David H. Koch
Theater at Lincoln Center. Four Tier
(Seat H107, $66.)
Story. Agnes is married to Protector, who considers
her his property. Protector asks the Boy
to make an illustrated book about the family (hence the title, since books were
written on parchment then.) Boy then
begins an affair with Agnes. When Protector
finds out, he kills Boy and feeds his heart to Agnes. Agnes commits suicide before the protector
can kill her.
Conductor – Alan
Gilbert. The Protector – Christopher
Purves, Agnes – Barbara Hannigan, Angel 1/Boy – Tim Mead, Angel 2/Marie –
Victoria Simmonds, Angel 3/John – Robert Murray.
For reasons that
are tenuous at best, this opera is part of the current Mostly Mozart Festival
season. It is presented in collaboration
with the New York Philharmonic as part of the Lincoln Center-New York
Philharmonic Opera Initiative, per the Playbill. Perhaps there is a financial angle to it that
I am not aware of.
Anne and I
debated till the last minute if we wanted to see this opera, since that would
mean driving into the city on three consecutive days. At about 2 pm in the
afternoon I went to the MM website to buy the tickets, and discovered that only
fourth tier seats were available. It
turns out there were quite a few empty seats in that level, so there was
massive movement of people from the lower-priced seats to our neighborhood.
MM sent quite a
few emails to promote this opera, so I couldn’t help but see the praise heaped
onto the opera, such as Washington Post’s “the cultural event of the NY summer
season.” Well, I would call it “a
cultural event,” since I assume not too many operas, especially modern ones,
are being programmed in NYC during the summer months. And, to be fair, there are some interesting
aspects to this event.
First a few
words about the staging. The stage is
divided into two levels. For two of the
three parts the the upper left level is a modern studio, upper right level depicts
the woods, lower left is the wardrobe for the opera (modern), lower center is
the main stage (bedroom, dining room, etc.) and lower right is the garden. Not much happens in the upper and lower right
portions of the stage. Things are
usually in slow motion in the upper and lower left portions. For Part 3 a brightly lit staircase is on the
right. Not much (if any) changes between
parts, so only a small pause is needed.
Sometimes people dressed in black will move the props around.
Curtain call. Stage used in Part 3 of the opera.
All this makes
for an interesting spectacle, although after a while things get a bit “old.”
The “modern”
aspect of the opera is not limited to the staging and costume. Some of the dialog refers to shopping malls
and eight-lane highways. It sounds
funny, but I am not sure that’s the intended effect here.
The music is
definitely different. Of all the
modern(ish) operas I have seen, the closest this comes to is that of Philip
Glass’s. Not as minimalist, but
certainly the dramatic elements come and go incrementally, not suddenly (unlike
Beethoven, for instance.) As to the
music itself, to me it is more like spoken dialog in a play, done with rising
and lowering pitch. When the characters
sang, they often referred to themselves in the third person while narrating the
action. For example, you would have Protector
singing “now the Protector is trying to put on his shoes.” (This phrase did not
actually appear in the opera.) As our
seats are quite far from the stage, this technique – perhaps unwittingly –
helped.
The word
“chamber” in the name of the orchestra is a misnomer, because the orchestra is
huge. From the fourth tier we didn’t
have a full view of the pit, but I could clearly see two rows of woodwind and
brass players, and counted at least 24 of them.
However, the roster shows eight first violins and six second violins, on
par with the MM Festival Orchestra. It
draws members from all over the world; for instance, only two of the fourteen
listed violin players are from the US.
The sound from
the orchestra was good. Unfortunately, I
used most of my bandwidth to try to follow the story and the action on stage,
and thus couldn’t concentrate on the orchestra music. The vocal singing was also good, no doubt
helped by the sound system of the theater.
There was enough drama in the lines to keep the audience’s
attention. Countertenor Tim Mead sang
the role of Boy, and this is one of the few instances I thought the voice
worked very well.
For the last
several weeks Anne and I spent a lot of time helping out with baby H, including
some “night shifts” for me while the mother tried to get some rest. When H fussed, I would pick him up and make
up songs to try to calm them down; the music in this opera reminded me of
that. H’s older sister M is 2 ½ years
old and talks incessantly, oftentimes offering a running commentary on what she
is doing. Not quite grasping the concept
between her name “M” and the first person “I”, she would say something “M is
now feeding the rabbit some soup.” A lot
of the dialog in the opera is of this nature.
Anne chuckled when I told her about these parallels.
The New YorkTimes review is positive, and contains additional information about the
composition, George Benjamin and the librettist Martin Crimp. The Washington Post review isn’t as sanguine;
while the reviewer is generally positive with this opera, she also laments how
low the expectations are when it comes to contemporary operas.
We couldn't see
Gilbert from where we sat, but I assume he enjoyed himself given how well the
orchestra sounded. Benjamin also came
out at curtain call.
No comments:
Post a Comment