The Great Globe Itself: The Tempest Songbook

Photo (c) Gotham Chamber Opera

Gotham Chamber Opera's latest project, The Tempest Songbook, continues to explore the possibilities of unconventional spaces and unconventional programs that the company has made its hallmark. The results were musically and theatrically thought-provoking, and left me wanting more. A co-production with The Martha Graham Dance Company, the evening's program was directed and choreographed by Luca Veggetti. The narrative of The Tempest is so deliberately surrealistic that I found the resistance of narrative in the program engaging, rather than the reverse. To this Shakespeare aficionado, the interpolations by Dryden sounded strange, but it was these interpolations that much of the 1712 incidental music, attributed to Henry Purcell, was designed to set. The Purcell and Kaija Saariaho's 2004 Tempest Songbook for soprano, baritone and period instrument ensemble intertwined in fascinating ways. In this version, it was receiving its world premiere, and I loved the textures of harpsichord, recorder, and archlute (archlute!) in Saariaho's unconventional harmonies. It was at Saariaho's suggestion that the two pieces appeared thus interwoven, and the dialogue between them was musically rich and intellectually stimulating.

The creative set design was by Clifton Taylor. It seems almost a misnomer to call it minimalist, so richly multivalent was the globe that hung elegantly suspended by ropes reminiscent of the fated ship's rigging. Video projections onto it, by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, were skillfully used to evoke globes of the kind so beloved at the courts of early modern Europe, with seas and continents shifting under maps of the zodiac, charts of the stars. Images of the singers and dancers also often appeared there, mirroring and amplifying the action on the stage. The music of Purcell and Saariaho appeared in alternate sections throughout most of the evening, with a suite of Saariaho's songs in the second half of the hour-long program, which was performed without intermission. From a fairly straightforward presentation of the initial scenes of The Tempest, with the panic and anger of the Bosun, and the terror and sorrow of Miranda, the structure became increasingly impressionistic, with Saariaho's music allowing Ariel and Caliban (for instance) much more time than the source material gives them.

La hija de Rappaccini: Opera in the Garden of Good and Evil

Elaine Alvarez as Rappacini's Daughter
(c) Gotham Chamber Opera/Richard Termine

Gotham Chamber Opera has made a specialty of presenting unusual opera in unconventional spaces. Their production of Daniel Catán's early work, La hija de Rappaccini, creatively uses modest resources in the luxurious setting of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The libretto is both more profound and more enigmatic than the Hawthorne story that forms its original source material. Juan Tovar, working from material by Octavio Paz, crafts an elliptical parable about humanity and nature, about humanity and the divine, which asks at least as many questions as it answers. The biblical imagery in which it is steeped was not always reflected in the surtitles. The last thing we need may be one more operatic heroine whose "tragedy is also her transcendence," to quote Gregory Moomjy's program note, but the eponymous Beatriz possesses a dignity and clear-eyed wisdom which are at least some consolation. This run of performances is given in a reduced orchestration by the composer of his 1988 opera.. Two pianos, timpani, and harp create an eerie soundscape, their knowledge of events and emotions often preceding that of the characters. The characterization through the score is also very strong, and as the passions of the principals set them on a collision course, the orchestra expresses their doom and sympathy with their doom. Gotham's musicians (including Andrea Puente Catán on the harp) were led by Neal Goren in a strongly atmospheric performance.

Eliogabalo: eccomi trasformato

That Francesco Cavalli's Eliogabalo survives at all is something of a historical improbability. The experienced and popular operatic composer penned the work late in his career, but it was never performed. Was it too musically old-fashioned? Too politically subversive? Scholars have labored over these questions without achieving consensus (more information here.) It was this trail of scholarship that led Gotham Chamber Opera to the work, replete with erotic and political scandal, which is now being performed to capacity audiences at The Box. In other words, seventeenth-century Venice interpreting third-century Rome gets an environment strongly reminiscent of the seedy sensuality of Isherwood's Berlin. I was intrigued by the venture's approach to showing New York City audiences past decadence(s) through the venues and aesthetics of our own. The results of this enterprise, however, were mixed. The baroque-punk aesthetic of Mattie Ulrich's costumes (with more than a hint of burlesque about them) I thought inspired. James Marvel's direction of the on-stage antics, however, was crude and unsubtle, doing a disservice to Cavalli's sophisticated treatment of sexual power games played--often with desperation--by all of the characters. The burlesque dancers had, in fact, the choreography most expressive of eroticism and control. Almost completely lost in the indiscriminate lasciviousness was the debate, prominent in Aurelio Aureli's libretto as in its seventeenth-century context, on whether or not the iniquities of a tyrant ever absolved his subjects of their loyalty to the person of the king. (An honorable exception to this was the transformation of burlesque dancers into the Furies who haunt Alessandro as he meditates on the conflict between passion and duty, surrounded by the mockery of multiple mirrors.) Despite the largely two-dimensional direction, the singers performed with admirable commitment, although musical matters were also somewhat uneven. Still, caveats and cuts notwithstanding, I was glad for the chance to encounter this rarity of the operatic repertoire.

Orientale: Orientalism goes meta with Monteverdi

Gotham Chamber Opera's advertisement of "an evening of music at the intersection of East and West" had me concerned as well as intrigued. Who would be constructing whom, through what? Would Edward Said be horrified? In the event, the evening at Le Poisson Rouge was both entertaining and provocative. By rejecting an ordering according to chronology or the origin of the composers, the program highlighted the artificiality of the atemporal "Orient." Moreover, the costuming (Zane Pihlstrom) and choreography (Austin McCormick) placed exaggerated emphasis on the abandoned sensuality and transgressive sexuality which have, historically, flourished as characteristics of the imagined Orient. The dancers of Company XIV wore fantastical costumes mixing men's and women's, Near Eastern and European articles of clothing, and adding elements of contemporary burlesque for good measure. There were moments where I wondered uneasily if the audience was aware of where all these ideas were coming from and why they appeared in the form they did, but I was fairly certain the artists were.* Opening with Lully's "Marche pour le cérémonie des Turcs" followed by the Armenian piece "Asparani Bar" gave a good aural introduction to the musical languages of the evening. The Maya trio contributed several Armenian pieces throughout the evening, playing with considerable beauty and spirit. Their expressive range was impressive, and their rich, dynamic playing carried an implicit challenge to a Western audience's aural habit of associating certain minor harmonies and lilting rhythms with a range of dramatic and emotional values limited by Orientalist constructs.

"Clorinda dies in Tancred's arms,"
Bernardo Castello

Fitting centerpiece of the evening was Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, that gorgeous Venetian creation--complex, compact, and indubitably sexy--based on Tasso's magnificent epic, Gerusalemme Liberata (I really like this translation.) Race, sex, gender, and religion are all hot topics in this excerpt, where the Norman warrior Tancred and the Ethiopian (but blonde... it's a long story) warrior Clorinda fight to the death, in the dark, Monteverdi and Tasso protesting a little too much that these fierce and breathless embraces are not at all like those of lovers. (And the deadly foes are in love with each other; the accidental incognito of darkness is their undoing.) All of this is chronicled in full-blooded verse thrillingly set;Gotham's early instrument ensemble contributed exciting work. Michael Kelly, as the narrator, sang with a bright and flexible baritone, making his figure's powerless compassion truly poignant. His sensitivity to text was also admirable, and crucial, as Monteverdi's vivid writing encompasses lyrical emotional expression and urgent onomatopoeic syllables. The roles of the warrior-lovers were sung by Maeve Höglund and Zachary Altman, and danced with furious intensity--and passion bordering on the obscene--by Sean Gannon and Cailan Orn. If it didn't seem like unutterable presumption, I could wish Monteverdi had set more stanzas. Rounding out the evening were selections familiar and unfamiliar.

From Monteverdi's eighth book of madrigals, Kelly and Altman gave "Se vittore sì belle," celebrating the piece's (homo)eroticism. (Altman's rendering of the Schumann lied "Aus den östlichen Rosen" was disappointing, its sense lost in strange vowels.) An account of Delibes' very familiar "Sous le dôme épais" was pleasingly langorous and tender, mezzo Naomi O'Connell accompanying Höglund. Höglund replaced the indisposed Jennifer Rivera in Bizet's slightly less famous "Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe" as she had done in the Monteverdi, with a warm, shimmery tone. Laura Careless danced the piece with an eroticism so flagrant as to seem a defiance to the beholder. Szymanowski's "Allah, Akbar, Alla" from Piesni muezina szalonego was an intriguing discovery, piano and soprano intertwining in a manner both ecstatic and dreamy. Embracing the nebulous quality of dreams was John Hadfield's world premiere, oniric [sic; oneiric.] The percussion was played by the composer; Marisol Cabrera danced flamenco. Spain: the other Orient! The inclusion of this was, I thought, an interesting way of highlighting how Europe has created its "others." The mood of the evening, however, remained resolutely ludic, concluding with Rameau's exuberant "Regnez, plaisirs et jeux!"

The program will be performed again on October 3.

*Note: Unless I misheard his introductory spiel, though, Neal Goren collectively identified the pieces as a "celebration of the music of the East by Western composers." Um... celebration is hardly the word, surely. Appropriating? Refashioning? Making up out of whole cloth? And Karol Szymanowski, incidentally, did not identify as a Western composer (his writings on nationalism, internationalism, and identity in music are fascinating, and some of them may be found in translation here.)

Il Sogno di Scipione: con lieto sembiante

The Dream of Scipio (Raphael) 

A Roman general's allegorical dream, and portents of his future glories, might not initially strike contemporary audiences as engaging matter for an evening at the opera house. The same might be said of a young man's anxieties about romantic liaisons and professional ambition (or lack thereof.) Dexterously interweaving these narratives, however, Christopher Alden's production of Il Sogno di Scipione for Gotham Chamber Opera is a sleek, savvy, and quite funny take on this early Mozart opera. Appropriately, the lines between reality and fantasy are frequently blurred, and the most fantastic occurrences-- dead ancestors emerging through an Ikea wardrobe--could carry a weight of real psychological significance. The heroes of the heavenly realms are reimagined as a chorus of the down-and-out, forgotten men and women whose uncompromising courage offers an object lesson in how to treat Fortuna and Costanza. The latter, here, are two attractive and powerful women, strongly characterized. My one serious quibble with the production was its reliance for the basis of these characterizations on somewhat tired "bad girl"/"good girl" stereotypes for the women's use of their power and sexuality. Sigh. The third female personification of the evening, Licenza, was here a confident and good-natured, if slightly ditzy woman. Scipione is a rather hapless young man struggling to define his place in the world; it is a tribute to Alden's production that his eventual success carried Everyman resonance.

Dark Sisters: Blaze a trail beyond the canyons

Seeing Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters at Gotham Chamber Opera was an unexpected opportunity, and, as it turned out, a deeply unsettling experience. The plot could be described as a fantasy on themes from the headlines, exploring and imagining narratives behind the 2008 raid which took 400 children from a Texan FLDS community into custody, following allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Transforming these events and the commentary on them into an opera has yielded intriguing results. Muhly appears deeply aware of the (problematic) histories of opera's focus on the suffering and singing of women. Dark Sisters is a work which is intensely focused on both, but also on the power of histories and myths--individual and collective--and on the tense issue of how narrative is controlled, often by men for women. With the first explosive, destabilizing contact with the outside world before the curtain's rise, the music is left to deal with the tensions resulting from, and revealed by, the dramatic event. The music given to the small ensemble (led sensitively by Neal Goren) is strongly atmospheric, and more than a little unsettling. Strings murmur ominously; a solo cello wails. There are strong contributions from grouped and solo woodwinds as well (nice oboe work) with brass only occasional, but dramatically effective. The ensemble also features a harp, a piano, chimes, and a wind machine. One curious characteristic of the opera is that, although the music certainly changes in texture to indicate shifts in mood and atmosphere throughout, there is not a strong evolution in the style of the music to follow the crisis-punctuated disintegration of the community. The precise, poetic libretto of Stephen Karam works symbiotically with the music; it might seem exaggerated or heavy-handed as a play; the music gives it nuance and ambiguity. The nature of the drama works against both dramatic eruptions and strongly individualized voice writing, although the latter does, as it were, break through.

The set was simple, and usually empty, with a raked stage colored like the red Texan earth, and projections depicting the changes in a large and troubled sky. In fine operatic tradition, portents in nature echo the cataclysmic events of the plot; the distressed opening ensemble takes place during a lunar eclipse.  Movements throughout are strongly stylized; changes from this deliberate and limited vocabulary of physical expression signal trouble (Rebecca Taichman directed, and made the choreography clear and expressive.) The first act takes place entirely within the household, and within the women's imaginations. In the second act, the opera audience is suddenly a television audience confronted with an all-too-familiar invasive news program. The role of the prodding reporter is doubled with that of the prophet (reinforcing the theme of the male control of narrative, and the breakdown of that control.) The wives grouped together in the interview room were seated on stage; projections were used to show us the probing, interpretation-imposing closeups of the TV reportage as they sang. It is in this scene that the final fracturing of the community begins; when the curtain falls several scenes later, the long-term effects of this fracturing are still unclear.