Fashion in the Time of Covid

At this time of the year I like to look at the fashions for the coming season and so I am doing it now, especially curious how designers make their creations relevant for the time of Covid, when many people spend days at home in their pajamas. Other increasingly common clothing items have been running shoes, training pants, hoodies, fleece jackets and puffers. Even the usually elegant French women seem to have let themselves go a little bit under the circumstances. Designers must be perfectly aware of the mood because they seem to be offering more elaborate variations of the clothes people are already wearing.

Paris street fashion, 2021

Passing by a few clothing stores in Washington's trendy Georgetown on a Sunday in December, my friend and I came across a small boutique with a display of long evening dresses in its windows. We looked at each other with the question in our eyes: is there any place where you can wear something like this, even on a New Year's Eve? The shop looked like a relic from a bygone era. And maybe it was not even open. It was hard to tell on that Sunday.

Boutique Lovely, Georgetown, Washington DC

The Washington area clothing stores have not quite adjusted to the Covid era. The racks are still full of dresses, high-heeled shoes and fancy jewelry as well as formal suits and ties for men. There are also tons of sports and casual items, of course, but no more than before the pandemic.  Some stores have closed permanently - Camper Shoes among them - and some still have their fronts boarded up since the BLM and election riots. But inside the stores, nothing has changed.

Designers, on the other hand, exhibit more awareness of the world around them than most US clothing merchants.  The new apparel focuses on the comfortable to the degree of frumpy and ill-fitted. Wardrobe basics include oversized "boyfriend" shirts, thick sweaters, big jackets, baggy pants and huge overcoats, intended to accommodate all the bulky items underneath when you run out to grab a bottle of milk from the corner store. In a pinch, women can borrow men's clothes for any occasion. 

Balenciaga, Spring 2021  

                                             

I have been a great fan of Scandinavian fashions for years. But the Nordic favorite this year - a sleeveless sweater I have always hated - takes it down a notch or two on my top list.  The reincarnation of my grandmother's knitwear looks to be crocheted from the yarn leftover from a cottage blanket she made all those winters ago.  When I was the age of the model in the photo below, you would not see me dead in the concoction she is showing off. But knitting has seen revival during Covid and designers are letting you know they approve.

Copenhagen, 2021

Now the shoes: they must be super comfy, with solid wide bottoms and tight ankles to ensure that you don't wobble during the five-mile daily exercise walks, or cause even a hint of a blister.

Platform boots, 2021

Spring Fashion 2021

While the winter apparel leans toward comfy and cosy, designers show optimism that the pandemic might subside by the summer and turn to light, airy and cheerful items. We see a plethora of fluffy concoctions for women and colorful creations for men.

 Summer fashion, 2021

Men's fashion, spring 2021

Much to look forward to, even though we are not quite sure if there will be occasion to show off our new wardrobe. Will anyone still have desire to dress up if you cannot join a crowd that might admire your latest look?

Let's see: D.C. restaurants are currently able to serve indoors at 25% capacity. Valentine's Day is coming up, and though large gatherings are discouraged, couples are acceptable. With love and engagements in the air, people will surely want to don something other than training pants. I'll go check the evening spots this weekend and make that five-mile walk on the asphalt. I may wear comfortable shoes, but I promise to put on a skirt. Even if it snows!

Minorities Dominate Upcoming Opera Seasons

 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

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.  

Looking beyond 2021, we can expect to see an opera adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours. The film adaptation featured Hollywood stars Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman.  Co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the opera by composer Kevin Puts will bring back star soprano Renee Fleming from her semi-retirement. Puts, whose opera Silent Night won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 is collaborating on The Hours with librettist Greg Pierce. The staged premiere, also featuring Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara is slated for 2022. 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

The End Is Near

Like the rest of the world, I've been glued to the news feeds for the past few months, but unlike many, I have not been able to articulate what I feel about the current US state of affairs. The reactions from the US media and political leaders have been largely predictable, analyses largely superficial. So I am more interested in how the rest of the world is reacting, especially ordinary people - not pundits or philosophers. One comment from Croatia strikes me as typical. Many others are either too nasty or too gleeful, but this one, though not reflecting my opinion, reflects some of my confusion and, I am sure, the confusion of many other people around the world. Here is my approximate translation of the piece:

Boris Dežulovićfor N1 :  THE END IS NEAR

"There was a guy throwing money around, installing gold toilets, dying his hair with orange juice and grabbing women by the pussy, who also believed that the noise from wind turbines caused cancer and suggested that tornados and hurricanes could be stopped with nuclear bombs, and that Covid-19 could be cured with Clorox. And that guy was the U.S. president. 

On one occasion he gathered Baltic leaders and blamed them for the Balkan crisis. On another, his wife visited a camp for immigrant children, dressed in a jacket with a sign "I really don't care." And on yet another occasion his election-campaign chief organized a press conference in the luxury Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia but which took place outside a Four Seasons Total Landscaping center in a Philly suburb, in a parking lot between the local crematorium and a sex-toy shop.

So when he lost the election, the president urged his voters and followers to march on Washington and prevent the announcement of the voters' choice for the country's new leader.

There was another guy in the US state of Georgia who heeded the president's call to come to Washington, but he did not have a flag of his home state, so he ordered one from the Amazon. He logged into his account, typed in "Flag of Georgia" and placed an order. The next day he received an Amazon box containing a large, beautiful flag of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, which he hung on a pole, mounted on his car and drove nearly a thousand miles from his southern state through both Carolinas and entire Virginia to the nation's capital. He was cheered by truck drivers along the way while he turned up the volume on Willie Nelson's "Georgia On My Mind". Surreptitiously, he wiped away a tear or two of his patriotic pride, as he listened to "just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind."

"Which flag is it, my friend?" shouted the truck drivers through their open windows, and he lifted his chin importantly and said: "Georgia, my friend."  "Georgia?" they wondered, slightly ashamed of not recognizing the southern state's flag but he would just croon along with Willie Nelson, "I said Georgia, heh, maybe it’s because I’m from Augusta, Georgia.“ His compatriots responded with wows and thumbs up.

That guy was among the first to attack the US Capitol. His photos appeared in all the news and were scattered all over the internet. Reddit was on to him, the whole planet saw him charging the Congress with a flag offered by the Amazon when you search for "Flag of Georgia." Little did he know that the first Georgia on Amazon's mind was a Caucasian state, on the shores of the Black Sea. And so the man waved a white flag emblazoned with five red crosses as he climbed the Capitol steps. Tovarish Stalin, Soviet Georgia's greatest son, would have been thrilled to see it.

Then there was an average American housewife with average American intelligence, from an average U.S. city, who looked as if she had walked straight out of The Simpsons animated series.  She was determined to prevent satanist-pedophile-vaxxer-communist conspiracy against Donald Trump and America. She was in all the papers all over the internet, and Twitter filled its pages with her memes and gifs.  The entire globe saw her charging the Congress and, in her patriotic fervor, attack journalists of the mainstream media and foreign reporters. Noticing their Cyrillic and Arab letters - she accosted Russian and Al Jazeera reporters telling them to go back to the communist China where they came from.

There was also a guy from Arkansas who broke into the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also was in all the news, the internet and social media and the whole world saw him break into madam speaker's office, sit in her armchair, lift his booted feet on her desk, take a hundred selfies and then - in case he had not yet been identified - pose for TV outlets in the street with items belonging to Ms. Pelosi in his hands. He bragged he did not steal anything because he had left 25 cents on her desk.

Then there was an expert fighter from Maryland, who watched in disbelief as the moron from Arkansas practically wrote his own arrest warrant. He left work at the local branch of Navistar Direct Marketing to join the siege of the US Congress and, having learned to be cautious from the experience of living under the dictatorship of the Deep State, he took steps to ensure he was not recognized.  He wrapped himself in the U.S. flag, pulled a hood over his head and a MAGA hat over it, and entered the Congress in the way General Lee entered Veracruz.  

He appeared in all the newspapers and internet portals; Facebook and Twitter and the entire globe saw him marching through congressional halls.  Upon return home that evening, he found Deep State agents waiting for him as well as a notice of termination of employment form Navistar.  When he asked how they identified him so quickly, the agents showed him Facebook photos of him strutting through the Capitol with a Navistar Direct Marketing ID hanging around his neck. 

Finally, there was also a failed actor-singer from Arizona, who after mindless wondering through the wasteland of his life, re-invented himself as shaman and joined the people's liberation army of QAnon. He came to the Congress naked to the waist, with a fur hat and bison horns on his head. He urged people over a loudspeaker to topple the dictatorship of Masonic-Hollywood-satanistic-pedophile elites that kidnap little kids and take them to the infamous Washington pizzeria with a secret entrance into a large global network of underground tunnels, in which Soros, Gates and Rockefeller sexually abuse children and drink their blood to stay young.

The guy also appeared in all the newspapers, internet, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The whole world could see and hear QAnon's shaman with bison horns as he explained to the international press corps that he can hear high-frequency sounds, not audible to the ear of a mere mortal, and that he had a passport for all the galaxies of the universe.

In short, those answering the call of the president who confuses the Balkans with the Baltics were people like the guy who does not know the flag of his native Georgia, a woman who does not distinguish Arabs from Asians, a thief who takes selfies while committing crime, and a guy who is hiding from Deep State by wearing a badge with his personal information on it. They were led by a shaman who can hear frequencies of a bat and is leading an international movement against a network of satanist pedophiles from the basement of a Washington pizzeria (which does not have a basement). The imbecilic group that could have come straight out of The Simpsons psychiatric clinic entered one of the most protected buildings in the world, in the most protected capital of the world and the most protected country in the world as if they were walking into a suburban Walmart.   

This is not the first time we have seen such scenes on TV. A few years ago, for example, there was a broadcast of Ronald Emmerich's movie White House Down in which terrorists attack the White House. James Vanderbilt's team had to re-write the scrip at least 20 times to make the story of invading the stronghold of the American democracy believable. But while the fictionalized attack was masterminded by sophisticated operatives and was carried out by elite special forces, in real life the Congress was demolished by a cast of characters from Dumb and Dumber. 

These characters announced their march on Washington at least a month before. US Capitol Police, Homeland Security, FBI and CIA, agents that stage coups in foreign countries - all were activated. Video footage was showing convoys of vehicles pouring toward the US capital, and Facebook published the exact route to the Congress and the time of the planned attack, January 6. And still the invasion of the Capitol shocked the security experts.  They watched in daze as the  man who took Nancy Pelosi's lectern to sell it on eBay cheerfully waved to them. 

Some of the best photographs from the riot were sold to Getty Images Inc. and published all over the internet with the logo "Via Getty." Afterwards, Google was literally flooded with questions "Who Is Via Getty?" and the police and secret service were promptly informed of Trump's new guerrilla operative named Via Getty, who is self-advertising on the social media.

What you have seen is jackass civilization in the era of imbeciles. The 20th century had its romantic revolutions, dark lieutenants, secret agents, spies, mercenaries, inglourious basterds and ailing poets - dreamers who believed in equality and a just new world. The revolutions of our time will be led by shamans with bison horns, who buy liberty flags on the Amazon; conspiracy theorists who believe that the recent earthquakes in Croatia were caused by satanist-pedophile elites mining their underground tunnels for ritual drinking of children's blood; and those who believe that pandemic was created on purpose so people can be vaccinated with microchips, and controlled by dark powers.  These revolutionaries will be confronted by conscientious citizens chasing over the Internet new Che Guevaras such as Via Getty.

The global revolution of our century is led by the prophets whom you may remember standing on banana crates with a sign: "The end is near - prepare!" 

Hasta la victoria siempre!

American Opera Follows Its Own Path

Washington National Opera’s premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s opera Blue, a tragic story about an African-American family in New York, would have been timely in March 2020 when it was scheduled for introduction to the nation’s capital. It will still be timely in May 2021, the new premiere date, coinciding with the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man killed by the police in Minneapolis, during an arrest.

A performance cancellation or delay is usually cause for regret, but for participants in this opera, mostly black singers and actors, it was a reprieve. Star singer Kenneth Kellogg said in a recent interview that "there wasn’t a day in rehearsal that somebody didn’t break down and cry,” because for many of the protagonists, the opera’s story was too real. Kellogg portrays the opera’s leading character, a black policeman whose son is shot to death by a white policeman.

Libretto by Tazewell Thompson has three main characters: the Father, the Mother and the Son. The opening act comprises a series of discussions among family members and friends about their aspirations in the context of everyday injustice in minority neighborhoods. When a baby boy is born the family rejoices, but there are also apprehensions about his future amid growing police intimidation of young black men.

Things turn tense when the teenage Son, dressed in a hoodie and glued to his laptop becomes involved in protests against police violation. His father’s argument that he and his fellow officers risk their lives to protect communities is wasted on the angry young man, who calls his father a pathetic "black man in blue."

Photo by Karli Cadel: Kenneth Kellogg and Aaron Crouch as the Father and the Son at the Glimmerglass Festival, 2019

The family is devastated when the Son gets killed during a protest, leaving the Father struggling to reconcile the faith in his profession with the tragic loss of his son. The funeral scene offers some of the opera’s most ambitious choral pieces, accented in places with the soaring duet of grieving parents.

American composers have developed a unique American operatic style, with recognizably American sound and unmistakably American themes. The effort to branch away from the European opera was there from the very beginning. As early as 1855, New York saw the premiere of George Frederick Bristow's opera Rip Van Winkle, based on Washington Irving’s short story. The composer championed American music and themes throughout his life and was critical of his contemporaries who did not.

Since then, other American literary masterpieces such as Little Women, The Great Gatsby and A View from the Bridge have been adapted for the musical theater. But few have been as successful as the works based on true events. One of the first ones was The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore, which premiered in 1956 at the Central City Opera in Colorado, where the real historical figures that inspired the opera, had lived.

When John Adams presented his opera Nixon in China in 1987 in Houston, some of the main characters were still alive. Initially considered a gimmick, the so-called docu-drama gained worldwide recognition and started a new trend that eventually caught on in Europe. In 2011, London’s Royal Opera House premiered Anna Nicole, an opera about the tragic life and death of American celebrity model Anna Nicole. Critics were not sure how to look at this provocative work, but all the six performances were sold out. Anna Nicole was portrayed by star soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek who then went on to New York to sing Sieglinde in Wagner’s Ring.

But the most performed American opera of all time is Porgy and Bess, which premiered in 1935 and has remained a symbol of American culture worldwide. There is hardly a place where the Summertime tune is not recognized even by people who do not know the opera. The music drama about African-American experience was crafted by three white men, the fact not lost on many black composers whose work has been ignored or neglected. Critics have described Porgy and Bess as a symbol of systemic racism in the American artistic world.

Many Americans would be surprised to learn that one of the earliest American opera composers, producers and teachers was a black man. Harry Lawrence Freeman wrote more than 20 operas and founded several music schools and organizations, including the Negro Opera Company. At the age of 22 he produced his first opera Epthelia in Denver. His second opera, The Martyr, was performed in several U.S. cities, while the others could not garner sufficient support in the U.S. music circles of his time. Still, during his lifetime Freeman was known as “the black Wagner.”



Scot Joplin’s 1911 Treemonisha is the only opera by a U.S. black composer that is still performed from time to time, albeit in smaller theaters, and there is a commercial recording of it.

Despite being ignored, African-American composers have created ambitious music pieces, some of which have survived. Scholars as well as music companies are now working to bring some of them to light and reverse years of neglect.

Among them is Freeman’s Voodoo that was performed in semi-staged production in 2015 in New York.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMZymNy8Nc

Shirley Graham du Bois’ epic work Tom-Tom was performed at Harvard two years ago, for the first time since its 1932 premiere at Cleveland Stadium.

The Metropolitan Opera has announced plans to bring Terence Blanchard’s work Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on Charles Blow’s 2014 memoir, which was first performed in St. Luis last year. This will be the first production by a black composer and black librettist (Kasi Lemmons) staged by the Metropolitan Opera in its 136-year history.

American opera companies have long fought to diverse their audiences, which are predominantly white people. One way to attract new audiences is to produce a new opera. But with most operas written by white composers on white themes, it is hard to attract people of different backgrounds.

“Rarely do you go to the opera and see black people onstage really letting you know how they feel with a story written by a black librettist,” said Kellogg. The music for Blue is composed by a white woman, but the libretto is written by a black theater director.

With the story so close to real life events, many people will wonder why go see it in the theater. Certainly, it is easier to escape the harsh reality with the music of Mozart or Rossini, but opera is ultimately about real people and their emotions in conflict or tragedy, as well as in joyful times. An average opera goer will go to see Carmen or La bohème, attracted by name recognition more than a sense of discovery. But a more avid fan is curious to examine a new work or at least a re-invented production of an old one. The advent of live opera simulcasts in movie theaters, and online opera streams has made the discovery of opera, both the time-tested classics and daring new productions, accessible to everyone. The most recent Met production of Glass’s Akhnaten must have dazzled even a complete novice.

Unlike Akhnaten, Blue is an intimate drama intent on inspiring contemplation of current events rather than dazzling. It premiered in 2019 at The Glimmerglass Festival and received the 2020 award for best opera from The Music Critics Association of North America. Performances in several cities have been cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Lyric Opera of Chicago has rescheduled performances for January of 2021 and Minnesota Opera for February 2021. Washington’s premiere has been rescheduled July 2021 and Toledo opera in Ohio announced plans to produce Blue in February 2022.

Opera in the Time of Coronavirus

This is a preview of my article written for the Washington Opera Society Magazine, June 2020 issue.

Arts organizations, especially opera houses, have put up a heroic fight to stay relevant during the pandemic, primarily by offering free streaming of their best stage productions. Individual artists have done their part by posting highlights from their repertoire in the social media and participating in organized outreach programs. The excuse of not seeing opera because of its prohibitive ticket prices is no longer valid.

No other opera company has done more than New York’s Metropolitan with its nightly presentation of Live in HD series on its web site, that includes such rarities as Berlioz’s Les Troyens and popular works like L’elisir d’amore, interspersed with memorable historic productions of La bohème, La sonnabula and Tosca. In addition, the Met is offering a free 8-week Opera Global Summer Camp via Google and Zoom classrooms, from June 15 to August 7.

Even smaller educational outlets, such as the Castleton Festival in Virginia, have made their productions available free online. Puccini's La fanciulla del West stands out.

The end of the COVID-19 crisis, unfortunately does not mean the end of problems for the performing arts that depend on large audiences.

Social distancing and other restrictions have forced the Metropolitan Opera to cancel all performances until the end of the year, including a new staging of the opening night Aida with Anna Netrebko. 

"The health and safety of our company members and our audience is our top priority, and it is simply not feasible to return to the opera house for a September opening while social distancing remains a requirement,” General Manager Peter Gelb said.

The company had earlier cancelled its planned premiere of Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, while the new productions of Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte had been postponed to future seasons. All the performances of Die Zauberflöte will feature Julie Taymor's production, rather than the new production by Simon McBurney originally announced. The revival will be part of the December 31 opening night and social gala.

On the positive note, the Met still intends to go ahead with its premiere of Jake Heggie’s modern opera Dead Man Walking. Netrebko appears to be forging ahead with preparations for her debut as Abigaille in Nabucco. She posted a video of a rehearsal session for the role at her home in Vienna.

The Washington National Opera is scheduled to open its 2020-2021 season with a new production of Beethoven's Fidelio on October 24, in celebration of the composer's 250th birthday. The season is to follow with a new production of John Adams’s Nixon in China, as well as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov and an “American opera initiative.” But at the time of writing this article, the company was still waiting for guidance from federal and local and health experts on when and in what manner it will be safe to resume. The Kennedy Center press office told the Washington Opera Society that “we do anticipate changes to our previously announced programming."

The 2019-2020 WNO season was cut short just ahead of the Washington premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s Blue, a work that grapples with a contemporary tragedy — the killing of an unarmed black man at the hands of a police officer. There could be no better time to show it than now, and one would hope the company will modify its fall season to include Blue.

Washington Concert Opera has confirmed plans to perform Rosini’s Maometto II on November 22 and Bellini’s I puritani in May of next year at the Lisner Auditorium, and is adding Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, which was cancelled in the spring due to the health crisis.

MButterfly, a brand new work by talented Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo will not see its world premiere in Santa Fe this summer since its summer festival has been cancelled. The Wolf Trap, the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and many other summer opera groups also have cancelled all performances.

Seattle Opera has also reached a moment of reckoning, announcing this week the cancellation of its first opera of the 2020/2021 season: Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci. The cancellation represents a loss of work for more than 220 singers, crew, and musicians in addition to the almost 60 percent of its administrative staff that has been furloughed.

“It is a deeply painful moment for us as a company, region, and world,” said General Director Christina Scheppelmann, one time director of the WNO. 

Theaters worldwide have been forced to reimagine their summer and fall seasons amid financial and other post-COVID restrictions.

Italy’s Teatro alla Scala in Milan had planned a grand fall season with 15 opera titles. But instead of conducting Tosca on the opening night in September, Riccardo Chailly will deliver Verdi’s Requiem in honor of the victims of COVID-19, as Toscanini did in May of 1946 to reopen the theater after World War II. The company has announced a new lineup including revivals of La bohème and La traviata, which had not been previously scheduled, but it is not clear what the whole season will look like.

The management of the Opera of Rome announced that it is cancelling its fall season due to the restrictions in closed venues.

The San Carlo Theater of Naples has announced a summer season featuring two concert opera performances at a central city square in July:  Tosca with Anna Netrebko and husband Yusif Eyvazov and Aida with Jonas Kaufmann. Live streaming will make both available to audiences around the world.

The Royal Opera House in London had planned Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Händel’s Ariodante and Janaček’s Věc Makropulos among its offerings for the fall season, but the company has yet to announce if and when it might reopen. And just this week ROH chief executive Alex Beard said the company will "not last beyond autumn with current reserves."

The Paris Opera was forced to cancel new productions even before the pandemic amid a series of strikes in the French capital. Between December and January, the company cancelled more than 70 performances and lost about 15 million euros. It expects to lose another 40 million euros as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's two venues, Palais Garnier and Opera Bastille, are hoping to re-open in the fall, but the schedule could be heavily disrupted according to the company’s general director, Stéphane Lissner.

“It’s impossible to attract 2,700 people and respect distancing. It’s impossible to maintain distances in the orchestra, the chorus… It’s impossible. We are waiting on a vaccine, medication… Maybe the virus disappears. We have to be optimistic,” said Lissner.

Germany's legendary Bayreuth Festival has been cancelled for this summer and patrons are being reimbursed or can use the tickets for the 2021 festival.

The lockdown of concert halls and opera houses, cuts in air travel and other restrictions have devastated careers and livelihood of artists worldwide. Star tenor Jonas Kaufmann started a petition in April, calling on European politicians to support the performing arts. “What is Germany, for example, other than language, culture, art, architecture, music and…well, also football ? This is the essence of our society. If you destroy that, what is left?” said Kaufmann.

European arts organizations can actually count on some financial support from the state, since culture in Europe is generally considered essential to a personal well-being. Germany, for example, approved an initial relief package of $54 billion for freelance artists and businesses in the cultural, creative, and media sectors at the end of March. Cultural ministers of all 16 states are now asking Berlin for additional funds to keep culture alive and thriving.

That idea is strange to the U.S. political establishment, which has been steadily cutting down funds for art institutions and education for decades, making art dependable on rich donors. There is no doubt, however, that American arts organizations, especially opera companies large and small, will survive the pandemic thanks to determined performing art professionals and their passionate audiences.

“Our mission is to draw our community together through opera, a unique blend of music and drama that speaks to the mind and spirit—especially in difficult times like these,” Seattle Opera's Scheppelmann said.

Kennedy Center's Reach - Compounding the Failure

The Kennedy Center is an embodiment of the disconnect between the rich and the other Americans. Perched on a plinth overlooking the Potomac River, the Watergate complex and the Saudi Embassy, and encircled by highways, the original building is as separated from the rest of the city as if it were on an island. With a grand staircase leading up to it, the gleaming white marble facade and gilded pillars, it could be a temple, a shining city on the hill or just a mirage, visible, but hard to reach. Its $250-million new expansion project, dubbed the Reach, aims to change that.  

View of the Kennedy Center from the south lawn, featuring Joel Shapiro sculpture Blue

The Kennedy Center has always felt more like a mausoleum to the 35th American president than the nation's center for the performing arts, which it purports to be. For years its managers, the board and the wealthy donors have struggled to bring it to life, attract people of every walk of life and dispel its image as an institution for the elites. They have staged musicals such as Maleficent and Aladdin, free Messiah sing-alongs, New Year's balls and exhibits. They created the Millennium Stage - a program of free performances by never-before-heard-of artists on two stages, each at one end of a huge hallway outside the three main performance halls. And now the Reach, which promises even more variety.

The annex is a bit of an architectural wonder with its three super-modern pavilions scattered over a smallish lawn, landscaped with indigenous grasses and a rectangular pond. A bridge running across Rock Creek Parkway connects the Reach with the river-bank promenade. There is also a video wall for future, presumably free shows. The tree moderate size buildings -  Welcome Pavilion, Skylight Pavilion and River Pavilion - contain surprisingly many large rehearsal and conference rooms, theaters and halls, because the structures spread into the ground. Huge widows and glass walls ensure they get enough light.

To introduce the "historic" expansion to the public, the Kennedy Center staged a two-week opening festival with free events. A visit required an online reservation and a timed-entry pass. I was not planning to go, but while looking for some ballet tickets, I ran into the page for the Reach passes and decided on the spur of the moment to go with a friend since the passes were - surprisingly -available. They did come with a warning that "all performances and events are first-come, first-served general admission until venue capacity has been reached." 

As it happened, last Thursday morning there were no lines. In fact there was no one. The organizers clearly expected crowds because there were two cordoned lanes leading to four or five gates with metal-detectors, controlling the access to the Reach area. One of the guards at the start of a lane looked at our printed passes and sent us back into the main building where, he said, we needed to sign up for real passes. We returned to the Kennedy Center entrance, bewildered and nor really clear what to look for, but a girl in a red T-shirt came up, checked our home-printed passes and said they were valid. We just needed to go out and stand in line, she explained. "What line?" we asked, "there are no lines. There are no people." She insisted that the empty lanes were lines and after some back and forth we got past the guards, through the metal detectors and to the door of the first new building. 

Kennedy Center's Reach expansion on the south lawn

A person at the door said we had to sign up for a 3-D presentation and wait. I thought we would be shown a 20-30-minutes introductory video with information about the project and its purpose. Instead, we were ushered into a room with round tables and swivel chairs, each equipped with three gadgets: a 3-D virtual reality headset, headphones and a remote control. While struggling to hold on to the two wiggly pieces on my head with one hand, I was feeling my lap for the remote control with the other to start one of the six video clips. Managed to play a clip from the Lion King musical, a very grainy one, but still providing a good glimpse into what seems to be a fun production. The next piece, a ballet from Sweden, freaked me out with its Lilliputian-size 3-D dancers who seemed to be emerging from under my feet. Skipping to the next video proved impossible before finishing the one you started (Honey, you can't get the desert before you finish your broccoli!) Just as I pulled the gadgets off my head in frustration, my fried did the same and said, "I am ready to go when you are."

3-D gadgetry at the Reach opening festival

Outside the gadgetry room, a KC employee or volunteer asked about our impressions. We said the video was grainy, the gadgets didn't work well and we still were not clear what the project was about. She launched into a speech about connecting with the community, making art accessible, reaching out to people instead of asking them to come in, and the usual spiel spewed by promoters of newly opened art institutions. But the lady showed us around the building and gave some orientation, however meager it may have been. Most of the rooms deep below us were empty except for a presentation to a group of students that we could see but not hear through a glass wall. One room contained electronic drawing booths that project images of drawings made in them on a big wall. Something kids might like to do.

Rich annex pavilions are mostly under ground.

From that building we proceeded through a lovely open space, along the pond to the next, smaller pavilion that houses a snack shop and a conference room where several chefs were conducting a workshop. It was probably one of the festival events that we were not guaranteed an entry to. On the way, we looked back on the original Kennedy Center to see newly installed Joel Shapiro's sculpture Blue, a gift from the artist.

The most prominent indoor piece of art was a video screen displaying the names of the donors - one percent of the one percenters. A leaflet picked up at the entrance showed there were other pieces of art, most of them on loan, such as Roy Lichtenstein's Brushstroke. A lengthy piece of canvas hanging in one room, which I had thought was a used drop cloth, turned out to be a piece of art by someone named Sam Gilliam.


Bridge connecting KC's Reach annex with Potomac River promenade.

I thought the bridge was a good idea, but wondered whether anyone could come up from the riverside promenade, considering how heavily guarded the main entrance to the annex was. We did not check. On that gorgeous Thursday morning the two 99-percenters decided to descend from the shining city on the hill into the plebeian valley below to enjoy a much better espresso in a more relaxed milieu.

I am not sure how soon I'll return to the Reach (what a weird name!). The place is gorgeous but not inviting, especially not with metal detectors and (as I discovered the next day), security guards at the entrance to the bridge. Nothing I've learned about the Reach concept, or a lack thereof, during this first visit looked promising. I would not be surprised if the project turned out to be a variation of the Millennium Stage, which for me only means having to elbow my way into a performance hall through the foyer filled with psychedelic-rock and flying-dancer crowds. 

The Reach concept is not well defined

I blame much of it on Placido Domingo. Everybody is ganging up on him these days, why shouldn't I. Not that he has ever harassed me, or anything. But he had a downtown Woodward and Lothrope building handed to him on a platter in the late 1990s to turn it into an opera house. The conversion was estimated at a little over $100 million and the city fathers' arms were twisted to grant a zoning permit. And then Domingo went and made a deal with the Kennedy Center to stay with them, and the building was sold to someone else. I wanted to howl. Now, instead of hopping on the metro that would take me straight into the opera house, I have to schlep across the wasteland between the George Washington Hospital, the Watergate and the avenues converging at Juarez Memorial, and fight the vagaries of Washington's weather.

It was another thing in the 1970s when most people lived in the suburbs and Washington DC had no night life. You could park anywhere. When I first visited the city in 1978, my hosts took me to see the musical Annie at the National Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue. We drove into the city from Annandale, Virginia, parked on the almost empty street right outside the theater (no meters, of course) and when we got out, the place was dark and deserted except for the patrons exiting the theater. Today, no one could pay me to drive through any part of Washington D.C. on Saturday, least of all Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Kennedy Center, with its expensive parking and a free but infrequent shuttle from and to the metro is not a place where people want to converge without a compelling reason. The only nearby restaurant is a pizzeria-café at the Watergate. The KC cafeteria is an elevator-ride away on the roof terrace and always crowded. The full-service upscale restaurant on the same floor is too expensive for most patrons. The market-style stalls in the main foyer sell sandwiches, brownies and beverages that have to be consumed on your feet or, if the weather permits, outside on the riverside terrace, which has only recently got some tables and chairs.

So I can't help but think that all the money squandered on keeping the Kennedy Center alive could have been better spent on making a new performing art complex from scratch, in a more accessible part of town, where it could attract other businesses and art groups, and infuse new life into a larger area. I do have faith in our one-percenters though: as they accumulate wealth, they'll need new screens and walls to display their names and maybe, just maybe, they'll sponsor a better project, like the donor of the Woodward and Lothrope building wanted to. Let's just hope another recipient will seize the opportunity.

Wolf Trap Opera's Emperor of Atlantis

The Wolf Trap Opera's performance of a double bill titled The World Upside Down on Saturday drove home what has long been at the back of my mind: that the company has developed into the area's most creative artistic organization, in some ways probably the best.  If there had been any lingering doubt about the WTO's excellence before, the production of Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis paired with Gluck's comic piece Merlin's Island removed it.
 
Created in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp just a year before Ullman's death in a gas chamber in Auschwitz in 1944, The Emperor of Atlantis is an hour-long piece comprising four scenes and 20 musical sections.  The music combines several genres, ranging from Bach-style oratorio and German folk song to contemporary styles and the orchestration is for 14 instruments, including a banjo, probably representing what was available in the camp. The work is styled roughly after the Italian commedia dell'arte in that it opens with a character, called Loudspeaker, introducing the players: Harlekin, Death, Emperor Overall, Drummer, Soldier and Girl. Like in commedia dell'arte, the characters represent certain social types, but that's where the similarity ends. The latter part of the original German title, Der Keiser von Atlantis, oder die Tod-Verweigerung, translated in turn as The Refusal to Die, The Denial of Death or Death Goes on Strike, augurs a somber theme.

Emperor Overall and Death in Wolf Trap Opera's Emperor of Atlantis

Written in 1943, the one-act opera echoes the chaos of the world swept in a global war and the insanity of the final years of the Nazi era. A mad ruler declares a universal war in which no one is to survive. Death is offended because deciding who will die is his mission and he also feels that mass killing diminishes his glory. Therefore, he refuses to act on Overall's orders. As a result no one dies and the world turns upside down. Enemies embrace and dance together, people fall in love and stop obeying Emperor's commands, conveyed through the Drummer. Harlekin bemoans the loss of natural order with tears in his eyes. Death says he will resume work only on condition that Emperor dies first. The ruler relents and agrees to die so Death can restore order. The opera ends with a quartet singing, “Come, Death, our honored guest…Lift life’s burdens from us,” words especially poignant coming from Ullman and his librettist Petr Kien shortly before they were sent to their own gruesome deaths.

Nazi authorities banned the performance after a dress rehearsal and the work was not staged before 1975 in a Dutch theater. 

I first saw The Emperor of Atlantis when it premiered in Washington's Holocaust Museum in 1998 to mark the centenary of Ullmann's birth. The award-winning production by the Austrian group Arbos was suitably solemn for the occasion. The stage was dark and sparse, the costumes solid gray or  striped like the uniforms of camp prisoners. The impact was powerful and depressing. I didn't think I would ever see it again.

More than 20 years later, I could barely remember where and why I had seen The Emperor the first time. But I knew I had a recording of the production which was given to me by a visiting artist whom I had interviewed and that CD helped bring the memory back. I was impressed by the WTO's choice of such a rare and harrowing piece and curious what its creative team would make of it. As I should have expected, what it did make was outstanding. 

Unlike Arbos, the WTO highlighted the satirical side of the work, without turning it into a comic parody. The silliness went away with Gluck's little known introductory piece Merlin's Island, about two shipwrecked men stranded on an island where social mores differ from theirs. Men are thrown in jail if they are not faithful, all businesses are honest, court cases are decided on the basis of common sense, and wisdom is found in laughter. Yet the two short operas worked well together, each enhancing the other.

The glittering tinsel backdrop and a playground slide from Merlin's Island segued into in Ullman's piece, but were lit in dark hues. The emperor's office was superimposed above the black tinsel curtain and characters descended on the stage from the slide, then disappeared through the strips of tinsel as the situation required. While most were dressed in neutral colors, gray, khaki, beige and white, each also wore a red or a sparkling accessory, such as the red bullhorn on the Loudspeaker's head and a red ruff around Harlekin's neck.  The characters were generally energetic and rebellious as opposed to being sad or depressed. They conveyed the madness of the world they inhabited as well as resilience that enabled them to overcome it.

I have always felt that a good work of art must be uplifting even if it deals with a most tragic of topics. Instead of beating me down, the WTO's performance of The Emperor of Atlantis left me feeling energized and optimistic, most of all impressed. What a powerful and memorable production by a relatively small company! Kudos to the WTO's creative team! Details from the performance are still swirling in my mind: Death wailing that people used to  dress up for him, Loudspeaker telling the emperor of a strange disease befalling soldiers that prevents them from dying, Emperor Overall declaring the people should be grateful to him for sending them to eternity....

The first WTO opera I saw at the Barns at Wolf Trap was Rameau's Dardanus in 2003. Since then, I have gone back almost every summer to see at least one of the season's productions, whenever possible choosing operas I have not seen before, like Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles and Britten's Rape of Lucrezia.  There is usually at least one element of craziness in Wolf Trap opera productions:  French-style soubrettes cleaning up Giulio Cesare's palace in Egypt, kids in green-striped pajamas frolicking in the woods of the Mid-summer Night's Dream, Il Viaggio a Reims set in the mid-20th century, an ensemble of most eclectic characters in Aridane auf Naxos, to name a few. 

WTO's Production of Merlin's Island, a little know short opera by Gluck

Most productions have offered perfect summer entertainment after a leisurely picnic on Wolf Trap's manicured lawn. Mellowed by a glass (or two) of chilled rosé, a person may be less engaged in the show and more inclined to snooze to a pleasant classical tune. But the WTO does not allow that. Their up-and-coming young singers are bursting with infectious energy and ready to engage in any and all shenanigans, silliness or real drama on the stage to wake you up just as you begin to nod off. You'll never look at an opera the same way after you've seen it at the Barns.

Exceptions are few and far in between. For me one of them was the 2016 production of Britten's Rape of Lucrezia. It was depressing, perhaps rightfully so, but not uplifting. Yet, what's that in comparison with some grand opera companies that surprise you when they do something extraordinary.

As an educational institution with a highly acclaimed opera residency program, Wolf Trap can afford to pick lesser known and short operatic works. It often chooses operas to match the singers who have come for a three-month-long intensive workshop. One thing to look forward to every summer are fresh new voices: agile, distinctive and clarion. The company also gives its set, light and costume designers freedom to be creative. The results are fascinating.