Opera Review: The old-time religion

The late Carlisle Floyd’s 1955 opera “Susannah” had its Opera Theatre of St. Louis premiere on June 10th and it is, on every possible level, a resounding success.

Janai Brugger, William Guanbo Su, and the chorus
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Winner of a New York Music Critics’ Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and several other honors, “Susannah” is Floyd’s most popular opera and it’s not hard to see why. The score is wonderfully evocative of both the beauty of the Appalachian setting and the poisonous ugliness of the spiteful “Christianity” practiced by the local community.  Based on the story of Susanna and the elders in Chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel, the opera (with both libretto and music by Floyd) generates so much dramatic tension that when it arrives at the final catastrophe it’s almost a relief.

The composer knew the fundamentalist obsession with the Three Ss (sex, sin, and Satan) well. His father’s career as a traveling Methodist minister in South Carolina guaranteed that the young Floyd would become intimately familiar ritual of the revival meeting. In a 1998 New York Times interview he talked about how this experience had affected his life and art. ''The thing that horrified me already as a child about revival meetings was mass coercion,” he recalled, “people being forced to conform to something against their will without even knowing what they were being asked to confess or receive.''

The contemporary relevance of this is, I would think, obvious enough to require no additional comment.

Janai Brugger, Christian Sanders
Photo: Eric Woolsey

So, yeah, “Susannah” is a harrowing experience, although probably not more so than (say) standard repertoire items like "Rigoletto" or "I Pagliacci." Besides it is, in this flawless production, an overwhelmingly powerful one. It boasts spectacular performances by soprano Janai Brugger in the title role, bass William Guanbo Su as preacher Olin Blitch (whose sanctimony and lust ultimately combine to destroy him), tenor Christian Sanders as Susannah’s friend Little Bat McLean (whose weakness ultimately leads him to commit shameful act of betrayal), and tenor Frederick Ballentine as Susannah’s loving but hotheaded brother Sam.

Brugger is especially effective at showing the wide range of her character and her journey from victim to triumphant defender of her home. ''Opera had for so long been about pathetic heroines, heroines as victims,” observed Floyd in the Times interview, “that not everyone was quite ready for a woman this strong.'' Which, in some ways, puts it a notch above those standard repertoire items I mentioned in the last paragraph.

The large supporting cast is equally strong. Bass-baritone Keith Klein and mezzo Elissa Pfaender are standouts as Elder McLean and his equally reprehensible wife, the ringleaders of the spiritual lynch mob, but even the smallest roles are given a depth that makes their moral bankruptcy that much more chilling.

This is, in short, a production that grabs you by the throat from the beginning and never lets go.

Janai Brugger
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Former St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Gemma New, who remains a great favorite with local audiences and critics (including yours truly), returns to lead her former colleagues in a splendid performance of Floyd’s score. Under the direction of Andrew Whitfield, the chorus radiates menace.

Director Patricia Racette (whose own performance of the title role won her high praise in San Francisco in 2014) creates a sense of tragic inevitability that perfectly mirrors Floyd’s intentions. Greg Emetaz’s video projections help maintain the relentless pace. The flattened church that is the centerpiece of Andrew Boyce’s set serves as a perfect visual analog for the congregation’s spiritual collapse.

“Susannah” is not an easy work to watch—great art sometimes isn’t. But it’s brilliantly done and is not to be missed. And its story of hypocrites using religion as protective cover for their own inner demons could hardly be more timely. Performances, in English with projected English text, continue through June 24th at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. For more information, consult the OTSL web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Opera Review: Out of the closet and on to the stage, the re-imagination of "Harvey Milk"

To quote Walt Kelly’s Howland Owl paraphrasing Kipling, “the tumult and shouting has died.” After being postponed for two years due to the pandemic the third and leanest version of Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie’s 1995 opera “Harvey Milk” (now titled “Harvey Milk Reimagined” according to the libretto) has, at long last, had its world premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. And my fellow critics could not be happier.

Above: Kyle Sanchez Tingzon
Below: Thomas Glass
Photo: Phillip Hamer

Widely praised both far and near, there’s little doubt that “Harvey Milk” will soon be showing up at opera companies everywhere. And while I’m not quite as enthusiastic about it as everyone else seems to be, I’m in complete agreement with my fellow St. Louis Theater circle member Gerry Kowarsky’s assessment of “Harvey Milk” as “a piece that deserves to be heard.” The Opera Theatre production runs through June 25th and really demands to be seen.

Librettist Korie—whose many credits include the stunning “Grapes of Wrath” seen at Opera Theatre in 2017—was a working journalist when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the Board of Supervisors, were shot to death by fellow board member Dan White. Although he had already abandoned that career when he began working on “Harvey Milk” in 1995, Korie writes that he was “excited to be able to bring together journalism with the power of opera.” Not surprisingly, then, his libretto combines the hard-hitting intensity of a documentary with poetic imagery and a fluid story line that moves back and forth in time.

Repeated shifts in perspective between the hard reality of San Francisco politics and Milk’s memories add a dream-like feel to many scenes, an effect enhanced by the frequent appearances of the character of “The Messenger.” Decked out in a white drum major outfit and sung by a countertenor, the Messenger serves as a kind of Greek chorus/narrator/prophet

Thomas Glass (C) in "Harvey's Walk-In Closet"
Photo: Phillip Hamer

Korie’s inventive combination of comedy, drama, and Blitzstein-style agitprop combines with Wallace’s eclectic mix of musical styles to create a fast moving and hard hitting opera/musical theatre hybrid. A fanciful “Walk-In Closet” filled with gay stereotypes, for example, is used to depict Milk’s early years playing it straight on Wall Street. The Stonewall Uprising scene includes a Drag Queen kick line and triumphant chants of “out of the closets and into the streets”¬ to powerful dramatic effect. Dan White gives voice to his resentment over the gay gentrification of the Castro Street neighborhood in an aria that obliquely mocks Irish-American vaudeville songs like “Mother Machree.”

And so it goes, hitting the highlights of Milk’s impressive and tragically brief life. Milk is presented as a heroic figure, certainly, but also a very human and flawed one. This is tragedy, not hagiography, and Milk emerges as a victim of not only the sexually neurotic resentment embodied in Dan White, but also of his own hubris.

Thomas Glass and Company
Photo: Phillip Hamer

More importantly, though, the opera is a testament to the ability of one person to be a catalyst  for change. “I am just one person,” Milk asserts, “but I have power. I remember who I am. My name. My people. Our histories. I remember.” At a point in our nation’s history when authoritarian voices try to convince us that we are helpless pawns whose only salvation lies in blind obedience to a Fearless Leader, Milk’s story reminds us that each of us can, in fact, make a difference.

“If a bullet should enter my brain,” Milk declares just before his murder, “let it shatter every closet door.”

OTSL has once again put a strong cast on stage. Baritone Thomas Glass captures every one of the title character’s many facets and does so with great vocal authority. Jonathan Johnson’s lyrical tenor enhances the role of Scott Smith, the activist who becomes Milk’s lover and helps bring him out of his walk-in closet. He and Glass conclude the first act with a touching love duet in which we see Milk emerging from his political closet as well.

L-R: Jonathan Johnson, Thomas Glass
Photo: Phillip Hamer

Tenor Alek Shrader’s Dan White has an intensity that is unnerving, especially when contrasted with the sweet, John McCormack-esque sound he uncorks in his lament for the Good Old Days in the first act. There was a time when I would have seen the character’s combination of bullying arrogance and insight-free self-pity as overdone, but these days it looks almost restrained.

Bass-baritone Nathan Stark’s back-slapping flamboyance is perfect for George Moscone, but he shows impressive range as both Horst, the cartoonish German inhabitant of the Walk-In Closet, and a tough-talking Teamster backing Milk’s election. Countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon brings an appropriately unearthly quality to the role of the Messenger.

The strong supporting cast includes Soprano Raquel González as politically savvy (and ethically flexible) Dianne Feinstein, soprano Xiao as Milk’s friend and political ally Henrietta Wong, and mezzo Elizabeth Sarian as Milk’s mother, constantly warning of “Golems everywhere” and invoking memories of the Holocaust while gay men are being beaten by police in Central Park.

Nathan Stark, Alek Shrader
Poto: Phillip Hamer

Unusually for opera, the performers all wear wireless body mics, but my impression was that they were only turned on when special electronic effects such as reverb were employed. For much of the evening, the singers’ voices sounded entirely unplugged.

The OTSL chorus has to work especially hard here, taking on a wide variety of small but important roles, from cops to teamsters to protestors to drag queens. That they do it all so convincingly is a testament to their skill as both singers and actors.

A special laurel wreath is in order for conductor Carolyn Kuan and the members of the members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Composer Wallace’s mix of musical styles, spoken word segments, and various electronic elements sounds like a challenge for both the conductor and the musicians, but it all came together perfectly on opening night.

Co-directors James Robinson and Seán Curran have done a splendid job of choreographing the cinematic shifts of mood and scene in this fast-moving work, assisted by Christopher Akerlind’s lighting and the documentary feel of Greg Emetaz’s videos.

Allen Moyer’s set includes a bit of subtle visual subtext in the form of a rank of grey closet doors stretched across the back of the set. At the beginning of the opera, they’re closed. Later they’re open but filled with clothes. By the end they’re both open and empty, echoing the triumphant chants of “out of the closets and into the streets”¬ that conclude the stirring Stonewall Uprising scene in Act I.

Back: Thomas Glass
Front: Mishael Eusebio as
Young Harvey
Photo: Phillip Hamer

The only real fly in the operatic ointment here is Wallace’s score. Yes, it’s inventive and generally supports the story, but like far too many recent opera scores it often feels disconnected from the text. Korie’s libretto contains a mix of prose and poetry, but the music makes no distinction between them. The result is a kind of generic “contemporary opera” sound with no distinctive character of its own.

It made me think—and not for the first time—that contemporary composers should seriously consider studying the scores of Sondheim before taking on an opera.

That said, “Harvey Milk Reimagined” is a worthwhile addition to the opera stage and a reminder of not only how far we have come over the last four decades in this country, but how precarious that progress is as well. The importance of the message overcomes any minor complaints I might have about the medium.  

“Harvey Milk Reimagined” continues through June 25th at the Loretto Hilton Center on the Webster University campus in rotating repertory with the rest of the Opera Theatre season. To get the full festival experience, come early and have a picnic supper on the lawn or under the refreshment tent. You can bring your own food or purchase a gourmet supper in advance from the OTSL web site. Drinks are available on site as well, or you can bring your own.  For more information, visit the web site.

Opera Review: Perchance to dream: Opera Theatre's 'Awakenings' puts a human face on a mysterious pandemic

Through June 24th, Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents the world premiere of “Awakenings,” based on the book of the same name by Oliver Sacks. With music by Tobias Picker and a libretto by Picker’s husband, neuroradiologist Dr. Aryeh Lev Stollman, “Awakenings” takes on the difficult task of turning a plot-free nonfiction work into a dramatically coherent piece of musical theatre—and a few missteps aside, it succeeds splendidly.

Sacks’s book is the story of the famed neurologist’s heroic but ultimately unsuccessful attempts in the late 1960s to treat patients at New York’s Beth Abraham Hospital who were suffering from encephalitis lethargica. A mysterious disease that infected at least a million people (and killed at least half of them) during a worldwide pandemic between 1915 and 1926, encephalitis lethargica left many of its survivors in a kind of netherworld—awake and apparently aware, but largely nonresponsive to everything and everyone. “They neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life,” wrote Sacks; “they were as insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies.”

L-R: Katherine Goeldner, Andres Acosta,
Marc Molomot, Jarrett Porter
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Sacks tried to treat them with L-DOPA—a drug used primarily to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, many of which are shared with encephalitis lethargica. At first it appeared to be a miracle cure and was described that way in the press. Unfortunately, the reprieve didn’t last, and the patients eventually slipped back into their former half-lives after experiencing a painfully brief return to full ones. The pandemic stopped as mysteriously as it started, and to this day there is no real cure.

The opera tells this complex story by focusing primarily on three patients: Miriam H., Rose, and Leonard Lev. Miriam and Rose are composites of real people from the book, as are most of the other characters, but Lev is, as Joshua Barone writes in The New York Times, “largely intact and is even intensified.” Sacks himself is also present, both as narrator and as a character struggling with his own awakening to his identity as a gay man—something disclosed publicly only a few months before his death in 2015.

That multi-layered approach has both its strengths and weaknesses. Leonard, Rose, and Miriam are all fully realized and immensely sympathetic characters whose stories are both beautiful and heartbreaking.  Their scenes are, far and away, the most compelling aspects of the opera. So much so that Sacks’s own story, while tragic in its own way, feels almost trivial by comparison.

L-R:Adrienne Danrich, Susanna Phillips
Photo: Eric Woolsey 

A subplot involving the unrequited love of the nurse Mr. Rodriguez for Sacks and Leonard’s equally futile love for Rodriguez feels imposed and unnecessary. And a flashback in which the young Sacks is suddenly and harshly rejected by his mother because of his sexual orientation comes across as implausible and clumsy. It does, however, set up one of the stronger moments in the opera, a long monologue in which Sacks realizes there are some things that “can’t be changed by me. Not with medicine or love.” He laments that “there is a border I can never cross”—echoing the same words sung by Rose as she describes the experience of falling ill decades before.

So, yes, “Awakenings” is a mixed bag, dramatically speaking. But the mix is heavily positive. And, given that this is a world premiere by a librettist who has never attempted an opera before, it’s really quite admirable. Better yet, Picker’s music has a strong emotional connection with Stollman’s words—something I have not always heard in some other contemporary operas. Surprisingly for someone who studied with composers like Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt (who treated music more as a mathematical exercise than a form of communication), Picker has written a score that often embraces melody and is perfectly matched to the natural flow of the text.

Part of this is likely due to the fact that Picker and Stollman worked as a team in creating “Awakenings,” writing music and lyrics together. In that sense, the work hearkens back to the musical theatre pieces of legendary teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, or Flaherty and Ahrens. I often come away from newer operas with the feeling that the composer and librettist inhabited different worlds. Not so with “Awakenings,” which feels like the true partnership that it is.

David Pittsinger and the cast
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Every member of this large cast (15 named roles) does a splendid job, making even the smallest character well-rounded and credible. Tenor Marc Molomot’s deeply troubled Leonard is a beautiful piece of work, and the character’s tragic fall into madness is deeply moving. Mezzo Katharine Goeldner offers sympathetic counterpoint as his long-suffering mother Iris.

Sopranos Adrienne Danrich and Susanna Phillips are (to quote Mr. Sondheim) a “practically perfect pair” as Miriam and Rose. The fast friendship that develops between the two is both heartwarming and, ultimately, heartbreaking as their illness snatches them back into the Twilight Zone. Two other patients, Frank and Lucy, are brought to vivid life by tenor Jared V. Esguerra and mezzo Daniela Maguara. Tenor Andres Acosta powerfully communicates Mr. Rodriguez’s frustrated yearning.

Bass-baritone David Pittsinger, whose stentorian tones have graced both operatic and musical theatre stages, is Dr. Podsnap, the hospital’s Medical Director. The character’s Dickensian name is a good match for his snobbishness and refusal to even consider the research behind Sacks’s proposal. “Who does this Englishman think he is,” he snarls. “Another fancy paper / It will be disproven before you know it.” It’s not until the final scene that we get to see the emotional conflict that lurks behind that arrogant front. “Have I broken my oath,” he muses. “Can it be wrong to have tried? I don’t know. Though in the end I did not protect them.” Pittsinger’s multi-leveled performance captures both sides of Podsnap’s persona.

LR: Andres Acosta, Jarrett Porter
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Much of the opera, of course, rests on the highly capable shoulders of baritone Jarrett Porter as Sacks. Picker and Sacks were close friends, and the fictionalized version of him in the opera has the ring of truth and compassion. A complex mix of crusader, healer, and a conflicted man who (in the composer’s words), “finds himself locked in by outside social and familial forces,” the character of Sacks requires not just a compelling singer but also an actor capable of showing us his many facets. Porter is just the man for the job. It’s a bravura performance.

The OTSL chorus has all of its usual power, although Picker’s thick choral lines are difficult to hear, requiring frequent glances at the English supertitles. Even so, I was especially impressed by the clarity with which the singers handled the short, sharp phrases lobbied back and forth in the contentious clinic scenes. Lines like “Hyoscamine! Stinking nightshade! Anticholinergics! Belladonna!” are not often heard on the opera stage and don’t fly trippingly off the tongue.

Under Roberto Kalb’s direction, the orchestra gives what certainly sounds like an authoritative reading of the score. Judging by the hugs and smiles when both Picker and Stollman came on stage afterwards, the creators of “Awakenings” would appear to agree.

OTSL Artistic Director James Robinson, who directed Picker’s “Emmeline” in 2015, repeats that role here, imparting a sense of momentum and even urgency to a work that could, in lesser hands, become static.  Robinson has brought most of his production team from “Emmeline” along as well, with satisfying results.

Allen Moyer’s set is simple and flexible, consisting of a series of transparent panels that are easily rolled around the hospital ward set to create different playing areas. Christopher Akerlind’s lights and Greg Emetaz’s video projections allow the scene to shift easily from the hospital interior to the botanical garden outside, where the recovering patients, in a touching scene, make their first contact in decades with the natural world. James Schuette’s costumes subtly reflect the personality of each character. The brown British tweeds Sacks wears in his first appearance, for example, clearly mark him as on outlier among the American hospital staff.

Jarrett Porter in the final scene
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Opera Theatre’s “Awakenings” is not, of course, the first attempt to dramatize the Sacks book. The 1990 film version is perhaps the best known of those attempts, but in 1980 Harold Pinter made it into a one-act play titled “A Kind of Alaska” and Picker himself composed a ballet version in 2010. There was even a 1974 documentary for British television. But this world premiere is the first try at a full-length work for the stage, and despite its flaws it’s well worth your time.

“Who knows if the world out there will ever truly know us,” wonders Miriam in the final scene. “Who in the world could ever truly know us?” “Awakenings” is another step towards that level of understanding.

“Awakenings” continues through June 24th at the Loretto Hilton Center on the Webster University campus in rotating repertory with the rest of the Opera Theatre season. To get the full festival experience, come early and have a picnic supper on the lawn or under the refreshment tent. You can bring your own food or purchase a gourmet supper in advance from the OTSL web site. Drinks are available on site as well, or you can bring your own.  For more information, visit the web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Opera Review: Opera Theatre's "New Works, Bold Voices Lab" fully lives up to its name with a timely and diverse trio of one-acts

The pandemic wiped out the 2020 season of Opera Theatre of St. Louis (OSTSL), but they’re back in business this year. There are fewer performances, fewer seats, none of the operas run over 75 minutes, and it all happens on a newly constructed stage taking up what is usually the company’s main parking lot. They’re not down and out, just downsized and outdoors.

Over the Edge
Photo by Eric Woolsey

With highly successful productions of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, William Grant Still’s Highway 1, U.S.A, and Poulenc’s La voix humaine already up and running, OTSL seems to have saved the best for last with the New Works, Bold Voices Lab. It’s a varied and consistently entertaining evening of three world premiere one-act operas which, as OTSL General Director Andrew Jorgensen said in an interview last month, were “actually designed with very small orchestral forces in mind…so they could be performed during the pandemic.”

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.

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.”

Moon Tea
Photo by Eric Woolsey

The 13 named roles in the three scenes are played by the impressively versatile quartet of soprano Monica Dewey, mezzo Mack Wolz, mezzo Melody Wilson, and bass-baritone Calvin Griffin (who is also making his OTSL debut). Wilson is a particularly familiar face on the local scene, having appeared with both OTSL and Union Avenue Opera over the years.

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.

The Tongue and the Lash
Photo by Eric Woolsey

The program ends with the most emotionally powerful opera of the trio, The Tongue and the Lash, with music by Damien Sneed and libretto by Karen Chilton. A singer, instrumentalist, and conductor as well as a composer, Sneed’s background is wide-ranging, spanning the worlds of jazz, pop, and R&B along with the classics, while Chilton is an actor and writer as well as a classical pianist. The result of their collaboration packs a serious punch.

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.

The Tongue and the Lash
Photo by Eric Woolsey

The contrast with Buckley’s music could hardly be stronger. Where Baldwin glides, Buckley skitters. His vocal line dances around to a rapid, slightly discordant accompaniment in a strikingly effective musical equivalent of what the New York Times obit called the real Buckley’s “use of ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare to an anteater’s.” Jonathan Johnson perfectly captures Buckley’s trademark supercilious attitude and deftly negotiates the character’s sometimes florid passages.

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.

Review: The enemy within

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Andrew Stenson, Mike Shigematsu
Photo by Ken Howard

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Last year, I began my review of Opera Theatre's production of Ricky Ian Gordon's "The Grapes of Wrath" by quoting a popular bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." It's equally applicable to "An American Soldier," the two-act version of which is getting its world premiere at Opera Theatre this month.

Based, I'm sorry to say, on real events, "An American Soldier" (which began life as a one act in 2014) is the story of Danny Chen, a native-born American of Chinese descent who volunteered for the Army and was deployed to Kandahar province in Afghanistan, where he apparently committed suicide on October 3, 2011.

An investigation after his death revealed that Chen had been routinely singled out for racist harassment and even physical torture, including being dragged over sharp rocks by a commanding officer and stoned by fellow soldiers. The Army charged eight soldiers with an array of crimes, including negligent homicide, but only four were recommended for court-martial, and then only on a small number of lesser charges.

Andrew Stenson, Kathleen Kim
Photo by Ken Howard

The fact that this occurred at all is appalling enough. The fact that it happened only a few years ago is downright depressing and more than a little disturbing.

The libretto of "An American Soldier," by noted playwright David Henry Hwang, sticks closely to the facts of the case, framing the action around the 2012 court-martial. Names of specific defendants and witnesses have been altered, but the details appear to be mostly true and are likely to incense anyone who still has a functioning sense of decency. The result is a literate and smartly written piece of documentary theatre that has a tremendous visceral impact, with credible characters and dialogue.

I'm less impressed with Huang Ro's score. It has, to my ears, a somewhat monotonous sameness and a restricted emotional palette. Vocal lines tend to be interchangeably declamatory, regardless of the emotional tone of the lyrics. A few scenes, largely in the second act, have real power, but on the whole I don't think Mr. Hwang's libretto is very well served.

L-R: Wayne Tigges, Andrew Stenson
Photo by Ken Howard

Still, the production as a whole is a pretty gripping experience, partly because of that libretto and partly because of the fine performances by the large cast. There are far too many to list individually--16 singers, handling 22 named roles--so I'll concentrate on the principles and major supporting parts.

The robust tenor of Andrew Stenson supports a heartbreakingly sincere portrayal of Danny Chen, telling his tale in flashbacks from beyond the grave. He's very impressive in an emotionally and physically demanding role. Mezzo Mika Shigematsu is equally remarkable as Danny's mother, a part that also demands much and gets it in a performance of vocal and theatrical virtuosity. Both performers are making their OTSL debuts.

Also making an auspicious debut with the company is soprano Kathleen Kim as Josephine Young, Danny's high-school friend. Young is a fictional character whose email exchanges with Danny give us a window into the young soldier's hopes and dreams. Ms. Kim gives the role an appealing vulnerability and sings with genuine authority. Her second-act duet with Danny, in which the two reflect on how much they miss each other and on how different the moon is in their separate worlds, is one of the rare moments of beauty in the opera.

Nathan Stark and the chorus
Photo by Ken Howard

Bass-baritone Wayne Tigges is the sadistic Sgt. Aaron Marcum, a fictional composite of multiple abusive officers. A classic bully, Marcum compensates for his own feelings of weakness and inferiority by abusing those over whom he wields power. Mr. Tigges's powerfully sung performance makes the character's repellent evil chillingly real.

Bass Nathan Stark is an imposing presence as the presiding judge. Towards the end of the opera he leads a chorus of soldiers in "E pluribus unum," a hymn to the military's ideal of diversity. It's sung with beautiful clarity by Cary John Franklin's chorus and stands in ironic contrast to both the terrible chronicle of abuse that precedes it and the plaintive lament by Danny's mother that comes afterwards, and which ends the opera.

Matthew Ozawa, who directed a charmingly fanciful "Don Quichotte" at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2016, proves to be equally deft with the gritty realism of "An American Soldier." Conductor Michael Christie, who has shown great skill and sensitivity in the past with everything from Puccini to John Adams, once again directs the orchestra of (mostly) St. Louis Symphony musicians in a persuasive performance of a score that employs a variety of non-traditional sounds.

Kathleen Kim
Photo by Ken Howard

Andrew Boyce's minimal set, with its turntable and platforms that quickly glide on and off, enables lightning-fast scene changes, assisted by Christopher Akerlind's lighting and Greg Emetaz's video projections. As always seems to be the case with Opera Theatre, the technical aspects of the show are first rate.

Like Marc Blitzstein's "Regina," an outstanding production of which is also part of the current OTSL season, "An American Soldier," forcefully reminds of us the gap that far too often exists between our nation's ideals and its realities. The jury is still out on whether or not we have the moral courage to narrow that gap.

Performances of "An American Soldier" continue through June 22nd, in rotating repertory with the rest of the OTSL season, at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. It's an important new work and, my misgivings about the score aside, it deserves to be seen.

Review: Life is a dark vaudeville sketch in "The Trial" at Opera Theatre of St. Louis

This article was originally published at Classical Voice North America.

Theo Hoffman (center) and the cast
Photo: Ken Howard

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Josef K.'s 30th birthday does not start well. Two men appear in his apartment to arrest him for an unspecified charge. They steal his underwear, eat his breakfast, and order him to stay put until an Inspector shows up. The Inspector confirms that K. has been arrested, observes his reaction, and tells him he's free to go to work.

Thus begins the opera adaptation of Franz Kafka's nightmarish 1915 classic The Trial, which just concluded its American premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. First performed in 2014 by Music Theatre Wales at the Royal Opera House in London, the opera boasts a libretto by noted playwright and director Christopher Hampton (best known for his stage and screen adaptations of the novel Dangerous Liaisons) and music by the prolific Philip Glass. With that kind of talent, you'd think the result would pack a powerful theatrical punch, but it felt more like a bloodless intellectual exercise.

Susannah Biller and Theo Hoffman
Photo: Ken Howard

The Trial is described as "a comic opera," and there's no question that it has its share of comedy, but it's mostly slapstick. When you have performers shamelessly mugging, capering about the stage as though in the grips of St. Vitus Dance, and engaging in cartoonish bouts of simulated sex, it's a safe bet you'll generate your share of laughs. But overall the atmosphere of The Trial is grim and bizarre. Characters behave in ways that defy logic. Every conversation is a non sequitur.

The world of The Trial is, in short, one in which nothing makes any sense. That means it's also one with which it's hard to establish an emotional connection. There's a kind of clinical ingenuity to this work that makes it easy to admire but hard to enjoy.

The best thing about The Trial is the score. As anyone who has heard his Songs From Liquid Days album knows, Glass is a composer who seems as comfortable with the worlds of the stage and popular music as he is with the concert hall. You can hear that throughout his consistently fascinating and often dryly humorous score for The Trial, which often seems to echo the acerbic, music hall feel of the theatrical works of Kurt Weill. There are even moments that sound like something out of a Carl Stallings Warner Brothers cartoon score, with buffoonish trombone passages and wah-wah muted trumpets. Mr. Glass's quirky score was more appealing than the opera as a whole.

Sofia Selowsky and Theo Hoffman
Photo: Ken Howard

Oddly, none of the whimsy in the instrumental parts has made its way into the vocal score, which tends to be monotonously declamatory and sometimes oddly disconnected from the orchestra. That has the advantage of making the text extremely clear – so much so that the usual projected titles were largely irrelevant – but it also makes for uninteresting listening.

I've never read Kafka's novel, so I'm in no position to judge how faithful Mr. Hampton's libretto is to the original. But as noted previously, it effectively conveys the sense of oppression by unknown (if not actually unknowable) forces that eventually grind poor Josef K. down to the point where, in the final scene, he meekly consents to being stabbed to death by the two clownish guards who confronted him at the beginning. An Opera Theatre press release from last November states that Glass saw Hampton as "the perfect person to preserve the ‘comedy-horror' of Kafka's writing." He appears to have chosen wisely.

Both the original London production and this American premiere were directed by Music Theatre Wales artistic director Michael McCarthy, who deserves considerable credit for creating the atmosphere of serio-comic menace that pervades the work. The atmosphere is enhanced by Simon Banham's stark set and Christopher Akerlind's harsh lighting, which throws exaggerated shadows on the walls and floor, reminiscent of German Expressionist cinema.

Robert Mellow and Joshua Blue with Theo Hoffman
Photo: Ken Howard

The sense of the surreal is further heightened by the use of a small ensemble cast in which one actor plays Josef K., with seven others (five men and two women) playing all the other roles. Except for baritone Theo Hoffman, who plays Josef K., the actors all wear makeup that makes them appear vaguely clownish, an impression reinforced by the use of deliberately cheesy vaudeville fake beards and derby hats. "The audience sees that it is the same people who keep returning in different guises," writes McCarthy in his program notes. "We know Kafka enjoyed seeing Yiddish theater and silent movies, especially Charlie Chaplin…I have aimed to embrace this feeling of black comedy by relishing the overt theatricality as a way of expressing the nightmare in which K. finds himself. One man, stuck inside a world which is constantly changing and shifting around him, into which people keep emerging as different characters and from which he cannot escape."

Hoffman, a graduate of the Opera Theatre's Young Artist Program, headed a strong cast. Because The Trial is K.'s nightmare, the character is on stage and singing for almost the entire opera. The part calls not only for stamina but also for dramatic flexibility, both of which Hoffman possessed in abundance. It was a brilliant performance that got a well-earned standing ovation.

The seven other performers were all impressively versatile singers and actors, handling the quick character changes with ease.

Tenor Joshua Blue and baritone Robert Mellon were the sinister "Laurel and Hardy" guards. Mellon also played two of the court officers and the priest who gives K. an opaque lesson on The Law, while Blue was also the hapless Block, whose own trial has reduced him to penury. Bass Matthew Lau was K.'s Uncle Albert as well as the menacing Inspector. Baritone Keith Phares was (among other parts) Huld, the arrogant lawyer who is of so little help.

Theo Hoffman and Brenton Ryan
Photo: Ken Howard

Mezzo-soprano Sofia Selowsky showed plenty of range as K.'s landlady Frau Grubach as well as the sexually adventurous wife of the Court Usher. Soprano Susannah Biller played Fraülein Büstner and Huld's mistress Leni, both of whom find K. irresistible. Tenor Brenton Ryan was most notably the painter Titorelli, who advises K. on the various equally bad options available to him and whose studio mysteriously connects to the court.

Carolyn Kuan, in her Opera Theatre debut, led the small orchestra in an incisive reading of the score, neatly balancing the highly divergent instrumental and vocal aspects of this music.

Judging by the increase in the number of empty seats after intermission, The Trial wore out its welcome with at least some of the audience the night I saw it. Those who stayed on, though, rewarded the company with a standing ovation at the end.

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis season concludes on June 25, but the company sponsors other events throughout the year; click here for more information.

Review: Impeccable performances highlight the world premiere of "Shalimar the Clown" at Opera Theatre

The Act I wedding scene
Photo: Ken Howard

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For those of you out there who think of opera as a lot of stuff by dead guys, consider this: of the 81 composers whose works have been performed during Opera Theatre of St. Louis's 41 seasons, 31 (38%) are alive and well. This season, in fact, OTSL presented the world premiere of a brand-new opera that it commissioned: Shalimar the Clown.

Adapted by Jack Perla (composer) and Rajiv Joseph (librettist) from Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name, the opera sets a tale of doomed love and revenge against the larger canvas of the war in Kashmir and the rise of fundamentalist terrorism. The title character, a performer in a Kashmiri bhand pather (traditional folk dance) troupe in 1964, falls deeply (and quickly) in love with the beautiful dancer Boonyi. She, alas, is Hindu and he's Muslim, so when their affair is discovered the elders in their village of Pachigam are scandalized. Instead of driving the pair apart, however, they insist that they marry immediately in a joint ceremony that celebrates the religious diversity of their town and of Kashmir as a whole.

Sean Panikkar
Photo: Ken Howard

That makes Shalimar happy but leaves Boonyi feeling unfulfilled. She loves him, but yearns for a bigger role in the world outside. Unfortunately, she decides to pursue her dream by allowing herself to be seduced by the American ambassador, Max Ophuls. When she has a child, he abandons her, his wife takes the baby, and Boonyi is dumped back with the villagers who reject her and force her to live apart. Shalimar, meanwhile, has turned his sorrow into anger and become an assassin for an anti-Indian terrorist group headed by Bulbul Fakh, the "Iron Mullah."

As the decades pass, war comes to Pachigam, Boonyi's daughter grows to womanhood in the USA, and Shalimar plots his revenge. Needless to say, nobody lives happily ever after.

Andriana Chuchman as Boonyi
Photo: Ken Howard

For me, the best things about this production were the stunning performances by a truly remarkable cast, James Robinson's clear and theatrically apt direction, the wonderful singing by Robert Ainsley's chorus, and the superb job conductor Jayce Ogren and the St. Louis Symphony musicians did with a complex and dense score. Seán Curran also deserves a shout-out for choreography that perfectly blended both Western and Indian movement while creatively advancing the opera's narrative.

The opera itself left me a bit cold, partly because Mr. Joseph's libretto seems to take for granted a degree of familiarity with the novel which I did not possess and which should not, in any case, be assumed when creating a stage adaptation from another medium. As it is, the characters of Shalimar and Boonyi (along with major secondary characters) lack a depth on stage that they presumably have in the novel.

Gregory Dahl and Katherine Goeldner
Photo: Ken Howard

Mr. Perla's score has many striking and even beautiful moments, such as the West Side Story-ish scene in which Shalimar and Boonyi first meet, and it does an impressive job of incorporating Indian rhythms, harmonies and even a couple instruments (sitar and tabla) without becoming obviously imitative. Unfortunately, Mr. Perla's standard technique for his most emotionally charged scenes seems to consist of having everyone sing and play as loudly as possible, producing a kind of aural mush.

Still, it was thrilling to see tenor Sean Panikkar and soprano Andriana Chuchman in such bravura performances of those very challenging roles, singing this very difficult and melismatic music. Ms. Chuchman doubled in the markedly different role of Boonyi's daughter India, which was even more impressive.

Bass-baritone Thomas Hammons, who was so impressive in La Bohème this season, cut a sympathetic figure as Shalimar's father Abdullah, while baritone Gregory Dahl and mezzo Katherine Goeldner were appropriately repellent as the unethical Max Ophuls and his seriously co-dependent wife Peggy. Bass-baritone Aubrey Allicock, a former Gerdine Young Artist, was an imposing Iron Mullah.

So the world premiere of Shalimar the Clown got a splendid performance and, thanks to set designer Allen Moyer and costumer James Schuette, it looked great. I just wish I had found it more compelling. It was, in any case, a reminder that opera is a living, breathing art form and that Opera Theatre continues to do its part to keep it that way.

Opera review: The world premiere of "Bel Canto" suffers from musical and dramatic overload at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Act I opening
Photo: Andrew Cioffi

I haven't read Ann Patchett's popular novel "Bel Canto". So I have no idea whether the musical and theatrical overload of the opera version, which is currently having its world premiere at Lyric Opera of Chicago, reflects the style of Ms. Patchett's writing or that of composer Jimmy López and librettist Nilo Cruz.

Danielle de Niese
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Although generally well received by the audience the night we saw it, the sheer excess of the work had the unfortunate effect of calling attention to its own inventiveness at the expense of the narrative and distancing me from what should have been a compelling story. If felt self-indulgent, as though the creators were more interested in showing off their considerable gifts than in communicating with an audience.

Based on a real-life incident in Peru in 1996, in which guests at the Japanese ambassador's mansion were held hostage by terrorists for four months, "Bel Canto" changes the ambassador to the CEO of a Japanese electronics firm and adds the character of Roxane Coss, an American soprano whose music casts a healing spell on hostages and guerrillas alike. As in the real incident, the hostage taking drags on for months until the Peruvian army raids the house.

By the time that happens, in the operatic version of the story, insurgents and hostages have some to see each other less as opponents and more as fellow sufferers at the hands of forces beyond their control. When the Peruvian army bursts in at the end of the opera, they blast away at everyone in sight, with a callous disregard for "collateral damage" that leaves little doubt as to who the real villains of the piece might be.

Andrew Stenson and Danielle de Niese
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

This ought to be pretty powerful stuff. After all, despite the fact that Americans are as likely to be crushed to death by furniture as killed by terrorists, asymmetric warfare has been very much in the news lately, so this story should have real resonance.

Indeed, the opera has moments of real dramatic impact, especially in the more nuanced second act, and the gradual dramatic transformation of the guerrilla leaders from slogan-spouting bullies to sympathetic freedom fighters is nicely done. But for much of its three-hour length, "Bel Canto" did a better job of pushing me away than drawing me in.

Part of the problem is the sheer decibel level of Mr. López's score, which sounds like Richard Strauss filtered through John Adams. There are moments of genuine beauty, especially in the third act, but for the most part the score feels like a musical assault vehicle. I felt that the periodic flights of poetic fancy in Mr. Cruz's libretto, beautifully written though they were, had a distancing effect as well. Often delivered as soliloquies, I thought they tended to stop the action cold, even if they did offer valuable insights into their characters' thinking.

Anthony Roth Costanzo
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Perhaps the biggest issue for me, though, is the rather artificial staging by director Kevin Newbury. In his "Anna Bolena" for Lyric last year and his "Eugene Onegin" for Opera Theatre of St. Louis back in 2010, I was struck by his tendency to place his principals in static poses, facing downstage, and generally adopting cliché operatic attitudes. There's a great deal of that in "Bel Canto", with characters nearly always singing towards the audience rather than interacting with each other. Even in the intimate third act love scene in which Roxane and the Japanese CEO Kasumi Hosokawa finally consummate the love affair that has been brewing for months, the characters have virtually no contact with each other until the final clinch.

That said, there are many outstanding performances in this cast, and that goes a long way towards making up for the production's other issues. Soprano Danielle de Niese does truly heroic work as Roxane Coss, a role that requires great vocal and dramatic range. So does tenor Andrew Stenson as Gen Watanabe, Hosokawa's translator, whose doomed love affair with the guerrilla Carmen (mezzo J'Nai Bridges in another compelling performance) is the "downstairs" parallel to the "upstairs" romance between his boss and Roxane.

Jeongcheol Cha
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Tenor Rafael Davila is very effective in the ultimately tragic role of the guerrilla leader, General Alfredo, and Korean bass-baritone Jeongcheol Cha makes Hosokawa a very sympathetic character, struggling with the language barrier that prevents him from expressing his love for Roxane. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo shines in the small but heartbreaking role of the fighter César, whose voice flowers under Roxane's tutelage, only to be cut short by a soldier's bullet. Bass Rúni Brattaberg also makes a strong impression in the cameo role of the Russian ambassador Fyodorov, although his odd comic relief scene late in the opera feels tacked-on and irrelevant.

In fact, there's really not a single weak link in this 24-member cast (19 singers and five non-singing actors), which is very much to Lyric Opera's credit. "Bel Canto" is a big piece that requires a deep talent pool, but Lyric is clearly up to the challenge.

David Korins's big, realistic, multi-level set is impressive, but it takes up so much room that action is mostly forced downstage. That makes for some cramped and confusing stage pictures and sometimes makes it difficult to tell who is singing when the entire cast is on stage (as it often is).

As the siege wears on, the fighters play socccer
Photo: Andrew Cioffi

Mr. López's score sounds highly demanding, but under the baton of Lyic's music director Sir Andrew Davis the orchestra gave a powerful account of it. The brass and percussion sections, in particular, got quite a workout. Even at its noisiest, though, the orchestra never overwhelmed the singers, which is a tribute to Mr. Davis's skill.

One interesting final note: projected English text has now become so ubiquitous in opera houses that Mr. Cruz apparently felt comfortable creating a libretto in which characters often sang in their native languages, secure in the knowledge that it would all be translated in the end. Eight different languages are heard here including Japanese, Latin, and Quechua, an Amerind language spoken in Peru and neighboring countries. It's an illustration of how technology has changed the way opera is done these days.

Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of "Bel Canto" continues through January 17th at Chicago's magnificent Civic Opera House. For more information: lyricopera.org.