but she’s a throwback to the traditional tragic opera heroine who has to die. I was struck by the contrast with Ms. Sadat’s film, in which a professional woman’s effort to stand up to the entrenched web of patriarchal interests ends in her execution—in a way, the killing of her husband is just an excuse to punish her. The film is a serious examination of what it means for a woman in Afghanistan to actually be seen; the opera is basically a sentimental love story that doesn’t push the art form to its limits. 

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 director François Girard’s production of the operatic fairy tale, powerful turns from Piotr Beczała and Christine Goerke compete with a series of questionable design choices.

A scene from Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’

PHOTO: MARTY SOHL/METROPOLITAN OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

New York

The Metropolitan Opera returned from its monthlong hiatus on Sunday afternoon with Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” last seen at the house 17 years ago. Director François Girard conceived this new production as a sequel to his revelatory 2013 “Parsifal”—the connection being that Lohengrin is Parsifal’s son—but while there were visual links, it lacked the consistent vision and devastating impact of the earlier show. Instead, Tim Yip’s sets and costumes rendered the opera dark, claustrophobic and occasionally cheesy.

Based on medieval sources, “Lohengrin” is a fairy tale and a morality play. The virtuous Elsa has been falsely accused by Telramund and his wife, Ortrud, of murdering Elsa’s young brother, the heir to the Duchy of Brabant. King Heinrich orders a trial by combat, and a mysterious knight arrives to fight for Elsa and marry her. She agrees to his condition—she must never ask his name. But after the knight’s victory, the malevolent Ortrud successfully sows doubts, pushing Elsa to ask the forbidden question. His identity as a knight of the Holy Grail revealed, Lohengrin must depart, though the supposedly murdered brother is magically restored.

Other production choices are similarly questionable. Lohengrin first appears at the lip of the oval, with the chorus in the dark below him. It’s a dramatic pose, but dressed in the white shirt and black pants that the Grail knights wore in “Parsifal,” he looks like a bistro waiter. Designer David Finn bathes both Lohengrin and Elsa in blazing white light, which at least provides a contrast with the otherwise sepulchral illumination. For Act 2, we see the cave as if from above—the root-twined ground is now a vertical wall, with the cave behind it—and all the action takes place outside it. Again, the initial image is arresting, but the cave interior is soon blacked out, and the wall is placed so far forward that the stage becomes uncomfortably cramped once the enormous chorus files in. The dispiritingly gloomy bridal chamber of Act 3 is two downstage rock walls; a small vertical opening between them offers only a glimpse of dancing starry galaxies behind. (Peter Flaherty’s projections are one of the show’s better visual elements.) Eight female dancers, awkwardly choreographed by Serge Bennathan, accompany Elsa.

As Lohengrin, Piotr Beczała does not have Heldentenor ping and power, but his delivery was dramatic, eloquent and, most of all, humane—one felt his pity for Elsa in Act 3. As Elsa, Tamara Wilson’s ample soprano alternated effectively between innocent spaciness, steely resolve, and moments of radiance, such as her expressions of absolute trust in her rescuer. The biggest, plushest voice onstage belonged to Christine Goerke, who turned Ortrud’s poisonous manipulations into the opera’s main event. Evgeny Nikitin(Telramund) was vocally colorless; Günther Groissböck (King Heinrich) sounded harsh and edgy; baritone Brian Mulligan brought a fluent ease to the Herald. The chorus often lacked cohesion, a serious flaw in this chorus-heavy opera; perhaps they were too focused on their complex color-switching. Four onstage trumpeters added flourish, while in the pit Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a sensitive accompanist—no drowning out of the singers—and effective orchestral sculptor. The ethereal pianissimos were a special pleasure.

Mr. Girard’s minimalist directing for the most part left the storytelling to the set and the music. He did, however, have Ms. Goerke skulk around the stage during Act 1 and, during the prelude to Act 3, perform some extra sorcery to make sure that Elsa would get the job done. Perhaps this was a way to mitigate the opera’s essentially sexist premise (Elsa’s weakness wrecks everything), and it certainly set up the bridal-chamber scene, which Ms. Wilson played like a zombie propelled by outside forces. However, neither the political motivations nor the Christian vs. pagan themes of the opera coalesced into a coherent narrative, and the treatment of the human story remained cursory at best, with only Mr. Beczała’s compassion and Ms. Goerke’s venom shining through the gloom.

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). 

Composer and librettist Kate Soper’s inventive, uneven adaptation of a 13th-century French poem at Long Beach Opera explores the messiness of romantic love.

Laurel Irene and Lucas Steele

PHOTO: JORDAN GEIGER

By Heidi Waleson

Feb. 21, 2023 6:11 pm ET

San Pedro, Calif.

‘Le Roman de la Rose,” a 13th-century, 21,000-line poem written in Old French, is an allegorical anatomization of love, with forays into numerous other fields, including astronomy and predestination. The composer Kate Soper has cherry-picked elements from this exhaustive compendium, added new ones, and adapted the tale into her eccentric but basically operatic “The Romance of the Rose,” which had its world premiere by the Long Beach Opera at the Warner Grand Theatre on Saturday. Though wildly imaginative and studded with ingenious musical effects, “Rose” doesn’t jell into a coherent evening. 

The opera’s text is wide-ranging, including snippets of the original French version (mostly from the God of Love); Ms. Soper’s modern interpretations of the poem’s themes; and rose-centered verses by Tennyson, Christina Rossetti and others. Spoken dialogue is often used for zingers, such as Lady Reason’s “There is no such thing as ‘sad music’!” or the Lover’s bewildered “Wait . . . does that mean I want to have sex with a plant?” With nearly 2 1/2 hours of music and dialogue, the piece feels long and repetitive, overly reliant on words, particularly spoken ones, to make its points.

Bernardo Bermudez, Phillip Bullock, Tiffany Townsend and Tivoli Treloar (front)

PHOTO: JORDAN GEIGER

This is ironic, given Ms. Soper’s fertile musical imagination and wit. The combatants have distinctive musical identities: The God of Love often veers into his falsetto range, and there is reverb on his singing (everyone is miked); while Lady Reason, prone to scientific jargon, is accompanied by a vocoder, which creates a robotic underlay for her voice. Shame spouts obscenities in a dizzyingly jagged vocal line against loud and chaotic distortions and instrumentals. The techniques aren’t gimmicky, and Ms. Soper can turn them into comic moments and alluring sequences, such as Lady Reason’s diatribe about how music and love are “twin sicknesses” and her list of alternatives to romantic love, a catchy tune backed by marimba and saxophone. 

Historical forms, such as madrigals, offer the audience a taste of familiarity, though never for long. Ballad duets sung by the Dreamer and the Lover—a sweet one to a text from Shakespeare (“O Mistress Mine”) and a more intense paean taken from Tennyson—are rudely interrupted by Lady Reason and Shame, respectively. Idleness (Tiffany Townsend) and Pleasure (Bernardo Bermudez), the God of Love’s henchmen, duet on a delectable torch song, which is both sincere and a sendup. The orchestral accompaniment, a nine-person ensemble ably led by Christopher Rountree, is also pointed, judiciously allotting string solos, harp riffs, heavy guitar licks, and the Rose Theme itself, an insistent ostinato. 

Anna Schubert and Tivoli Treloar

PHOTO: JORDAN GEIGER

The capable singers were game for the opera’s extended techniques; a standout was Ms. Schubert, who made Lady Reason’s robotic insistence affecting as well as comic, especially in Act 2, when she dresses up—and then strips down—to seduce the Lover into the camp of rationality. Mr. Steele made an appealing narrator, but his voice lacked the warmth that the opera singers could summon, so a lament like “A rose once blown must die,” which concludes Act 1, lost some poignancy. 

The set, designed by Prairie T. Trivuth, suggested minimal resources—white walls, a few plants, and doorframes hung with colored streamers could only hint at a dream pleasure garden. The rose itself, marooned on a platform in the middle of the audience, remained stubbornly out of reach until the Lover secured it in Act 2 and then dismembered its paper petals. Molly Irelan’s costumes relied heavily on bright colors and shimmery lamé; Pablo Santiago’s lighting was unsubtle, going from flat to lurid pink or orange in an instant. Director James Darrahworked hard to shape the opera into a narrative arc, but the form resisted his efforts. For all its invention, “Rose” came across as an exercise in cleverness. 

Ms. Soper ventures regularly into these waters. Her witty vaudeville chamber piece, “Here Be Sirens,” for female trio and tortured piano, produced in New York in 2014, similarly plumbed old texts and mythologies, but was tighter and more effective. Her new chamber opera, “The Hunt,” in which three virgins, passing time in a meadow, await the appearance of a unicorn, will have its premiere at New York’s Miller Theatre in October. But exhilarating as it is to channel archaic lore into modern dress, the operatic form itself demands theatrical consistency that goes beyond adroit amusement. 

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). 

This year’s edition of the adventurous showcase includes an intimate double bill by Irish composer Emma O’Halloran and a dazzling, uncategorizable work by Gelsey Bell that spans geologic time

A scene from ‘Morning//Mourning’

PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

By Heidi Waleson

Jan. 10, 2023 7:18 pm ET

With the 10th anniversary season of the Prototype Festival under way, it’s hard to imagine artistic life without this annual January showcase for adventurous opera/music theater. Launched in 2013, this collaboration between Beth Morrison Projects and HERE has given a wide range of young composers a New York stage on which to experiment with subjects and forms. Over the years, Prototype has birthed two Pulitzer winners (Du Yun’s “Angel’s Bone” and Ellen Reid’s “p r i s m”), welcomed unusual European fare like the choral “Toxic Psalms” and the savage “4:48 Psychosis,” and presented breakthrough works like David T. Little’s “Dog Days,” David Lang’s “anatomy theater,” Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves” and Gregory Spears’s “Fellow Travelers.” Forced into the digital sphere by the pandemic in 2021, Prototype came up with the ingenious multicomposer work “Modulation”; and although the live 2022 festival was canceled at the last minute due to a resurgence of the virus, the producers got Taylor Mac’s “The Hang” and Huang Ruo’s “Book of Mountains and Seas,” both gems, onstage.

This year, one of Prototype’s discoveries is the Irish composer Emma O’Halloran, whose double bill “Trade/Mary Motorhead” had its world premiere on Saturday at the Abrons Arts Center. Ms. O’Halloran’s distinctive musical style meshes acoustic and electronic sound in a way that makes it hard to separate one from the other. The effect—brutal and gentle by turns—suited her subject matter, two short plays by her uncle Mark O’Halloran that explore the inner lives of some damaged, frustrated people. 

Naomi Louisa O’Connell as the title character in ‘Mary Motorhead’PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

Mary Motorhead (Naomi Louisa O’Connell) is serving an 18-year prison sentence for murdering her husband; in “Trade,” the Older Man (Marc Kudisch) and the Younger Man (Kyle Bielfield), both of whom are in heterosexual relationships, meet for paid sex. All are Irish working class, and one gathers from their halting speech that they are unused to articulating their feelings. Yet Ms. O’Halloran’s vocal settings, and especially her orchestral accompaniments, help push those feelings to the surface in all their awkwardness. It’s 21st-century verismo, using psychological revelations instead of physical violence as dramatic catalysts. 

“Mary Motorhead,” a 30-minute monologue, is the slighter piece, and Ms. O’Connell, with her rich mezzo, seemed a bit too polished for the tough young woman whose desperate need for connection is expressed as anger: She explains that she stabbed her husband in the head “to see if he’s in there.” Unlike Italian verismo, the musical setting doesn’t afford the listener distance from the stark rawness of emotions and deeds. Rather, the rock ’n’ roll thrust of the electronics pushes the story’s sense of brutal inevitability. 

---

“Trade,” twice as long, delves deeper into the inner lives of the two men, their feelings about being both fathers and sons, and for each other. In their slow, uncomfortable process of self-explanation, fueled by many cans of “shite” beer, Ms. O’Halloran’s music fills in the blanks, finding both the brittle aggressiveness of the Younger Man, who discovered at age 14 that he could make easy money having sex with “auld fellers,” and the tentative but luminous tenderness that the Older Man feels for him. Skillfully directed by Tom Creed, Mr. Bielfield’s haunting tenor created an enormously poignant character, his monosyllabic profanity just a cover for his terror, while Mr. Kudisch’s slow burn gradually revealed a superficially macho man longing to be understood. 

Marc Kudisch and Kyle Bielfield in ‘Trade’

PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

Jim Findlay’s simple sets—a wall with a central door that never opens for “Mary,” a faceless room with only a bed and chair for “Trade”—acted as canvases for Christopher Kuhl’s lighting: a violent spotlight for “Mary”; giant shadows and pastel colors in “Trade.” Montana Levi Blanco did the evocative costumes, though one wondered why Mary got to wear goth gear in prison. In the pit, NOVUS NY, conducted by Elaine Kelly, created a vivacious sound world. 

“Morning//Mourning,” which had its premiere on Friday at HERE, exemplifies what makes Prototype essential: It’s a home for the uncategorizable. This alluring work by the polymath artist Gelsey Bell—she wrote the music and the libretto, served as music director, and created the arrangements in association with her four singer/player fellow performers—is a 90-minute meditation on what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared from Earth. Part scientific exposition, part imaginative flight of fancy, “Morning//Mourning” plays with time, flipping our knowledge of geologic eras into the future, beginning with tiny spans—“Within the first hours”—and ending with vast ones, “At 42 million years.” 

The musical flow sweeps the listener into those stretches of time, whether it’s a haunting, five-voice canon about bristlecone pines on a windy ridge (5,000 years); a joyous explosion of bells, xylophone and harp as new life forms begin their journey at 241,000 years; or a sweet, accordion-accompanied reminiscence about odd things that humans did. Sonorities can be unexpected. Ms. Bell and her fellow performers—Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Justin Hicks, Aviva Jaye and Paul Pinto—play a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, and vocalize in speech, syllabic noises, ululations, choral settings, and the occasional operatic flight. The text, set clearly and evocatively, has plenty of wit: Listeners can track the evolution of a new intelligent species, the Blooklungs, from their origin as octopuses making their way onto land into beings capable of traveling into outer space and living there. 

The message is serious, but not tragic. One late section is titled “Nothing Lasts Forever,” and at 1.6 billion years the last bacteria on Earth die. The wordless “Mourning,” which begins the piece, is a short-term affair; “Morning,” which ends it, suggests the infinite possibilities of galactic time and space. 

Simply and powerfully staged by Tara Ahmadinejad, with scenic design by Afsoon Pajoufar and lighting by Masha Tsimring in a semicircular space, the five storytellers move among the sculpted stations that hold their instruments. Marbles, symbolizing years, are added to a bowl at the center; in one long section, played in an almost complete blackout, the performers face upstage, watching lanterns behind a scrim blink on and off. The piece could be trimmed slightly, but overall, its clarity accentuates its emotional impact.

A scene from ‘Undine’

PHOTO: UNDINE TEAM

The same cannot be said for “Undine,” a 30-minute animated opera film, with music by Stefanie Janssen, Michaël Brijs and Richard van Kruysdijk and directed by Sjaron Minailo, available as a stream for free. It’s the story of a mermaid addicted to plastic who interferes with the lives of three humans, but the piece is bewildering unless you read the synopsis first, and even then. Ms. Janssen’s high vocals are intriguing, as is the visual depiction of the multi-tentacled mermaid, but the anti-plastic message went over my head. Still, that’s the beauty of Prototype—it takes opera experimentation seriously, even if not every experiment is a success.

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). 

Appeared in the January 11, 2023, print 

Umberto Giordano’s 1898 verismo work has a creaky plot but an engaging score, beautifully delivered by soprano Sonya Yoncheva in a handsome new production at the Metropolitan Opera

Sonya Yoncheva

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

Jan. 4, 2023 5:26 pm ET

Umberto Giordano’s “Fedora” (1898) proved to be perfect New Year’s Eve fare at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night. It’s relatively short; the creaky plot is melodrama rather than tragedy; there’s a party scene; and it’s a splendid verismo showcase for the right soprano—in this case, Sonya Yoncheva. David McVicar’s handsome new production offered plenty of eye candy and kept the entertainment level high without cheesy overreach. With the early (6:30 p.m.) curtain, the crowd could head out at 9 for their own festive dinners and Champagne toasts after the heroine expired. 

Arturo Colautti’s libretto is based on a play by Victorien Sardou, who also provided the source material for Puccini’s “Tosca.” “Fedora” makes less sense. The title character is a Russian princess. In Act 1, which takes place in St. Petersburg, her fiancé, Vladimir, is murdered, supposedly by Nihilists (a violent political group of the period), and she swears to avenge him. In Act 2, at a grand party in Paris, she seduces the accused killer, Count Loris Ipanoff, into a confession. While Loris is off getting proof of justifiable homicide, Fedora dispatches a letter to St. Petersburg condemning him. Loris returns with a different letter (the opera has quite a few) that proves that Vladimir was having an affair with Loris’s wife and was marrying Fedora for her money. Shocked at these revelations, Fedora transfers her affections to Loris. Alas, that letter to St. Petersburg will return to haunt the lovers in Act 3, in which they have decamped to Switzerland. Things don’t end well. 

Ms. Yoncheva, elegantly swathed in sumptuous period gowns by Brigitte 
Reiffenstuel, managed to make Fedora’s questionable choices persuasive. In Act I, she was every inch the imperious aristocrat, her imposing soprano declaring rapturous adoration of a man who, it is clear, she barely knows. (We’ve already heard his servants briskly discussing his unsavory habits.) The seduction scene of Act 2 was perfectly manipulative, and her headlong tumble into passion, vigorously and idiomatically paced by conductor Marco Armiliato, made for a complete—and exciting—reversal. In Act 3, her voice turned lush and imploring as she begged for forgiveness, a convincing prelude to her inevitable suicide. 

As Loris, tenor Piotr Beczała had less to do—he doesn’t even appear until Act 2. His delivery was more stentorian than lyrical, which was particularly noticeable in the opera’s brief hit tune, “Amor ti vieta,” but he made a fine dramatic foil for Ms. Yoncheva. There were numerous other engaging musical moments as well, since Giordano and Colautti laced the melodrama with fun and novelty. The Act 2 party took off with a merry waltz; later, the French diplomat Giovanni De Siriex (Lucas Meachem) and Fedora’s flirtatious cousin Olga (Rosa Feola) traded teasing arias—he describes Russian women as tough Cossacks; she declares that French men are as ephemeral and headache-inducing as Veuve Clicquot Champagne. Both singers imbued their spotlight moments with élan. 

The party also features a Chopin-esque piano solo (performed by Bryan Wagorn, resplendent in a long blond wig, as Olga’s current paramour), which cleverly accompanies the Fedora-Loris seduction. Other notable soloists were Jeongcheol Cha, as Vladimir’s coachman Cirillo, offering halting, poignant testimony about the shooting, and Luka Zylik, as a peasant boy, who sang a hauntingly dissonant folk tune, accompanied by concertina, making a striking contrast to the volcanic emotional explosions of Act 3. 

Mr. McVicar skillfully balanced playfulness and histrionics. Charles Edwards’s detailed set designs combined grandeur with sleight-of-hand: Elements of each act’s set remained in the subsequent ones, reminders that the past is never gone. The ghost of Vladimir also haunted the production, both in his portrait, hanging on a wall at stage left, and in person. That physical ghost made for an effective staging of the dreamy Act 2 Intermezzo, giving Fedora and Vladimir—whom we never see together alive—a mimed love scene; Fedora’s subsequent switch to Loris was thus all the more startling. 

Adam Silverman’s atmospheric lighting emphasized the different tones of the acts: The gloomy, heavy reds of Vladimir’s sitting room in Russia; the breezy white curtains in Paris; the bleached-out mountain in Switzerland that faded into blackness for the denouement. Ms. Reiffenstuel’s costumes were always perfectly apt to the moment, be it somber or silly, from the coachman’s huge fur coat and hat to Olga’s blue silk lounging pajamas and the bloomers in which she sets off on a bicycling adventure. 

“Fedora” was last staged at the Met in the 1996-97 season as a vehicle for soprano Mirella Freni. It is symbolic of another age of opera production and attendance, when an unfamiliar title, featuring many of the favorite musical and dramatic hallmarks of better-known turn-of-the-century Italian operas, could be slotted into the subscription season and please the audience. Today, this production, even with its splendid cast and staging, seems like something of a dinosaur.

The Met recently announced that it will increase the percentage of contemporary titles in future seasons, since new works like “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “The Hours” have actually been outselling warhorses. Novelty matters, particularly now that the company depends heavily on single-ticket sales—subscriptions have dropped to less than half of what they were two decades ago. The Met’s brand has always been grand traditional operatic entertainment, performed for an audience that returned every year to see many of the same spectacles or related ones, and willingly paid premium prices. With that business model under heavy pressure, a pure diversion like this “Fedora”—if revived when it is no longer New Year’s Eve and with a less starry cast—might well show its C-list cracks. And in a repertory house that needs a lot of titles—23 this season—it’s hard to predict what might take its place. 

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).