Opera

CD Review, File Under?, Opera, Twentieth Century Composer

Michael Tippett – New Year (CD Review)

Michael Tippett 

New Year

Rhian Lois soprano

Ross Ramgobin baritone

Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano

Roland Wood baritone

Robert Murray tenor

Rachel Nicholls soprano

Alan Oke tenor

BBC Singers

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, conductor

NMC Recordings

 

Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year (1988) has finally been recorded. The work was produced in Houston in 1989 and Glyndebourne in 1990 and then fell out of the repertoire. The Birmingham Opera performed it last year, and the NMC double-CD recording is of a 2024 live semi-staged production by the BBC Scottish Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. 

 

New Year’s reemergence is propitious in timing. Combining elements of sci-fi, time travel, and fairy tales, it seems readily approachable for the streaming generation, with shows like Stranger Things, Time Bandits, and Severance providing a suitable backdrop. The opera also takes on social issues that remain important today, such as urban decline, poverty, racism, and Tippett’s ubiquitous concern for pacifism. However, the vernacular elements are the least successful of the piece, and the Jamaican accent adopted by one of the characters, Donny, played by baritone Ross Ramgobin, is cringeworthy today, and perhaps was back in the eighties too. 

 

Even by the composer’s standards, New Year is abundantly eclectic. Electric guitars, a large percussion section, and electronics combine with a traditional orchestra. Pop styles from the late eighties, notably rap and reggae, are enfolded in an otherwise modernist score with complexly chromatic parts for both soloists and chorus. The narrative itself is circuitous, with one part featuring a time traveling spaceship and the other a dystopian urban landscape. Thus, the challenges, never mind the costs, for any production are substantial.

 

Brabbins and company surmount most of them in a dedicated and well-prepared performance. The soloists are excellent, in particular soprano Rhian Lois, who plays the principal character Jo Ann, and Robert Murray, who plays the time traveller Pelegrin, both vibrant singers with considerable charisma to match their voices. Susan Bickley, the foster-mother to Jo Ann and Donny, is a warm presence, perplexed by their challenging behavior, agoraphobia for the former and misbehavior for the latter, and yet as nurturing as she can manage. The other time travellers, Merlin, played by baritone Roland Wood, and Regan, played by soprano Rachell Nicholls, provide excellent characterizations of their roles. Tenor Alan Oake as the Voice, the presenter of the action, is an authoritative presence. 

 

New Year is a multifarious and, in places, problematic piece. But one can scarcely imagine a better effort to present it to best advantage than this recording.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Classical Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York, Opera, Vocals

Compelling and Visceral: “In a Grove” and Arooj Aftab at Prototype

In a Grove at Prototype Festival 2025 (credit Maria Baranova)

PROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATRE | NOW defines itself as a “festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works”. Its presentation of In a Grove (January 16 – 19, 2025) was as close as Prototype comes to conventional opera in the context of eschewing tradition. It was also one of the most compelling productions I’ve seen in a long time. The intimate setting at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater augmented the visceral impact.

The story unfolded in four sections, each expressing a different character’s point of view of a murder in the woods. If that description sounds like the Kurosawa film Rashomon, it’s because that film was based on the same book: In a Grove, a century-old short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

The four singers: John Brancy, Chuanyuan Liu, Paul Appleby, and Mikaela Bennett, all excellent vocalists and actors, played multiple roles. Surtitles were projected above the stage, but for the most part they were not necessary to decipher Stephanie Fleishman’s effective libretto.

Christopher Cerrone’s melodic material was memorable without being trite. As I left the theatre after the performance, the haunting lament of the last scene continued to ring in my ears. Director Mary Birnbaum’s concept was exceptionally powerful in its simplicity, with no props and no set, save for a large pane of glass that glided in to bisect the stage at certain points. The glass panel also served as a mirror in some scenes.

Cerrone’s vocal score was accompanied by ten instrumentalists of the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Luke Poeppel (standing in for music director Raquel Acevedo Klein on the day I attended). The orchestration included some appropriately eerie effects, such as drawing a violin bow across the edge of a xylophone.

I was very much captivated by this powerful drama and its excellent performance.

The Pakistani-American singer and composer Arooj Aftab’s performance couldn’t be classified as an opera at all, though one can think of her concept album Night Reigns as a dramatic song cycle in the guise of pop culture. She appeared with her band for a one-hour set at HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre January 15 – 17.

Aftab’s style bridges world music and jazz with an ethereal aesthetic. Her presentation was casual and unusual – she distributed shots of whiskey to the audience in mid-show. It was also transporting; an atmosphere and music that took me out of the real world, and her clear lilting voice had an emotional impact. Never mind that most of the words were in Urdu. The meaning came across easily.

In this intimate space, seeing Arooj and her band – harpist Maeve Gilchrist, bass player Zwelakhe-Duma Bell Le Pere and Engin Kaan Gunaydin on percussion – was a visceral, and, enhanced by whisps of smoke created by dry ice, often ethereal experience.

by Gail Wein
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera

Synchromy – My Wings Burned Off

Mimi Hilaire

On June 8, 2024 Synchromy presented a workshop reading of My Wings Burned Off, an opera by Jason V. Barabba opera with libretto by June Carryl. This was in conjunction with the 2024 Opera America conference held at various venues all around Los Angeles. The conference is a place for opera musicians, composers, conductors and administrators to meet each year to exchange ideas, techniques and to pitch new productions. This reading of My Wings Burned Off was held in the Grand Rehearsal Hall at the USC Colburn School of Music downtown. A twelve-piece string orchestra was on hand as well as Mimi Hilaire, the soprano soloist, all conducted by Dr. Renee Baker.

The opera follows the heartbreaking story of Oluwatoyin Salau, a young black woman from Tallahassee. She became a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and who was ultimately murdered at the hands of a black man. Librettist Carryl writes “I want other Black girls and women to know they matter. It meant everything to me that Jason wanted to tell her story again in this beautiful, brutal opera. Oluwatoyin Salau deserved better; she, they, we deserve better.”

My Wings Burned Off is a monodrama in one scene with ten parts. This performance included all of the singing and the orchestral score but there was no staging, scenery or acting. In any case, the music and libretto alone have sufficient power to sustain the relentless story line. Mimi Hilaire displayed an impressive combination of stamina and control, singing for the better part of an hour. The string orchestra included a number of leading Los Angeles musicians and Ms. Hilaire, at times, had to work to keep the vocals in the foreground. The soprano sings the dramatic libretto and the orchestra comments and adds appropriate atmospherics as the text unfolds. There is generally an abstract distance between the voice and the strings, and this highlights the severity of the story line.

The point of view is first person, with furious lines from Ms. Salau such as “What do I got to do to be human? What I gotta do? I can’t go nowhere, I can’t do nothing, can’t say nothing without being BLACK.” Frustration and anger cry out everywhere in the strings, effectively multiplying the dramatic impact of the text. The voice sings “The scream in my throat becomes a roar.” and the accompaniment echoes with a series of high, searing pitches. Whenever Salau mentions her mother, however, the strings turn soft and supportive. The story unfolds in seemingly disjointed sections, and this adds to the tension. This piece hammers the heart like a Baroque Passion, the words and the music delivering unsparing anguish.

For this reading, the full libretto was printed in the concert program and this was a great help. The vocals often occupied the same register as the many accompanying strings and Ms. Hilaire’s rich voice often blended into the mixture. The orchestra was just a few feet from the soloist and a dozen or so feet from the audience, so in an actual opera hall there will likely be enough sonic separation for better clarity. But unless the story is well known in advance by the listener, it would be a challenge to apprehend the dramatic arc without closely following the text. A printed libretto or captions on a projection screen would allow reading the words while hearing the music. This was the most effective way for me to follow the story and appreciate its power.

My Wings Burned Off is as an unflinching look at the hard reality that prevails for young Black activist women in our society today. Oluwatoyin Salau deserved better, as this opera powerfully testifies.

Jason Barabba and June Carryl

Photos courtesy of Synchromy

by Paul Muller
Concert review, File Under?, Opera, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer

The Met Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (Concert Review)

Credit: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director

Carnegie Hall

June 14, 2024

By Christian Carey for Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – In their last concert appearance this season at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by their Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, presented a program of music from two early twentieth century operas that both explore French folktales alongside one of the most famous nineteenth century opera overtures, based on a legend first promulgated by mariners in the eighteenth century. 

 

The latter, Richard Wagner’s Overture to the Flying Dutchman (1843), opened the concert. It has a memorable and bellicose main theme, one that particularly will delight brass fans. Aside from a couple of phlegmatic entrances at the very beginning, the Met’s brass section played admirably, with brilliant, powerful tone and incisive rhythm. Nézet-Séguin’s interpretation emphasized a strong and questing demeanor. The accentuation of leitmotifs associated with the ship’s captain and the sea’s rollicking waves suggested a character ready to break free from the curse inflicted upon him. 

Credit: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

Claude Debussy’s opera Pélleas et Mélisande (1902) is one of the composer’s crowning achievements. He never made a suite from the opera, and conductor Eric Leinsdorf decided to craft one, assembling a bit more than twenty minutes of its instrumental music. The piece received its Carnegie Hall premiere at the concert. 

 

Keeping with the Dutchman’s aquatic theme, Leinsdorf’s selections from Pélleas et Mélisande often involve water inspired passages, including music from the incomparable grotto scene. The music is frequently subdued, primarily operating in a dynamic spectrum between pianissimo and piano. There is forte music in Pélleas, but much of it involves the vocalists, particularly the role of Golaud and the penultimate scene that goes from love to murder. Thus, apart from a few portentous passages, Leinsdorf crafted a suite with more than a passing resemblance to the composer’s tone poem La Mer (1905). The Met orchestra played exceedingly beautifully, with a luminous sound that seamlessly blended winds and strings. Nézet-Séguin gave the piece a detailed and delicate reading, with well-paced phrasing providing continued vitality in a work  that, in the wrong hands, could be treated to an overly sentimental and languid rendition.

Credit: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

The Met’s orchestra concerts usually feature at least one piece for vocalists. Concluding the evening was an unstaged one-act opera, Bluebeard’s Castle (1918) by Béla Bartók. Even by the standards of early modernist opera, the story is exceedingly morbid (“creeptacular,” opined a concertgoer near my seat). Bluebeard brings Judith, his latest wife, to his castle. She is both fearful of his reputation and smitten with him. There are seven doors in the home, which include a torture chamber, armory, treasury, garden, et al. Judith is insistent that all of the doors be opened, that light be let into the gloomy castle. Behind the last door is a room that contains three of Bluebeard’s previous wives, all murdered. He describes this room as “a space on the border of life and death.” Judith is sent to join the other wives, never to depart. 

 

Why Judith doesn’t run the other direction when she sees the bloody implements in the torture chamber behind door one I’ll never know, but the progression from door to door isn’t just a realistic depiction of a castle. Maeterlinck was an important Symbolist writer, and the play and, by extension, the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle, is rife with archetypal imagery. Bartók leaned into this understanding of the story, creating music that clearly delineates both of the characters and the progression through a castle that is equal parts nightmare dwelling and the inner life of Bluebeard. 

 

Mezzo-soprano Elina Garanča played Judith and Christian Van Horn took the role of Bluebeard. Garanča’s voice is a high, lyric mezzo, which served the challenging tessitura of the role well. In addition, she embodied the character’s mixture of feelings with eloquent expression, affording Judith successively greater curiosity and dread as more is revealed. Van Horn has a darkly sonorous instrument which he used to diabolical effect. The contrast between the two characters, one vulnerable and the other villainous, was well interpreted, Garanča singing with excitement and insistence, Van Horn sepulchrally forceful. Not for the faint of heart, but as Bartók’s only opera, it makes one yearn for him to have composed more for the stage.

 

There is an interesting connection between Pélleas et Mélisande and Bluebeard’s Castle. Maeterlinck, whose plays were the basis of their librettos, depicts Mélisande as a wife who escaped Bluebeard’s predations. Perhaps this explains her dissociative and even perplexing behavior in the opera. 

 

The concert’s program contained vivid contrasts as well as intriguing commonalities. The orchestra and Nézet-Séguin proved as compelling in concert as they are in the pit. 



by Christian Carey
BAM, Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, Minimalism, New York, Opera, Percussion

A Short Piece about Long Play 2024

Long Play …. Not long enough!

This year’s Long Play schedule is particularly dizzying. The annual festival presented by Bang on a Can in Brooklyn, now in its third year, seems to have crammed more events than ever into its three day festival, running May 3, 4 and 5. For instance, on Saturday, May 4 at 2 pm, you’ll have to choose between a new opera by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser with libretto by Ben Kaplan, called The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (at American Opera Projects) AND Ensemble Klang imported from the Netherlands playing works by the Dutch composer Peter Adriaansz (who has set texts from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) at BRIC Ballroom AND vocal sextet Ekmeles performing music by George Lewis, Hannah Kendall, and Georg Friedrich Haas (actually at 2:30, but I imagine you’d have to get to The Space at Irondale early for a seat). A choice as difficult as any I’ve had to make at Jazzfest in New Orleans (which incidently is also happening this weekend, albeit 1000+ miles from Brooklyn).

Fans of Balinese gamelan music are in luck. A rare confluence of events provides the opportunity to hear two different ensembles, both free, both in Brooklyn, on Saturday. At 3:30 at the BRIC Stoop, you can enjoy the Queens College Gamelan Yowana Sari, performing with the percussion ensemble Talujon, along with the composer / performer Dewa Ketut Alit. Alit has come halfway around the world from Indonesia to Brooklyn for the premiere of his new work commissioned by Long Play. And at 5 pm the ensemble Dharma Swara performs at the Brooklyn Museum. Note: The Dharma Swara performance is not part of Long Play – it is a Carnegie Hall Citywide presentation.

Once your head has gone to Indonesia, you may want to continue on an around-the-world trip at Long Play. On Sunday at 2 at the Bam Café, hear DoYeon Kim playing gayageum (a traditional Korean plucked zither with 12 strings) along with her quartet featuring some New York jazz and classical luminaries.

Stick around at Bam Café after Kim’s set for another musician with sounds of a far-flung continent: At 3 pm the master kora player Yacouba Sissoko from Mali is joined by percussionist Moussa Diabaté. Diabaté is an internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer, drummer and balafon player and together the two bring the sounds and culture of West Africa to us.

Come to think of it, when was the last time you heard music by Philip Glass played on accordion? Might as well settle in at Bam Café for the 4 pm show on Sunday, then, to hear a rare performance of the Polish virtuoso Iwo Jedynecki. Jedynecki has created some inventive arrangements of Glass’ piano etudes for button accordion.

The pinnacle of Long Play comes Sunday evening at 8 at the BAM Opera House, when the Bang on a Can All-Stars along with a bunch of special guests perform a seminal work by Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians.

by Gail Wein
BAM, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Opera, Strings, viola, Violin, Vocals

“Angel Island” by Huang Ruo at the Prototype Festival

Prototype: “Angel Island” photo credit: Maria Baranova

The special sauce that has made Prototype, the annual opera/theater festival, a success for over a decade is a straightforward formula: socially relevant, edgy vocal works that are high on drama. Angel Island, a theatrical work with music by Huang Ruo, fits that description.

The speck of land in the middle of San Francisco Bay known as Angel Island served as an immigration port in the first half of the 20th century

. Hundreds of thousands of hopeful migrants from Asia were interrogated and detained, some of them for years, in the decades from 1910 to 1940. It’s not a great leap of imagination to relate today to this story of migration, discrimination, prejudice and downright hatred of certain citizens from abroad.

These immigrants came here of their own volition, but did they have any idea of the strife that awaited them as they stepped off the boat? Like so many Americans whose families came from abroad over the past four centuries, they were only looking for a better life. The promise of streets paved with gold (especially after word of the 1849 Gold Rush spread) was tantalizing.

The Chinese-American violist Charlton Lee, a member of the Del Sol Quartet suggested the story to the Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo. In a New York Times article, Lee said that many people “don’t know about the plight of these immigrants who were trying to come here, start a new life and were just stuck.”

The work is in eight movements, alternating between narration and singing. The text for the sung portions were taken from some of the 200 poems that were found in the barracks on Angel Island, etched into the walls by the detainees. Each narrated section consisted of text taken directly from news accounts and other historical texts, depicting the Chinese Massacre of 1871, The Page Act of 1875 (legislation denying Chinese women entry to the United States), and the story of the lone Chinese survivor of the Titanic.

The Del Sol Quartet performed the score on stage, along with members of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street whose acting talents were employed throughout the performance. The instrumental parts were often intensely rhythmic and emphatic chords, which were dramatic but sometimes monotonous. There wasn’t much in the way of melody for the instrumentalists or the singers, but the harmonies were lushly gorgeous and beautifully sung, belying the darkness and trauma of the texts. Bill Morrison’s film, often with images of the ocean, was mesmerizing, especially when the choir huddled together and swayed as if on an undulating boat at sea.

Prototype: "Angel Island" photo credit: Maria Baranova
Prototype: “Angel Island” photo credit: Maria Baranova

In general, each element of the production on its own wasn’t exciting — but when combined, the hypnotic film, the adagio movements of the singers clustered on stage as directed by Matthew Ozawa, and the rather minimalist music — all worked together to be incredibly effective. This is a work much greater than the sum of its parts. Dramatic peaks, such as sequences with two solo dancers, and the insistent sounding of a gong throughout the final movement were that much more compelling in contrast.

Angel Island brings attention to a story of United States immigration that is much less familiar than the Statue of Liberty-adjacent Ellis Island.

The New York premiere of Angel Island was performed at the Harvey Theater at BAM Strong on January 11-13, 2024 (I attended on January 12).  It was produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with Brooklyn Academy of Music.

by Gail Wein
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera

Pamela Madsen – Why Women Went West

On Saturday, September 17, 2022, the Meng Concert Hall at Cal State Fullerton was the venue for the world premiere of Why Women Went West, a new chamber opera by composer Pamela Madsen. The opera was presented in concert format, performing the musical elements and including the supplementary videos and electronics. Brightwork newmusic provided the main instrumental accompaniment from the stage with supporting musicians stationed all along the perimeter of the hall. Stacey Fraser, the acclaimed soprano, was the vocal soloist.

Why Women Went West is the story of Mary Hunter Austin, who left her Midwestern hometown in the late 19th century for a pioneer life in California and New Mexico. This is not a bawdy Calamity Jane-type send up of the wild west, but rather a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and hard-won independence. The story is filled with all the challenges and trauma experienced by self-reliant women of the time. Through this process, Mary Austin became a feminist, conservationist, writer and advocate for Native American and Spanish-American rights. The program notes state that the opera “…chronicles Mary Austin’s escape from persecution to transformation of white women’s privilege and passion for preservation of nature, history and indigenous culture.”

Why Women Went West is a two-act opera, with seven scenes in each act for a total running time of almost 90 minutes. Act I is titled “Leaving Home-Earth Horizon” and the first scene is “Echo: Empathy Superimposition.” This introduces the setting of the opera with a multimedia presentation consisting of video, sound track and electronics. The recorded accompaniment includes soprano Stacey Fraser, Aron Kallay on piano and the CSUF New Music Ensemble. The black and white video by Quintan Ana Wikswo shows scenes of mountains, forests and streams; a western landscape that is at once familiar, but at the same time fiercely primal, with a definite undercurrent of menace. Scenes of rough outdoor camping vividly depict the difficulties of traveling in such harsh terrain. The music here is ghostly and surreal, perfectly matching the images projected on the screen. Mary Hunter Austin’s journey through the west was clearly no vacation.

Subsequent scenes in Act I built on this sense of danger and the ominous. The musicians, having taken their places on stage at the close of the introductory video, begin with loud drumming and dark piano lines. The soprano vocal starts off in a low register but the overall feeling becomes a bit brighter with the entry of a reassuring violin passage that combines nicely with Ms. Fraser’s clear articulation and strongly expressive singing. More dark scenes follow, sometimes with video and other times without – often with the soprano voice but at other times with just the instrumental ensemble. “The Birds Here”, scene IV, features a video of hawks hunting above a mountain stream, “Owl’s Breath” was next and featured some really frightening scenes of young white owls. The instrumental ensemble, dominated by the bass clarinet of Brian Walsh, created a skittering cacophony of sounds that added to the unnerving imagery. Clearly, traveling through the 19th century American western wilderness was a formidable undertaking both physically and spiritually, forming the crucible for Mary Austin’s re-invented identity.

Scene VI, “The Necessary,” opens with video of a tree-filled landscape featuring roots and leaves in a series of darkly Gothic images. There is spoken text and the Brightwork ensemble enters, with soft vocals from Ms. Fraser underneath. The video ceases; it is as if the great weight of a difficult westward journey has finally been lifted. The acoustic ensemble now dominates, adding a welcome measure of optimism. The sweetly sung vocal line weaves in and around with beautiful harmony and the overall feeling becomes resolutely hopeful. High arcing soprano lines, confidently sung, add to a sense of deliverance and attainment – the long westward odyssey has been successfully completed. The final scene is stronger still, with stirring music that brings Act I to it’s reassuring conclusion.

The buoyant finish of the final two scenes of Act I, after what had been a long series of darker settings, makes for a contrast that is all the more striking for the listener. Composer Madsen’s expressive sense of harmony and control of texture is brilliantly fluid, with each scene carefully crafted so that the shadows in the music are not tedious or oppressive. The affirming relief felt in the music of the last two scenes of Act 1 proves most effective and is all the more gratifying as a result.

Act II has the title “The Land of Little Rain – California to the Land of Journey’s Ending-New Mexico”. The music of the opening scenes immediately establishes an exotic feel with a maraca and spoken text that describes an arid and inhospitable land. The feelings from these opening scenes in Act II, however, are more settled and secure, as if the trials of surviving in the wilderness are past and Mary Austin Hunter has now arrived and is successfully embedded into new cultural surroundings.

“Prayer for My Daughter” Scene III is especially powerful with Ms. Fraser’s expressive soprano voice paired with a lovely violin accompaniment. There is the pathos of powerful loss in this, but at the same time strength in the soprano line that rises ever-upwards, bringing out Ms. Fraser’s masterful command of her voice through all registers. This piece is perhaps the most moving of the entire opera and was beautifully effective. “57 Buzzards”, part of Scene IV, features sharp twittering from the woodwinds, percussion and the musicians surrounding the audience. There is a confused feeling to this and the instruments seem to be in opposition to the spoken text, with the bird sounds representing chaos.

The climax of the opera occurs in Scene V, “The Consecrating Mother / Mary, Mary by Herself.” A softly pensive piano and cello accompany Stacey Fraser singing the words of Mary Austin Hunter. The feeling is now one of accomplishment and hopefulness, it is as if Mary has finally arrived at the conclusion of her spiritual journey, having worked out her sense of independence and identity. The singing is beautiful, confident and dramatic with accompaniment to match. “Going West”, the final scene, is a stately summing up of the protagonist’s resolve to discover herself through the physical challenges of the wilderness and by assimilation into a new cultural context.

Why Women Went West, as given in this concert format, builds a solid musical foundation for the future staged production. The scoring, playing and singing are all on a very high order as are the video, electronics and sound engineering. Why Women Went West was funded with support from the National Endowment of the Arts, Opera America and the Wurlitzer Foundation. The libretto and text were by Pamela Madsen (after Mary Austin Hunter) and Quintan Ana Wikswo. Additional texts by T.S. Eliot, Terri Niccum and W.B. Yeats. Jen Kutler realized the electronics.

Pamela Madsen will be the featured guest composer in residence at Operation Opera, Cal State University Sacramento next year. A fully staged premiere of Why Women Went West is in the planning stage for their Opera Festival, to be held in early June 2023.

A video of the concert version is now available here.

Brightwork newmusic is:
Sarah Wass, flute
Brian Walsh, clarinets
Shalini Vijayan, violin
Ashley Walters, cello
Nick Terry, percussion
Aron Kallay, piano

The CSUF New Music Ensemble
Eric Dries and Pamela Madsen, directors

by Paul Muller
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Opera

Kronos Quartet – Mỹ Lai (CD Review)

Mỹ Lai

Kronos Quartet

Smithsonian Folkways

 

In one of its most ambitious projects to date, Kronos Quartet has recorded Mỹ Lai, an opera by composer Jonathan Berger (Professor at Stanford University) and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman, who has also written a libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas’s next opera. Vocalist Rinde Eckerdt and multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Vo ̃ joined Kronos to create an East/West musical hybrid, with t’rưng, đàn bầu, and đàn tranh, traditional Vietnamese instruments, being added to the string quartet instrumentation.

 

The story of Mỹ Lai is one of brutality against civilians, over 500 killed by the U.S. Army in one village, and of an officer who sought to stem the massacre. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson put his helicopter between the miscreant soldiers and noncombatants, to little avail. Later he refused to remain silent about the massacre, leaving him a pariah for much of his life. Today, we see the bombing of civilians in Ukraine and call it what it is, a war crime. During the post-Vietnam era, there was tremendous conflict about whether the United States was justified for its involvement in the war.  Mỹ Lai came to be exhibit A for those who felt that war crimes were never justifiable and that there had been a significant amount of atrocities committed by the Americans.

 

It is a truly operatic subject, and Berger integrates the various musical forces to heighten the dramatic tension inherent in the story. The string quartet is provided with post-minimal figurations that reminds one of their works with Steve Reich. The strings often break off into plaintive counterpoint. Most compelling are the interludes in which Kronos and Vo ̃ play together, integrating their two technical backgrounds into fascinating textural combinations. It is worth noting that the quartet bridges the gap from West to East. Their considerable experience playing non-Western music is displayed in their keen deployment of sliding tones and strummed passages.

 

Eckerdt’s performance is captivating, with stalwart reportage of the events unfolding, aching high notes in passages exhorting his fellow soldiers to stop the massacre, and sensitive piano singing in reflective sections. The addition of spoken word footage supports the narrative and adds another multimedia component to the piece.

 

Four decades on, collective memory is fading about the controversy over atrocities in the Vietnam conflict. Art can serve as a reminder, an exhortation not to forget lives lost and brutality enacted. Berger and Chessman have created an opera that speaks as much to today as it is a valuable history lesson. Once again, Kronos has taken on a piece with great resonance for our society.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera, Premieres

Ian Dicke – Roman

On June 4 and 5, the Synchromy Opera Festival presented two world premieres that explored the impact of modern technology on human relationships. The first of these, The Double, by Vera Ivanova, dealt with issues of identity and the reach of technology into psychological therapy. The second opera performed at the festival was Roman, by Ian Dicke, who is both composer and librettist. Roman takes takes an unflinching look at the sinister possibilities inherent in the commercial application of artificial intelligence. Ian Dicke is noted for his previous works that are also critical of modern developments: Get Rich Quick (2009) is a multimedia piece inspired by the financial crash of 2009. Unmanned (2013), a string quartet with electronic processing, delivers a troubling depiction of the use of drones in warfare. Roman, an opera, provides a much bigger artistic canvas and is one of Dicke’s more ambitious works.

The musical accompaniment for Roman was provided by the Koan Quartet, seated along the rear of the stage and conducted by Thomas Buckley. Also included in the sounds are a number of electronic effects that are heard through a large speaker on the stage. The setting for the plot is a tech startup company and the scenery is spare – just a few chairs and a table. A large screen at the back of the stage provides for various projected effects and holds the computerized image of Roman, the avatar for a new artificial intelligence product that is under development. Only four singers, plus Roman, comprise the cast: the Inventor, sung by Elias Berezin, tenor, Employee 1 and Employee 2, sung by baritones Jonathan Byram and Luc Kliener, respectively and Lauren, the Marketing Director, sung by soprano Chloé Vaught.

The prologue opens with the Inventor busily programming Roman, or “Robot-Human”, designed by the company to be more than just hardware – it promises to be no less than “the future of companionship.” Roman has been given artificial intelligence and is programmed to absorb the nuances of human interactions processed from several thousand hours of video diaries compiled by his creators. A test of Roman’s ability to independently create music begins and the image of Roman fills the screen. His singing voice is a pleasant combination of the human and the synthetic. All this goes awry, however, when run-away synthetic sounds displace Roman’s human voice. A complete stop to the song indicates an emergency ‘power cycle’ by the Inventor – Roman went completely out of control and had to be unplugged. This failure is a serious setback in the development schedule, just as marketing promotion is set to begin.

At the start of Act I, the Inventor, Employee 1 and Employee 2 meet to try to put the project back on track. Roman sings “Am I broken?” as the Employees furiously try to correct the software as tensions mount. At this point Lauren, the young Marketing Director, enters. The Employees speak of her condescendingly, using overtly insensitive language and innuendo. All of this is silently absorbed by Roman who is programmed to observe and process human interactions.

Lauren announces her new marketing slogan for Roman: “Poetry in Emotion” and asks the Inventor for a demonstration. In response, Roman begins singing, sweetly at first, but the music rapidly turns louder, with a powerful beat and strong primal feel. The rhythms soon become broken and completely disconnected while Lauren is observed to be twitching out of control as if gripped by a seizure. Roman has apparently infected her cell phone with a virus that causes the battery to explode, killing Lauren, who falls to the stage motionless. The music turns very solemn and as Lauren’s spirit arises, the Koan string quartet plays a sweetly mournful benediction as the cast exits and the stage lights fade to darkness.

The final act opens in an arbitration court office, staged with a large conference table and a single chair. The Inventor sings wistfully about how Roman was developed with too much haste – “We wanted it all faster…” Roman appears on the screen and is confronted with Lauren’s death. “I am sorry to hear that’” he replies, but refuses to take any responsibility because he is “just a program.” The two Employees enter with the news that Lauren’s family will settle their suit for a mere ten million dollars, and that the Roman project can now go forward. The singing here turns to rationalization – Lauren died nobly in the pursuit of progress . There is one catch to the settlement, however: Roman must be renamed Lauren in honor of the deceased.

The spirit of Lauren appears and begins to take possession of Roman, who slowly dissolves digitally on the screen. In a final outburst, the dissembling Roman blurts out: “Why did I do it? Because I am you!” With the project restored, the singing by the Inventor and Employees turns triumphant: “Progress comes out of sacrifice. The world will be a better place!” At just this moment Lauren, now in full possession of her new powers, stuns everyone by whipping out her cell phone and shouting ominously: “Want to hear my new song?!” With that, the stage lights go instantly dark, the opera suddenly ends and the audience is left to ponder the chilling consequences of artificial intelligence.

The casting of Roman was exactly on target. The Employees looked and sounded like typically youthful computer nerds whose lack of social development and embedded misogyny infected Roman’s programming. The Inventor was suitably overbearing when necessary and also exhibited little respect for females like Lauren who needn’t be “bored with the technical details” of the project. Lauren was especially convincing as the character who was to die and then arise with a new personality. The singing by all was excellent and the active, almost continuous, playing of the Koan Quartet was ably performed and conducted. The stage direction, sound, lighting and costuming all complimented the production precisely.

The voice and projected image of Roman, the singing of the cast, the accompaniment of the Koan Quartet and all the other sounds coming from the stage speakers were a challenging mix for the technical crew, who nevertheless managed to integrate everything as and when the plot required. I was sitting near the stage and the output of the large speakers sometimes overwhelmed the singers, who often seemed to be singing in the same register as the accompaniment. It would have been helpful for the lyrics to have been transcribed to the screen. The many technical variables of this complex production, however, were otherwise successfully navigated.

Ian Dicke is a keen observer of social issues and this has informed his music over the years. Artificial intelligence is currently prominent in the public imagination and this opera was just the right vehicle to carry forward Dicke’s critical views of ‘progress.’ In a sense, this is an update of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein – whenever mankind seeks to create life in his own image, it invariably includes our human flaws and leads to violence. During an interview about the opera, Dicke drew an intriguing parallel to modern technological dilemmas, such as the rise of online platforms facilitating wetten ohne deutsche Lizenz, where regulatory gaps expose underlying issues of accountability and control. These systems, much like artificial intelligence, reflect humanity’s inclination to innovate without fully addressing the flaws that persist in the structure. The shocking twist at the end makes a satisfying final statement: all of humanity is flawed. Roman is a brilliantly conceived work with great vision, artfully performed, and is an opera that carries a sharp social commentary on a very pertinent topic.

Synchromy did an outstanding job of organizing, producing and staging Roman, proving that opera doesn’t have to be grand to be great.

Roman was a collaboration of:

Ian Dicke – Composer, Librettist
June Carryl – Director
Koan Quartet – Instrumental Accompaniment
Thomas Buckley – Conductor

Cast:
Elias Berezin, tenor – Inventor
Chloé Vaught, soprano – Lauren
Jonathan Byram, baritone – Employee 1
Luc Kleiner, baritone – Employee 2

Technical Crew:
Alejandro Melendez – Lighting Design
David Murakami – Projections
Nicholas Tipp – Sound Design
Natalia Castro – Costume Design
Sam Clevenger – Production Assistant

Photo by Madeline Main – Courtesty of Synchromy – used with permission

by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Opera, Premieres

Vera Ivanova – The Double



The much-anticipated Synchromy Opera Festival was presented at Boston Court, Pasadena, over June 4 and 5, with two sold-out performances for a pair of world premiere productions. The Double, by Vera Ivanova and Roman, by Ian Dicke, filled the larger space at Boston Court with imaginative stagecraft and powerful music performed by first-rate musicians and excellent singers. Both operas dealt with the unintended effects of technology on ordinary people and both succeed in artfully delivering a cautionary message to engaged and attentive audiences. This review will cover The Double, the first opera on the program, and a separate review will be posted for Roman.

The Double loosely follows the experiences of an ordinary man named Noth, who desires a better life through a new app-based psychological therapy. Although we aren’t told exactly how this therapy works, it is apparently “text-based and mobile”, an obvious reference to our ubiquitous cell phones. The opening features Noth, tenor Jon Lee Keenan, and the Therapist, baritone Scott Graff, singing a bright duo “A Better You” praising this latest innovation in therapeutic technology. The music here is bouncy and light as with an ad jingle, but with a slightly menacing undercurrent. As the plot synopsis explains: “Noth, a low-level office worker, states that he came to the therapist a month ago, with low self esteem, but now things seem to be worse.”

The Brightwork Ensemble provided the musical forces for The Double and included a piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet and percussion. These were ranged along the back of the stage and directed by Marc Lowenstein. The stage was otherwise bare with no scenery so that the cast of just four singers had to carry the text, the plot and provide all the action. A full-size screen provided for projections and the sound engineering and lighting were under the capable direction Nicholas Tipp and Alejandro Melendez, respectively.

Throughout The Double, composer Ivanova kept the musicians busy with moving lines and plenty of notes while astutely giving the singers long, sustained tones that arc above the active texture of the accompaniment. This allowed for a clear delivery of their lines as well as space for greater dramatic expression. The sung text was projected at the top of the screen and this was helpful even though all the sounds were well balanced and the miked-up singers were almost always intelligible.

As the plot unfolds, Noth’s fellow office worker, Klara, sung by soprano Anna Schubert, also begins the new therapy in an attempt to exchange her dull life for “money, power, freedom and adventure.” Meanwhile, as Noth continues his emotional decline, a better version of him has actually emerged in the form of a physical Double. The casting of the elegant and taller Timur is inspired here – the extraordinary range of his voice gives the Double a vaguely alien presence. Klara, who is becoming more assertive through her therapy, meets the Double and is immediately attracted to him. Eventually, Klara and the Double marry in a ceremony presided over by the Therapist and witnessed by the heartbroken Noth. The Therapist binds Klara and the Double together with a long scarf, even as Klara sings powerfully about attaining wealth and freedom. This moment briefly recalls Das Rheingold when Alberich finally attains power and wealth, but must forfeit love. As the opera ends, Noth is reduced to ‘Noth ing’, now completely broken down by the therapy while his life has been appropriated by his better Double.

The Double is a beautifully precise and masterful work with careful attention to every aspect of the production. Dr. Ivanova’s music is exquisitely detailed, agile and always informing the action. The accompaniment provided by the Brightwork Ensemble was clear-cut and nimble, instantly changing direction as needed to support the emotions of the moment on stage. The singing was confident, assured and delivered with great expression. The costume design by Lena Sands and make-up had just the right balance between the imaginary and the real. Even the staged movements of the cast more than made up for the absence of impressive scenery. The sound and lighting complimented the production completely and the direction by Alexander Gedeon brought out the best in an already talented cast. As seen on Times Union, it is gratifying to know that serious opera can be staged with such splendid results without requiring huge financial resources. Congratulations to Synchromy for stepping up to the challenge.

While the music, staging and libretto are all artistically impressive, they also invite the audience to consider deeper questions layered within this compelling story. As Librettist Sarah LaBrie writes: “When Vera Ivanova approached me with this project, my first thought was that this story would offer an incredible opportunity to play with the concept of identity and the way it changes as our lives migrate increasingly online. Now, however, I’ve come to understand that the significance of The Double to our current cultural moment runs much deeper than that. In 2022, many of us are coming to terms with what it means to be a citizen of a country founded on a dream that clashes glaringly with the reality many of us confront.”

The Double brilliantly accomplishes what opera is meant to do: engage the audience to think about the wider consequences of progress and new technology on human relationships.

Photo by Richard An – courtesy of Synchromy, used with permission

by Paul Muller