Appomattox, Take Two

In my previous blog, I noted that technology moves forward but human nature does not. One could add that laws make progress but human nature does not. In just the past year Baltimore, Ferguson, Charleston and university campuses in Missouri have been the most visible examples of how far we remain from securing equal treatment for all our citizens. No wonder Philip Glass saw fit to revise his 2007 opera Appomattox to emphasize that in terms of race relations little has changed in the United States since the end of the Civil War. The new version of Appomattox premiered Saturday at Washington National Opera.

Not having seen the San Francisco performance, I cannot compare the two versions, but one critic described the first take of Appomattox as an "epic-proportioned opera, sensational in its conception, drama and music that had one sitting on the edge of one’s opera seat being witness to history." Much of this could be said of the revised version shown Saturday in Washington. While the production did not have me sitting on the edge of my seat with a particularly sensational conception, it had me sitting back and contemplating.

The opera starts with the final days of the Civil War and the surrender of Confederate Army commander Robert Lee to Union General Ulysses Grant in the village of Appomattox, Virginia. It then moves to a post-war meeting between President Abraham Lincoln and African-American activist Frederick Douglass in which Douglass tells the newly re-elected president he would like to see “voting rights for all free men of color.”

Generals Lee and Grant discuss their correspondence with aides.                Photo: Scott Suchman for WNO

One hundred years later in the second and most revised act of Appomattox we are in the midst of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and African-Americans are still fighting for their voting rights.   

Then the opera turns into a political farce in which President Lyndon B. Johnson cleverly handles political adversaries while ridiculing their small-mindedness behind their backs. As it moves to more recent years, Appomattox opens the door to a private conversation between two inmates (real-life characters) convicted of racially-motivated murders committed decades before. One, now dead, got away with a negligible sentence. The other, a former Ku Klux Klan member, will spend his life in jail, but scorns the punishment because for him no price is too high in defense of white supremacy - a state of mind not much different from suicide bombers. 

A group of women calling for the end of the strife and healing of the nation in the final scene concludes the epic on a soothing note.  

The first part of Appomattox struck me as the more operatic and colorful than the second. It opens with a gorgeous all-male choral piece sung by soldiers tired of war. Back home women lament the bloodshed. General Lee and his Union counterpart Grant are juxtaposed on the stage, against the background of huge Confederate and Union flags as each contemplates the other's moves. Their correspondence as well as direct communication are gentlemanly throughout, the interest of American people upmost on their minds. 

The second part felt like a surrealist docu-drama in which historic characters and events presented on the stage blend with those from current news reports, as they would in a dream. You could be listening to Martin Luther King or a reverend in Charleston's historic black church after the racially motivated killing of nine worshipers. The historic marches in Selma were sparked by the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the 26-year-old civil rights marcher at the hands of a state trooper.  Today's Black Lives Matter movement was sparked by the deaths of several black men at the hands of white policemen.  As you watch the former, you think of the latter.  As the opera points out, it took much longer to get the voting rights law enacted than it did to get it repealed.  

The music is a mature and refined Philip Glass, with his signature minimalist style still clearly recognizable in the repetition of phrases that underline the text, or stand alone in their eloquence. The choral passages are unanimously gorgeous, at times angelic and ethereal, like the one that ends the opera, or steeped in the African-American tradition: spirituals and songs like The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Ol' Man River.  Glass even produced his own version of the Civil War anthem We Shall Overcome that brought to mind the original without imitating it.

The singers were mostly superb and well suited for the characters they portray. As the opera moves through the time, some of them could conveniently appear in two different roles without being recognized. Bas-baritone David Pittsinger was the epithome of a southern gentleman when portraying General Lee and sinister as murderer Edgar Ray Killen later on. I could not tell that it was the same singer.

The shining star among his equals was Washington's own Soloman Howard, a graduate of the WNO's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program who has already debuted at the Metropolitan Opera. The 33-year-old bass is the only singer I can think of with the right stature and enough charisma to bring Martin Luther King to life. He also appeared as Frederick Douglass in the first act.

Soloman Howard as MLK in Appomattox            Photo: Scott Suchman for WN

Appomatox is packed with energy and powerful characters, but also (and I know I am going to be crucified for saying this) with occasional longueurs, the recitativi that drag it down like millstone.  In the traditional opera, parlando segments serve to speed up the action and can be as memorable and haunting as any aria. Like this dialogue between Tosca and Scarpia: 

Scarpia: "Or su Tosca, parlate!
Tosca: "Non so nulla."

Or Germont's rebuke: "Di sprezzo degno se stesso rende qui pur nell'ira la donna offende."

Or Eboli's outrageous shriek:  "Voi la regina amate!"

In the modern opera, these half-sung-half-spoken conversations, or monologues as the case may be, sound monotonous and if they go on for too long can become a crashing bore. Not only do they always sound the same, but the voice or the intonation raised in the wrong place or at the wrong time makes me wince. I cannot tell if it is the English language, or a lack of effort, or the belief that modern music should not concern itself with appeal, but few of the modern recitativi - if they are still called that - are memorable. And while they are somewhat tolerable in a staged performance, it is hard to imagine that anyone wants to listen to them at home on CD.

One solution Philip Glass and his librettist Christopher Hampton have found to overcome the tedium is the use of witticism and irreverence in the text, for example in LBJ's conversation with U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Another trick is following LBJ's "televised speech" with an especially attractive instrumental passage.  Still, the sing-song talk combined with Donald Eastman's unchanged set of pillared facade with a long balcony, creates a static impression, turning the opera into an oratorio at times.

Overall, Glass and Hampton have created a quintessentially American work, focused on voting rights, but sending a powerful message about the legacy of racism that has plagued the world's leading democracy since its inception. The accompanying photo exhibit A Journey from Civil War to Civil Rights is a helpful preview, especially for those of us who missed that chapter in the history book.

During the 1960's rights movement in the United States, I lived in eastern Europe where the assassination of Martin Luther King received no more attention than the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende, Che Guevara or Haile Selassie. When I came to live in the U.S. capital 20 years later, it was with the conviction that racism and segregation were forgotten things of the past. It took years to realize that racial tensions were not just lingering here and there, but seething under the surface all this time to reach a new boiling point this year.

Washington is probably a better place than San Francisco to introduce an opera such as Appomattox, but the work should be seen by more ordinary Americans than the limited number of shows in D.C. can accommodate. Let's hope that WNO records one of the performances for a nationwide television broadcast in the near future, say during the upcoming dreary months of January and February when many people like to stay at home.

Gun Culture As American As Apple Pie

In 1968, two prominent Americans fell victim to gun violence: Martin Luther King Jr. in April and two months later Robert F. Kennedy. The young senator from New York, whose brother President John F. Kennedy was gunned down less than five years before him, said the following words on the day after King's assassination:

"Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence, the whole nation is 
degraded.  Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike."

Robert Kennedy' Assassination, June 6, 1968, Los Angeles

Almost half a century later, President Barack Obama had a similar message for the nation following the killing of 10 people at a community college in Oregon.

"Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws -- even in the face of repeated mass killings.”  And later that day, there was a mass shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana."  

After every one of the mass killings in American schools and other public places, President Obama has called for a tougher gun law.

"We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.  We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings.  Friends of ours, allies of ours -- Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours.  So we know there are ways to prevent it." 

I am not convinced. I am all for tougher gun laws, in fact I am for confiscating every privately owned gun in the United States and banning all gun sales. In a civilized society, people should not need guns "for protection" or for any other reason.  But we are not Australia or Great Britain. The United States is so profoundly steeped in the gun culture that it will take a lot more than tougher gun laws to slow the soaring spiral of killings.

As Kennedy said in that 1968 speech:

"We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire."

And President Obama said a few days ago:  

"And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation.  Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out:  We need more guns, they’ll argue.  Fewer gun safety laws."

I am more inclined to agree with Kennedy in saying, "I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set." 

But we have to make an effort to eradicate this evil, and getting the facts would be a good place to start.  Who are the perpetrators of mass shootings?  (not many women from what I can see)  What are their motives ( hatred? celebrity status? depression? weakness? isolation?) and what inspires them  (movies? computer games? love of gadgets?)  This is just some of the information we need to have. 

President Obama said:

"We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so.  And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths."

President Obama Speaks After Oregon Shooting

But lawmakers cannot block research by the independent think tanks, or reporting by the independent news media.  For example, American Enterprise Institute recently posted an article from the National Review which says that Protestants are more likely to commit suicide than Catholics and atheists are even more likely to commit suicide.  Researchers also have found a link between suicide and relation to a community.  

http://www.aei.org/publication/an-epidemic-of-loneliness/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITHISWEEK&utm_campaign=Weekly101015

Who knows what links would be discovered in a serious study of the inclination to shoot and kill large groups of people.  I would bet that relation to the community is a crucial factor.

We live in a culture that values material possessions, power and fame above all else.  One person having a place above others.  Ostensibly, our society still values honor, duty and loyalty, at least rhetorically, but most will agree that these qualities are obstacles on the road to what is considered "top" today.  To become rich, powerful and famous one has to be relentless, shameless and insensitive - "walk over dead bodies," so to speak.

But if we, citing Kennedy, "...admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all, "  and if we  "admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others,"  then maybe fewer people will feel the urge to kill their fellow human beings.

Promoting this kind of culture instead of over-emphasizing the "rights of an individual" at the expense of the society, including the right to carry a weapon that can kill a whole lot of people in seconds,  may go a long way to make any "tougher" gun laws more effective.  If as individuals we believe we are important members of a greater community that is our nation, then perhaps we will be less inclined to commit acts that degrade this nation.

WNO Opens 60th Season

Washington National Opera opened its 60th Season on Saturday and what an eventful season it promises to be! In addition to the complete Wagner Ring, it includes a Philip Glass opera, a Kurt Weill work, Hansel and Gretel and three brand new 20-minute operas based on contemporary American stories. With so many works rarely performed in Washington coming up, it is hardly surprising that the season started with a warhorse such as Carmen.

Kennedy Center, Saturday evening, WNO season about to begin

I am happy Francesca Zambello came to Washington and took over WNO in January 2013. She had previously impressed me with her creation of the so-called American Ring, her rendition of the Wagner's tetralogy performed here between 2006 and 2009.  She reconfirmed that impression with her staging of Berlioz's Les Troyens at the Metropolitan in 2012. As WNO's artistic director, she is turning an opera house of mediocre Traviatas and Trovatores into an art organization blowing fresh air into a staid cultural atmosphere of the nation's capital. Francesca (and I feel close enough to use her first name) is my only hope that we may see a Berlioz opera in Washington one day.

Having seen several excellent performances of Carmen in the past few years, most recently a live broadcast from Orange, France, with Jonas Kaufmann and Kate Aldrich, I was prepared for a less than exciting evening. But once the lights went down and the curtain up (in this case a set splitting along a jagged line in the middle) magic happened. The more-or-less standard production directed by Loren Meeker had a few novelties to offer, such as a couple of enter-acte flamenco dancers. Since Clémentine Margaine's Carmen was not an especially skilled dancer, it would have been good to see a little more of Fanny Ara doing it for her.

Flamenco dancers Fanny Ara and Timo Nuñez 

Margaine has a beautiful voice, but her entrance was not impressive and it took a while for her to assert her presence. In the first act one could hardly distinguish her from other factory girls and her rendition of Habanera did nothing to make her stand out. Maybe a more strategic wardrobe and makeup would help. Her singing improved in the subsequent acts, but the wardrobe did not.

One problem most Carmens have is how to be seductive without being ridiculous. This one did nothing different than most others before her (Baltimore Opera's Milena Kitić from a decade ago comes to mind) and her trump card was spreading her legs around a guy. Directors should make a little more effort than have the "Gypsy" girl strut back and forth on the stage, wiggling her hips and hawking her wares like a vulgar street girl. That's not sexy. Furthermore, coming from the Balkans, I have seen more Gypsies than an average American opera patron, and none of their women walk like the operatic Carmen. Kate Aldrich changed the routine somewhat in the contemporary Orange production, but in my view, nobody has done a better job of seduction than Elina Garanča for the Met's Carmen a few years ago. She seemed to have a lot of fun with it and everything she did looked natural. A singer who is not good with gestures can be made more seductive with the right clothes and a suitable wig.

Bryan Hymel was an impressive Énée in Les Troyens recently and thus an artist to look forward to in WNO's Carmen. He was a sensitive and convincing Don José, though sharing more chemistry with Janai Brugger's excellent Micaëla than with Margaine's Carmen.

Bryan Hymel and Janai Brugger as Don José and Micaëla in WNO' Carmen

Michael Todd Simpson was a lackluster Escamillo. His entrance failed to electrify the stage as a celebrity toreador's is expected to do, although there was some improvement in the last act. Kenneth Kellog was well suited for the role of Lieutenant Zuniga and Nicholas Houhoulis did well as tavern owner Lillas Pastia. The sets were a slightly stylized take on the standard for the opera, with the faded image of la Nuestra Señora de Guadelupe hinting that the smuggling might be taking place on the U.S. border with Mexico rather than anywhere near Seville.

Overall, it was a solid performance that should please anyone who has not seen Bizet's masterpiece in a while. It was also an appropriate prelude to the new and rarely seen works such as Appomatox and others that will follow. The 2007 opera by Philip Glass will be WNO's first ever performance of a work by arguably the most celebrated contemporary American composer. The reworked version includes a completely new second act, featuring Washington native Soloman Howard as Martin Luther King Jr.

An important company premiere will be a South African production of Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars based on Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Bass-baritone Eric Owens interprets Stephen Kumalo, a minister in apartheid-era South Africa who travels from his small village to Johannesburg to find his errant son.

The highlight of the WNO's 60th anniversary without doubt is Wagner's Ring. The cycle of the four operas attracts the world's attention whenever it is staged and people will travel distances to see the Met Ring, the Seattle Ring, the Melbourne Ring, and others, with the Bayreuth Ring remaining a lifelong dream for many an opera lover. WNO performed the four operas separately over four seasons about a decade ago, with the last one, Götterdämmerung given in concert form as the production money ran out. Oh, but what a glorious concert it was - with South African Gidon Kramer brooding his way into the role of Hagen to create the sexiest version of the evil dwarf's offspring ever seen on the stage. The then-WNO director Placido Domingo did a commendable job as Siegmund in the 2007 Walküre. All in all, it was a memorable Ring, the staggered performances whetting the appetite for every subsequent installment - and now making one eager to see how the next year's complete cycle will compare to the first run.