Opera Review: Peace and Truth in Mid-Air

Satyagraha returns to Brooklyn Academy of Music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A wilderness of ramps: Leif Arun-Solen is Gandhi in Satyagraha.
 Photo by Stephanie Berger for BAM.

Once every few seasons, an opera production emerges that enables this writer to see the art form in an entirely new light. This year, that production is Satyagraha by Philip Glass, which returned to the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week. (BAM NextWave was the sight of the first New York performances of this opera in 1981.) This staging brings Philip Glass' three act meditation on the early years of Mahatma Gandhi to a literal circus, combining singing, dance, aerialism and other feats to make this cool, cerebral opera into a warm and intimate experience.

Opera Review: As the Walls Close In, a King is Made

Les Arts Florissants bring David et Jonathas to BAM.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jonathan (Ana Quintans, left) and David (Pascal Charbonneau)
greet the Israelites in a scene from David et Jonathas. 
Photo by Julieta Cervantes © 2013 BAM/Les Arts Florissants.

In 1979, the period performance group Les Arts Florissants took their name from an opera by French baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. This week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the ensemble, under the baton of its founder William Christie, presented another Charpentier gem, the biblical drama David et Jonathas. Written in 1688 and designed to be played in alternating acts with Saul (a play written by a French Jesuit) this is an example of tragedie-biblique, where a sacred story is treated in the style of early French opera.

Opera Review: The New Cruelty

Berliner Ensemble present Threepenny Opera at BAM.

Swinging London: Macheath (Stefan Kurt, center)
about to be hanged in Act III of Threepenny Opera. 
Photo by Leslie Leslie-Spinks © 2011 Brooklyn Academy of Music.

It is entirely appropriate that this year's NextWave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music chose to mount the acerbic Three- penny Opera (in a production by the Berliner Ensemble and Robert Wilson) during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Coincidence, but entirely appropriate.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Jazz-Oper is well known in this country as the source of "Mack the Knife", a jazz standard and a pop hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. In this production, using the original German text and the bare-bones vision of director Robert Wilson, Threepenny regains its sharp teeth. Brecht's bitter commentary about man's inhumanity was especially resonant last night--the audience roared approval at that line about bankers being worse than murderers.

Mr. Wilson's staging emphasizes Brecht's "theater of alienation." His production removed most of the sets, trappings and even props from the action, forcing the listener to focus on the text. The effect: this sordid tale of London's back alleys (based on The Beggar's Opera by British composer John Gay) becomes a strange, alien ritual, conducted by just-landed extraterrestrials with the rogue Macheath as the sacrificial victim.

Opera Review: Here Comes the Sun King

Les Arts Florissants revive Atys at BAM.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ed Lyon as Atys (kneeling) mourns the death of Sangaride (Emanuelle de Negri, foreground)
as Cybéle (Anna Reinhold) looks on. Photo by Stephanie Bamberger courtesy Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music opened their 2011 season with the welcome return of Les Arts Florissants, the period performance troupe specializing in French opera of the 1700s. The program: a revival of Atys, the wildly successful fourth opera of Jean-Baptiste Lully, court composer to Louis XIV.