Opera Review: Just a Small Town Girl

Emmeline takes off at Manhattan School of Music.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Living in her lonely world: Blair Cagney as Emmeline.
Photo by Carol Rosegg for the Manhattan School of Music.

Composer Tobias Picker returned to his alma mater,  the Manhattan School of Music last week bringing a new staging of his first opera, Emmeline. A searing re-telling of the Oedipus myth among the hardscrabble folks of a small New England town, this opera helped put the Santa Fe Opera Festival on the map. Here, the work received a new staging from director Thaddeus Strassberger, and an update to the libretto to better reflect the troubled 21st century. Touches like home shopping channel footage and even texting (used brilliantly in the projected titles at one point made the whole show a reflection on the current screwed-up state of affairs in this country.

Festival Preview: PROTOTYPE 2019

The good, the loud and the weird in avant-garde opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Cellist and singer Leah Coloff stars in Thistree at this year's PROTOTYPE Festival.
Photo © 2019 HERE.

The new year is here, and January means it's time for the PROTOTYPE Festival. Now in its seventh year, this is the annual celebration of cutting edge opera and experimental theater pieces, centered around the the TriBeCa performance space HERE. The Festival opens on Jan. 5 and runs to Jan. 13 this year, offering eleven new works in venues on both sides of the East River. There's also a Festival Soirée. This year it's Jan. 9 at 6:30pm at City Winery.

Here's the slate:

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.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Marnie

Nico Muhly adapts Hitchcock's 1964 "suspenseful sex mystery" Marnie for the operatic stage. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

She'll steal your heart: Isabel Leonard is Marnie in a new opera by Nico Muhly.
Photo © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera.

Nico Muhly's second opera for the Met is Marnie, the story of an obsessive relationship that leads to marriage and other interpersonal disasters.

Opera Review: It's Seven o'clock Somewhere

The Mile Long Opera: A Biography of 7 o'clock premieres on the High Line.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Singers at an exhibition: David Lang's Mile Long Opera in performance on The High Line.
Photo by the author.

Composer David Lang is no stranger to presenting operatic and choral works in unusual locations. His latest opus, The Mile Long Opera: A Biography of 7 o'clock is  an a capella opera performed in its entirety by singers stationed on The High Line, the former elevated freight railway on the west side of Manhattan that was saved from demolition in the 2000s. In three phases, this old but structurally sound railway was converted into a public park, a narrow oasis in West Chelsea that served as a spring-point for a kind of frenzied urban development the reminds one of the game SimCity. 

Opera Review: A Show About Nothing

The Whisper Opera returns (quietly) to New York.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ross Karre hugs a bass drum in a performance of David Lang's The Whisper Opera.
Photo courtesy International Contemporary Ensemble.

For almost five hundred years, humanity has used the form of opera to express itself. And for most of those centuries the argument has always run: which is more important--the words, or the music? (There's even a couple of operas about that very subject. However, in The Whisper Opera, which premiered in 2013 at Mostly Mozart, and returns this week for a run of performances at the Skirball Center at NYU, the composer David Lang provides his own answer. Mr. Lang, who is one of the founders of Bang On A Can chooses "neither."

Festival Preview: Kicking the Tires

Superconductor breaks down this year's Prototype Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Images from four of the operas at this year's Prototype Festival:
(clockwise from upper left: Fellow Traveler, Acquanetta, The Echo Drift and IYOV).
All images © 2018 Prototype Festival.

The two weeks of the New York-based Prototype Festival are the first important event of the new calendar year. Here is the cutting edge: fearless contemporary composers presenting bold, brilliant new works (OK sometimes they're less than brilliant) but they are always at least interesting. Superconductor offers this short field guide to this year's Festival, which opens on Sunday, January 7th with this year's Festival Soirée. The operas are....

The Superconductor Interview: Stewart Copeland

The former Police-man discusses his fifth opera, premiering Feb. 18.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Welcome to The Island of Morel with your guide: Stewart Copeland.
Photoshop by the author, which is cheaper than flying to the Pacific
with a famous musician but not as much fun.

Stewart Copeland rose to fame as the founder and drummer of the rock band The Police, who burst out of the British punk scene to top the charts in the 1980s. He has been a composer since The Police broke up, branching from soundtracks and TV scores to orchestral works and opera. His fifth and latest is is The Invention of Morel, a co-production between the Long Beach Opera and the Chicago Opera Theater. Morel bows at the Studebaker Theater on February 18.

Opera Review: A Cabinet of Carnage

David Lang goes for the gut (literally) with anatomy theater.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

'This pity she's a corpse: Marc Kudisch and Peabody Southwell share
a tender moment in anatomy theater. Photo by Craig T. Mathew amd James Matthew Daniel.. 

It started with beer and sausage. On arriving at the downtown Brooklyn space BRIC, I checked my coat and was directed to the blacked-out "surgeon's lounge" for tankards of Brooklyn Lager and the aforementioned wurst, served on hard rolls slathered with mustard by pretty, in character serving-girls. Then a funeral drum beat its merciless tattoo and the waitresses turned savage. 

Opera Review: A Sea of Troubles

Breaking the Waves sails into New York.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jan (John Moore) and Bess (Kiera Duffy) go to the altar in the first act of Breaking the Waves.
Photo by Dominic M. Mercier © 2016 Opera Philadelphia.

The Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier is a master of human misery, exploring the depths of men and women in a four decade career. His 1996 film Breaking the Waves is the inspiration for the opera of the same name by composer Missy Mazzoli. First mounted last fall at Opera Philadelphia, Waves is the centerpiece of the 2017 PROTOTYPE Festival, celebrating contemporary opera here in New York City. It is the second opera based on von Trier's "Golden Heart Trilogy", following Selma Jezková, which composer Poul Ruders based on Dancer in the Dark.

Opera Review: We Don't Have To Take Our Shoes Off

Juilliard Opera lifts off with Jonathan Dove's Flight.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Stuck in the aurport with you: the Refugee (Jakub Józef Orliński, left) and anunhappy couple in a scene from Flight. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor for The Juilliard School. 

It is rare to encounter a contemporary opera that is, at once musically rich, dramatically moving and funny as hell. Such an opera is Jonathan Davis' 1998 opus Flight, which landed on the stage of Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Wednesday night. This is the second New York production of this contemporary masterpiece, with a witty libretto owing something to Lorenzo Da Ponte. Flight is a comedy for our modern age, chronicling the travails of anonymous travelers trapped in an airport terminal overnight, their trips delayed by an electrical storm.

Opera Review: The Glory of Infinite Resources

The Park Avenue Armory stages Louis Andriessen's De Materie.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A zeppelin watches its flock in Part IV of Louis Andriessen's De Materie.
Photo by Wonge Bergmann for the Park Avenue Armory © 2016 Park Avenue Armory.

The yawning black void of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is the largest theatrical space in the art music community of New York City. This week, that vast black slate is the playground of director Heiner Goebbels and the first North American stage production of De Materie, a sprawling two-hour work by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Like some of the larger works by Hector Berlioz, De Materie falls somewhere between enormous symphony and fully staged opera. This work is both staggering in its achievement and bewildering in scope, an expression of what can be achieved when a composer's imagination meets a director's enormous budget.

Opera Review: Poe-Faced

The American Modern Ensemble premieres a pair of chamber operas.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The composer and his title character.
Original photo of Stewart Copeland © 2015 by Shayne Gray. 

The spirit of artistic invention was in full flower on Saturday night, as American Modern Ensemble premiered its production of a pair of chamber operas at Dixon Place, the engaging bar and cabaret that hides a robust subterranean performance space on Chrystie Street. The operas were The Whole Truth by AME artistic director Robert Paterson and a new orchestration of The Cask of Amontillado by rock star turned composer Stewart Copeland.

Opera Review: But You Can Never Leave

PROTOTYPE Festival presents The Last Hotel.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

She's ready to check out: Claudia Boyle (center) flanked by Katherine Manley (left)
and Robin Adams (right) in The Last Hotel. Photo by Teddy Wolff © 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival.

The PROTOTYPE Festival, an annual celebration of the avant-garde in opera and modern music crossed the East River on Friday night, with the New York premiere of The Last Hotel. This is a new work, a collaboration between Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy and librettist/stage director Enda Walsh. Set in a grim seaside hotel on the coast of Ireland in contemporary times, it is part exploration of life, death and uncomfortable triangular relationships. The work was presented in the newly refurbished St. Ann's Warehouse, a former tobacco storage that is now gorgeous arts space under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Festival Preview: The Prototype Opera Festival

Four new operas and three concerts offer the best of new opera in New York.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Image from La Reína by Jorge Cano, © 2016 Prototype Opera Festival.

Let's face it. Things are not good for opera this year. The New York City Opera is showing signs of revival (we'll know more after the Jan. 20 premiere of NYC Opera Renaissance's Tosca) and the Gotham Chamber Opera upped and folded its movable tents last October. Into that void steps Prototype, the downtown opera festival that has inspired  attendees for three straight years. Its fourth season, opening Jan. 6, boasts seven shows that aim to push the envelope of contemporary opera for listeners. Perhaps there are more interesting things going on than endless revivals of Puccini?

Opera Review: Boot Up, Log In, Burn Out

The Met unveils Nico Muhly's Two Boys.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

You're sitting too close: Paul Appleby as Brian in Nico Muhly's Two Boys.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera leaps squarely into the 21st century with the North American premiere of  Two Boys, the company's first commission (and the first opera) from the pen of contemporary American composer Nico Muhly. The opera (which premiered at the English National Opera in 2011) bowed on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera House. It shines a light into the dark chat rooms of the early Internet, and the ultimately fatal relationship between the cyberspace-obsessed title characters.

Opera Review: The Wives of the Golden West

With Dark Sisters Nico Muhly creates a new American verismo.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Media frenzy: Eliza (Caitlyn Lynch) in Act II of Dark Sisters.
Photo by Richard Termine.

Nico Muhly's second opera Dark Sisters is a two-act meditation on the perils of multiple marriage, focusing on one fictional, oppressive household following the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. It is also one of the most raw and emotionally effective American operas to premiere this year.