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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.)

MORE OPERA REVIEWS

• ‘Treemonisha,’ ‘Susannah’ and ‘Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra’ Reviews: Fatal Love and Outcasts’ AriasJune 27, 2023
• ‘Dido and Aeneas’ Review: Roman Tragedy in BarcelonaJune 20, 2023
• ‘Die Zauberflöte’ Review: The Met Humanizes Mozart’s FantasyMay 22, 2023
• ‘Don Giovanni’ Review: Ivo van Hove’s Grim Mozart at the MetMay 8, 2023

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).

Henry Purcell’s moving Baroque opera features William Christie with Les Arts Florissants in a production at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, directed and choreographed by Blanca Li, that is both stylish and sometimes confusing.

By Heidi Waleson

June 20, 2023 5:13 pm ET

Ana Vieira Leite, Kate Lindsey and Renato Dolcini, with a dancer in the foreground

PHOTO: PABLO LORENTE

Barcelona

Baroque opera productions headlined by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants have stopped traveling to New York now that BAM and Lincoln Center are no longer bringing over these kinds of elaborate classical-music offerings from Europe, so I was glad to have the opportunity to catch Les Arts’ typically stylish staging of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu on Saturday. Mr. Christie teamed up with director and choreographer Blanca Li, plus six dancers from her company, and visual artist Evi Keller, whose work is built around “Matière-Lumière,” a fusion of matter and light. The result read like an art installation animated by music and dance, intriguing if sometimes confusing. 

The small instrumental ensemble, with Mr. Christie leading from the harpsichord, occupied one side of the stage. Ms. Keller’s abstract décor was a trio of glowing, textured metallic drops; everything was sepulchrally lighted by Pascal Laajili. “Dido” is short, so the evening got a prelude: Purcell’s ode “Celestial Music Did the Gods Inspire,” its solos and choruses eloquently sung by a nine-member vocal ensemble and enacted by the alternately sinuous and acrobatic dancers. The work, which describes the power of music while invoking figures of antiquity and mythology such as Virgil and Orpheus, is a more cheerful piece than “Dido.” It managed to make its point, despite the shadowy lighting and Laurent Mercier’s all-black costumes, which made the singers disappear into the gloom.

In Nahum Tate’s “Dido and Aeneas” libretto, based on an episode from Virgil’s “Aeneid,” Dido’s love story is brief. Aeneas, the Trojan hero, arrives in Carthage; he and the queen fall in love and have a passionate one-night stand; the gods, embodied by the malevolent Sorceress, insist he depart to found Rome; Dido, betrayed, kills herself.

Here, the three principal characters in “Dido” were part of the décor: looming statues, perhaps some remnants of antiquity. They stood on tall, rolling pedestals, so tightly wrapped in metallic foil that matched the backdrops that they could only move their arms, shoulders and heads. When they were pushed downstage to sing, their wrappings glowed. Movement was left to the chorus and the dancers, who were on stage almost continuously.

As a result, one focused intently on the vocal qualities of the singers, especially mezzo Kate Lindsey, a profoundly expressive Dido. In her first aria, “Ah! Belinda, I am pressed with torment,” every anguished line had a different vocal color. Her ferocity as she commanded Aeneas, “Away, away,” seemed to explode from her body, and in her final lament, her soft singing of the repeated line “Remember me” conveyed a woman dissolving in grief. 

Mr. Dolcini and dancers

PHOTO: PABLO LORENTE

Ana Vieira Leite brought a gentle supportiveness to Belinda, Dido’s confidante. Bass Renato Dolcini made a regal Aeneas who managed to make his regret at deserting Dido persuasive. But the choice to have him double as the Sorceress was questionable. With just a bit less light to indicate that he was now someone else, the switch was confusing, and he didn’t capture the Sorceress’s vocal harshness and cackle. By contrast, the ensemble singers Maud Gnidzaz and Virginie Thomashad all the necessary spite and gleeful viciousness as the two Witches; Jacob Lawrence also shone as a jaunty Mariner. 

Along with the ensemble singers, the dancers flowed around the pedestals, sometimes literally evoking the emotions of the characters; at others, forming a kind of moving classical frieze, albeit in contemporary black costumes, which they changed depending on the scene. At the end of Act 1, the rejoicing dance as Dido and Aeneas got together had explicit choreography for couples in bathing suits. The more abstract movement sometimes came across as visual filler—intriguing to look at, but not indicative of anything other than looming tragedy. Some of the most striking sections had the dancers sliding prone across the floor, which was wet. The best use of this technique was in the funeral chorus at the end, as the dancers twined their bodies together to make a boat and rowed somberly across the stage, as if crossing the Styx. 

In contrast to the visual gloom of the staging, Mr. Christie and his eight players were vivacious. Felix Knecht, the excellent continuo cellist, kept the pulse with verve; the flute and oboe players, Sébastien Marq and Pier Luigi Fabretti, brought a piquant airiness to the score. At times, the different genres in the show were at odds: When the Sorceress called up demons from the underworld, the dancers, writhing in diaphanous tulle skirts, were all in, while the ensemble, singing their echoing curse, “In a deep vaulted cell,” were not nearly creepy enough. But every time Ms. Lindsey sang, even though she was almost entirely motionless, the dancers seemed irrelevant.

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).

Simon McBurney’s production of “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera is an unusually nuanced yet still playful rendition of the fairy tale.

By Heidi Waleson

May 22, 2023 6:51 pm ET

Lawrence Brownlee and Erin Morley

 PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

New York

Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” (“The Magic Flute”) is often staged as a fun fairy tale, playing to its magical and ritual elements; the Metropolitan Opera’s colorful Julie Taymor production is a prime example. Director Simon McBurney’s interpretation, which had its Met premiere on Friday, takes a different approach. Devised in collaboration with Complicité, Mr. McBurney’s London-based theater company, the production—first presented in Amsterdam in 2012—strips away the fantasy while retaining a sense of playfulness. It creates an onstage world that includes the audience by inviting it behind the scenes and offers a nuanced, human perspective on characters who can often come across as one-dimensional. 

There’s a lot going on, and Mr. McBurney makes us work and pay attention to sort out what is happening. The house lights are still up when the overture begins; there’s almost no color in the sets and costumes. The orchestra pit is raised so that the musicians are visible and involved in the action, while a walkway between the pit and the audience allows characters to enter from the house. We see the theater effects as they are being made: On one side of the proscenium, Blake Habermann, a visual artist, chalks and erases simple figures and words that are projected on scrims; on the other, Ruth Sullivan, a Foley artist, creates amplified sound effects such as rain, thunder and clinking bottles. Twelve black-clad actors supplement the singing cast. 

All this activity is purposeful: It allows the audience to share the disorientation of Tamino, Pamina and Papageno as they wander through a strange environment, fearful and not knowing whom to trust. The central element of Michael Levine’s industrial set is a large platform that hangs by four wires from girders. It moves up and down, tilts, and swings precariously, forcing the performers, who may be on it or under it, to fight for balance amid almost perpetual instability and looming threat. Jean Kalman’s lighting emphasizes shadows while Nicky Gillibrand’s monochromatic costumes, such as the severe business suits for Sarastro and his followers, provide no reassurance. 

Thomas Oliemans (center)

 PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

The production visually unifies the disparate scenes of this strange journey; still, the overall effect is theatrical and spirited rather than grim. Actors shake pieces of paper to represent Papageno’s birds; flutist Seth Morris climbs out of the orchestra to play Tamino’s solo tune, making animals dance via Mr. Habermann’s live drawings and Finn Ross’s projections. Brief comic bits are tossed off: The fleeing Pamina and Papageno, relieved at being rescued from Monostatos by the glockenspiel solo, try frantically to shush the trumpet player who stands up to play Sarastro’s entrance music. Amid such intimate, homemade moments, a coup de théâtre has more force: For the trial by water, Tamino and Pamina are suddenly suspended, swimming, in midair. 

Nathalie Stutzmann’s crisp, authoritative conducting built a steady dramatic arc while giving the excellent singers expressive freedom to create personalities. Lawrence Brownlee’s tenor sounded slightly harsh in Tamino’s rhapsodic aria about Pamina’s portrait, but his forceful delivery ably demonstrated the character’s confusion and resolve. In his most striking moment, he stood before Sarastro’s temple (a giant projection of a row of books) with the flute in one hand and a gun in the other, asking in despair if Pamina “has been sacrificed already.” Erin Morley’s exquisitely pure soprano bloomed in Pamina’s arias and ensembles. Papageno, the comedian, invariably has the most activity of the principals, and Thomas Oliemans, dressed in tattered outdoor gear and toting a stepladder, carried it all off with gusto, aided by a warm, appealing baritone. He also wandered into the audience in search of Papagena, followed by Mr. Habermann’s video camera. 

Kathryn Lewek and Ms. Morley

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

The opera’s two principal antagonists had more depth than usual in this staging. Kathryn Lewek’s Queen of the Night was old and weak—hobbling with a cane or slumped in a wheelchair—but she deployed her coloratura as if it were her only remaining weapon, while bass Stephen Milling, an imposing presence in shoulder-length silver wig, made a complex, not very comforting Sarastro. Ashley Emersonwas a lusty Papagena; Brenton Ryan a conniving Monostatos, rather like the office sneak. Alexandria Shiner, Olivia Voteand Tamara Mumford played the Three Ladies as enthusiastic soldiers/seducers; Harold Wilson was an officious Speaker; Richard Bernstein and Errin Duane Brooks doubled effectively as the Priests and the Armed Men. The Three Boys—Deven Agge, Julian Knopf and Luka Zylik—came across as a weird combination of ancient and unborn. The Met Chorus was impressive as Sarastro’s devoted entourage. 

Everything works out in the end, and the welcoming ethos of the production is pervasive. For the finale, Sarastro and the Queen, atypically, were reconciled, and the whole cast crowded the stage apron, as if to join the orchestra and the audience. The Metropolitan is an enormous theater, and the yawning expanse of the pit usually feels like a barrier moat. On Friday, the house felt intimate, as though we were part of the show, and the new, better world that is supposedly born at the end. 

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 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).