Minorities Feature Prominently in Upcoming New Operas
Contemporary operas can be an ordeal to sit through. Composers are pressured to offer some new and groundbreaking concept, which usually means hard-to-like music, black-and-white scenography, and absolute absence of tradition. Melody is anathema. A few years ago, I came to Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at the Washington National Opera almost directly from the world premiere of La Ciudad de las Mentiras (City of Lies) in Madrid. While Heggie’s opera leaned toward traditional, Elena Mendoza’s opus at Teatro Real in Spain’s capital, bore all the characteristics of a modern work.
 La Ciudad de las Mentiras, Teatro Real, Madrid, 2017, photo: Z. Hoke |
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Mendoza used four stories by Juan Carlos Onetti to explore theatrical and perhaps some musical possibilities, but her sopranos, tenors and baritones never sang. They recited lines from the stories so intertwined that only those familiar with Onetti's work could hope to understand what was going on. The English language surtitles kept the uninitiated out of a complete fog, and a written introduction gave some clarification, but I had to agree with a co-spectator who argued that if a work of art needs so much explanation, it is not a good work of art. If Mendoza's singers did not sing, neither did the musicians played much music. At one point a man appeared on the stage with an accordion only to tap his hand on it a couple of times. An actor portraying a bartender scratched a metal tray with a knife, a piano player hit the keyboard a couple of times and the orchestra produced some "atmospheric" sound, sort of like a distant wind howling. Overall, it was an interesting, innovative stage production, but it was not what an average person would call an opera.
That word typically conjures images of Figaro, Carmen or Violetta singing their hearts out in melodies most opera lovers can hum in the shower. We usually think of opera as a dramatic or comic story related through song and instrumental music. It consists of melodic arias that express a character’s feelings, and spoken or almost spoken recitativi, which move the action forward. Of course, today, if you google the word “opera”, you may come across information about a browser for Android devices.
Many modern operas veer away from the standard structure. In September of last year, the historic Bavarian State opera in Munich, Germany, premiered a new music-theater work 7 Deaths of Maria Callas by controversial performance icon Marina Abramović. The New York-based artists is perhaps best known for her 2010 MoMA performance The Artists Is Present, in which she sat at a table speechless while long lines of visitors waited to sit across her and watch her expressions.
7 Deaths of Maria Callas was presented as an opera. It featured seven arias Callas was most famous for, such as Vissi d’arte and Un bel di sung by various sopranos, while Abramović, occasionally joined by actor Willem Dafoe, recited her own narratives. Music by composer Marko Nikodijević accompanied her recitatives and video projections, which showed Abramović being strangled by snakes or die in some other torturous manner.
For a classical opera fan, the one-hour performance was an outrage as was Abramovic’s claim that she and Callas have a lot in common. But perhaps more importantly, Abramović’s latest opus was an homage to a great soprano that some of performance art fans may not have been interested in. Similarly, the television series Lovecraft Country features an episode based on the 1921 Tulsa massacre that is accompanied by operatic music at the request of composer Laura Karpman. The soundtrack ends in a requiem.
Belgian composer Jean-Luc Fafchamps opened the 2020 season at the La Monnaie opera house in Brussels with a “pop requiem” Is This the End? Éric Brucher's libretto focuses on a woman caught in a twilight zone between life and death. There, she meets other people in a kind of transitional state between this world and the next. The staging by Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski contrasts the live action on stage with film sequences shot inside the theatre and then integrated into the live performance. But the piece is conceived for watching from home.
Fans of the traditional music theater may wonder why we even call some of these modern pieces of theater “opera.” But we should be reminded that in Italian, opera means work, labor or opus. Operaio is a worker or laborer. So the word opera is not restricted to the kind of music performances with which it is most often associated.
The new works we sometimes dismiss too quickly actually bode well for the future of the opera. Their creators acknowledge and often build on the timeless masterpieces and pay homage to old masters.
Let’s look at some of the novelties in the pipeline for the upcoming opera seasons.
In the United States, hopes are high that the Metropolitan Opera will be able to re-open on September 27 and make history by staging its first ever opera created by an African American composer and an African American librettist. Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, is based on the memoir by Charles M. Blow and will star Angel Blue, Latonia Moore, and Will Liverman.
The Met will premiere two other operas in its new season: Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice, starring Erin Morley in the title role, and Brett Dean’s Hamlet, with Allan Clayton portraying the tortured Danish prince.
Cincinnati Opera’s ambitious plan for the next season includes two world premieres: Fierce by William Menefield and Castor and Patience by Gregory Spears. Fierce focuses on four teenage girls who struggle to adjust to school, family, and friendship, and follows their journeys toward empowerment. In their college essays, one mourns the loss of a special friend. Another one hides behind her popularity. The third feels oppressed by her parents’ expectations. And the last one struggles with a troubled home life. Despite the chorus of trolls that taunts them, the girls unite in their fight against adversity. The libretto is inspired by life stories of real Cincinnati-area teenage girls.
Castor and Patience is centered on two cousins from an African American family who find themselves at odds over the fate of a historic parcel of land they have inherited in the American South. The opera probes historical obstacles to black land ownership in the United States.
Spoleto Festival USA has commissioned a new opera by Grammy Award-Winner Rhiannon Giddens, inspired by a real-life character from the American South. Titled Omar, the opera is based on the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said – an enslaved African man from the Futa Toro region of present-day Senegal - who was brought to Charleston in 1807. Thirteen years later, Omar, a Muslim, converted to Christianity, but his manuscripts written in Arabic, especially his autobiographical essay, suggest that he remained faithful to Islam.
Dayton Opera will present its first ever full-length opera premiere in its coming season. Finding Wright is a result of creative collaboration of four talented women: composer Laura Kaminsky, librettist Andrea Fellows Fineberg, conductor Susanne Sheston and stage director Kathleen Clawson. In Finding Wright, 21st century Charlotte (Charlie) Tyler, a young, recently widowed, aerospace engineer and researcher learns about the extraordinary life of Katharine Wright, younger sister of flight pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. The Wrights siblings were born in Dayton, Ohio.
The Washington National Opera is planning to continue its new opera initiative as soon as the circumstances allow with a short work intended for all ages, titled Elephant & Piggie, based on the book I Really Like Slop! The music is by D.C.-based composer and 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner Carlos Simon. The libretto is by author and illustrator Mo Willems, who is the Kennedy Center’s first education artist-in-residence.
San Francisco Opera is likely to bring in a performance of the new Finnish opera Innocence in the near future. The work by composer Kaija Saariaho and novelist Sofi Oksanen, is a co-production of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Finnish National Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Dutch National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera and is sung in nine languages: English, Finnish, Czech, Romanian, French, Swedish, German, Spanish and Greek.
Here is how Music Finland online describes the opera: “Innocence takes place at a wedding in present-day Helsinki, Finland, with an international guest list. The groom is Finnish, the bride is Romanian, and the mother-in-law is French. But the groom’s family has a dark secret – ten years earlier, these characters were involved in a tragic event. When the events from long ago begin to unravel and the ghosts of the past revive their memories of the trauma, the family faces the question: where does the innocence end and guilt begins?
Sounds bergmanesque and intriguing.
Los Angeles Opera’s new season is highlighting a one-man opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun. In the work titled In Our Daughter’s Eyes, baritone Nathan Gunn portrays a father struggling to become a man his daughter would be proud of. As a gift for his unborn daughter, he writes a diary documenting his journey to fatherhood.
More new operas than ever are written by and about minorities. Just a few years ago the best that a female or African American composer could hope for was a performance at a smaller local theater. Now, the world’s most eminent opera houses are fighting to commission their best efforts and turn the spotlight on them. If successful, these works may change the world of opera in unexpected ways.
