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| Over the Edge Photo by Eric Woolsey |
Running around 20 minutes each, the three operas are all radically different in style, and yet they complement each other quite neatly. As Stage Director James Robinson writes in his program note in the OTSL app, each creative team was asked to think about the question, “what is on your mind and how are you feeling about the world right now?”. He describes their answers as “incredibly rich and varied”—a statement with which I heartily concur.
The evening opens with On the Edge, with music by Laura Karpman and a libretto by Taura Stinson, both of whom have extensive credits outside of the opera house/concert hall orbit. A five-time Emmy Award winner, Karpman has written extensively for television, film, theatre, and various newer media platforms. Stinson is described by OTSL as a “multi-hyphenated visionary,” which seems appropriate for someone who works as a vocalist, producer, composer, songwriter and author. Together, they have created a seriocomic reflection on the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic from the points of view of a single mom (in April 2020), a mother working from home (May) and, finally, a classic nuclear family in June trying to find hope amidst the worsening pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the increasing miasma of violence and aggressive authoritarianism unfolding on their TV.
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| Moon Tea Photo by Eric Woolsey |
The first two scenes are fast-paced and witty, echoing (but never imitating) influences as diverse as Stephen Sondheim and Phillip Glass. You can hear the former in Stinson’s clever lyrics and the latter at the end of the first scene, in which Single Mom’s growing frustration, the demands of children Kadin and Kyra, and homework reminders from their teacher explode in a chorus of wildly overlapping vocal lines that coalesce in the refrain “We are stuck / in the muck / WHAT THE…”.
No, the last word isn’t actually sung. It’s funnier that way.
The second scene opens with a simple canon on the word “Zoom” sung by Mama, Mommy, and Son 1 to express the daily routine of lockdown and a life lived online. Other phrases are added in (“Getting fat, fat,” “It goes on and on”) and the vocal polyphony becomes more complex as Grandma starts to chime in with a confused mix of fact and fancy about the pandemic. The scene slowly winds down with a return to the original canon, suggesting that nothing will change anytime soon. Which, of course, it didn’t for most of us.
The shift in tone that comes with the more anguished and borderline-preachy final scene seems odd at first, but only until one reflects on the fact that the outrage at Floyd’s murder was amplified by, “[a] pandemic, and a captive audience, / For the world to catch a glimpse of our pain.” And the combination of pain, hope, and determination expressed in the closing quartet is both moving and inspiring. “Hold on!” they sing. “And all the fallen stars, / We will speak your names.”
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| Moon Tea Photo by Eric Woolsey |
The mood shifts towards Monty Pyton-esque surrealism in the second opera, Moon Tea, with music by Steven Mackey and a libretto by Rinde Eckert. Mackey’s eclectic compositional style—often heard at St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concerts during the tenure of former Music Director David Robertson— meshes quite well with the imaginative and whimsical words of the multi-talented Eckert (a composer, singer, actor, and director as well as a writer).
Moon Tea is a fanciful and slightly loopy imaginary version of a real-world event: an awkward 1969 meeting with Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip. and Apollo 13 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, along with their wives. The Queen was unenthusiastic about the project, Armstrong was suffering from a terrible cold, and Collins (as Aldrin would reveal many years later on Twitter) “almost fell down the stairs trying not to turn his back” on the Queen.
It was not a great moment for the Anglo-American alliance, and the farcical nature of the simple facts of the event appealed greatly to Mackey. “I’m a sucker for fish-out-of-water stories,” he confesses in comments on the OTSL YouTube channel. “The music just flowed out.”
Mackey’s musical toolbox is as eclectic as Karpman’s, although in his case that eclecticism stems from a background in rock and pop. He and his long-time collaborator Eckert were members of the band Big Farm and have teamed up on many projects in the past. As a result, both the music and words of Moon Tea seamlessly unite to create a whimsical sonic world that combines unorthodox elements such as microtonality and oddball percussion instruments like the flexatone with more conventional techniques without any hint of a conflict.
Ingenious touches include the ragged sneeze rhythms that repeatedly interrupt Neil Armstrong’s vocal line, the slightly demented, not-quite-a-waltz theme that serves as the basis for the dreamlike scene in which Queen Elizabeth imagines herself Queen of the Moon, and the elaborate, rapid-fire patter song that illustrates Michael Collins’ awkwardness. If Gilbert and Sullivan were still with us, they would have loved it.
That said, I found Moon Tea to be amusing, but not particularly involving. Moon Tea is facile and often brilliant, with plenty of playful stage business and clever use of digital animation by designer Craig Emetaz, but at around 20 minutes it’s as long as it needs to be.
Still, congratulations are due the performers, all of whom fully inhabit their roles. Monica Dewey is properly regal Queen Elizabeth, Melody Wilson a cheerfully celebrity-obsessed Janet Armstrong, and tenor Jonathan Johnson a pleasantly fatuous Prince Philip. Tenor Michael Day rattles off his tricky patter song with the assurance of a latter-day John Reed and Jarrett Porter’s weighty baritone lends dignity to the afflicted Neil Armstrong.
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| The Tongue and the Lash Photo by Eric Woolsey |
Like Moon Tea, The Tongue and the Lash is inspired by a real event: the 1965 debate between author and activist James Baldwin and conservative intellectual gadfly William F. Buckley, Jr. on the premise that “the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that the vote declaring Baldwin the winner was 544 to 164 instead of, say, 708 to zero.
The opera, which takes place in the Cambridge University Union after the verdict has been rendered, imagines what a post-debate conversation between Baldwin and Buckley might have been. Baldwin is portrayed with vocal power and gravitas by baritone Markel Reed. In long vocal lines that carry the weight of authority and conviction, he declares that “I have made plain my case” but then asks, “what victory is there / When all our suffering and injustice is laid bare?” When, at one point, Baldwin’s music turns into a passionate gospel hymn on the words “Time is all we’ve got,” the effect is electrifying.
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| The Tongue and the Lash Photo by Eric Woolsey |
All three operas share the same eight-piece ensemble of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra members: first violinist Xiaoxiao Qiang, second violinist Janet Carpenter, violist Leonid Plashinov-Johnson, cellist Elizabeth Chung, and double bass Erik Harris. The sizeable percussion battery consists of Shannon Wood on timpani with Alan Stewart and Thomas Stubbs on everything else. Composer/conductor Daniela Candillari, who leads a special SLSO concert on June 24th, is on the podium. Their performance of this varied assortment of new and challenging music was a joy to witness.
Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s exceptional 2021 season continues through Sunday, June 20th on the Webster University campus. For more information, visit the company’s web site.
A shorter version of this article originally appeared at Classical Voice North America.
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