Chelsea Opera premieres The Mark of Cain.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
In a city that has forced itself to overcome long odds in the wake of recent events, the game Chelsea Opera company opened its season this week in St. Peters' Church on W. 20th St. Considering that their entire neighborhood was without power for most of last week, this opera company should be noted for its doggedness. Some singers even had to pedal all the way home from Brooklyn after performing rehearsals without heat.
There are advantages and disadvantages to writing opera based on the Bible. In the plus column, there's a lot of unmined stories, because of the Catholic Church's longstanding prohibition on putting religious stories on the stage. The minus: a certain sameness of voice. Musical clichés that include: dissonant, crashing chords for acts of great evil, a slinky, minor-key "Asiatic" mode for woodwinds, chiming triangles and divided violins for the twin concepts of goodness and redemption.
All of these musical clichés are present in Matthew Harris's The Mark of Cain, the one-hour one act opera presented this weekend by Chelsea Opera. Happily, an interesting libretto by Terry Quinn found new depths in the familiar story of Cain and Abel, and a strong cast of young singers did much to overcome the score's musical conventions.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
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| God (Tom McNichols) marks Cain (Brace Negron) in The Mark of Cain. Photo by Robert J. Saferstein © 2012 Chelsea Opera. |
There are advantages and disadvantages to writing opera based on the Bible. In the plus column, there's a lot of unmined stories, because of the Catholic Church's longstanding prohibition on putting religious stories on the stage. The minus: a certain sameness of voice. Musical clichés that include: dissonant, crashing chords for acts of great evil, a slinky, minor-key "Asiatic" mode for woodwinds, chiming triangles and divided violins for the twin concepts of goodness and redemption.
All of these musical clichés are present in Matthew Harris's The Mark of Cain, the one-hour one act opera presented this weekend by Chelsea Opera. Happily, an interesting libretto by Terry Quinn found new depths in the familiar story of Cain and Abel, and a strong cast of young singers did much to overcome the score's musical conventions.
