SFist Goes to the Opera: an American Tragedy
Commissioning a new opera remains a relatively rare thing nowadays: audiences have acquired familiarity with a given repertoire and they do not necessarily like to be pushed towards modern and unknown musics. Yet companies try to introduce fresh air in their program now and then, as the SF Opera did earlier this year with Dr. Atomic, and as the Metropolitan Opera in NY did last week with an American Tragedy.
We saw the Met's new production on Monday, and one thought sprung to our mind: there is an East Coast-West Coast divide that would make the gangsta rappers proud. Oh, we are not talking about NY sopranos shooting San Francisco tenors in Las Vegas. For one, the performers are pretty much shared between the two stages. But we noticed a strong clash in philosophies and in musical choices in both these Fall premieres: one opera inscribed itself into a traditionalist perspective, while the other broke new grounds.
Trying to distinguish and compare between two work of arts based on the geography of their opening might be just another illustration of our proverbial provincial San Francisco insecurities with all things New York. On the other hand, while most performers, production directors and conductors are free agents, moving about and changing dalliance from each opera and season to the next, both Dr Atomic and An American Tragedy have a strong connection to their respective cities, with composer John Adams living in Berkeley for the former and Tobias Picker being a life-long New-Yorker for the latter. Lastly, Dr Atomic and American Tragedy present two alternative views of the future of the opera, something we wish to elaborate upon. So let's write the scorecard, after the jump.
Performers Both Dr Atomic and American Tragedy share exceptional casts and stellar orchestras. We know already about that of Dr Atomic, but we were often taken aback by the quality of the performance for American Tragedy. The Met has assembled a dream team of a cast, with most of the performers having little bins named after them at the record stores. The lead protagonist, Clyde Griffiths, was sung by baritone Nathan Gunn, seen on the SF Opera stage as the title role in Billy Budd and in Così Fan Tutte last season. His voice, richly textured and assured in all tessitures, combining both accuracy and lyricism, charmed the audience with the same ease he seduced his on-stage partners. And he does take off his shirt, a treat for the eyes he provided in Billy Budd already. James Conlon makes conducting look easy, as if he was directing the orchestra with one hand in his pocket. Yet from the Met pit comes a flawless, crisp and nuanced sound. James Conlon will conduct the San Francisco Symphony in the Spring next year in the Verdi Requiem and a few other dates.
Patricia Racette was Roberta, the factory girl Clyde impregnates and eventually assassinates, to make room for Susan Graham, as Sondra, the society woman whom Clyde hopes to marry. Patricia Racette will be the lead in the upcoming production of Madame Butterfly this spring in San Francisco, and based on Monday night, we can hardly wait to see her here. Both passionate and accurate, her singing achieves the most emotional moments of the evening, when writing unrequited letters to Clyde after he exiled her on the pretense of coming up with the money to marry her. Susan Graham's Sondra is a fluttery debutante chirping about lavender hats and New-York, which Graham makes sound effortless. Graham created the role of Sister Prejean in Dead Man Walking here in San Fransisco in 2000.
Libretto While Dr Atomic's libretto is somewhat hermetic, culling vignettes from different original sources into a package which requires an effort from the production to make it cohesive, an American Tragedy is the opposite: the libretto, by Gene Scheer, bases itself on Dreiser's familiar classic 1925 book. We might have seen the subsequent movie adaptions, including the Academy Award winning A Place in the Sun. The time line, which slows down, stretches and eventually stops in Dr. Atomic, just skips linearly forward in an American Tragedy in a very traditional narrative. American Tragedy recycles themes which are the bread and butter of opera --love and betrayal, with a spoonful of redemption, when Dr Atomic brings science into the mix, or even one's protagonist weight watchers diary.
Production Adrianne Lobel designed a very slick production for American Tragedy.The three-layered vertigineously vertical decor, like a doll house opening different scenes as panels slide and reveal here a lake cottage, here a Salvation Army mission, here a court room… Sets change in an eye blink, the machine runs smoothly. Dr Atomic, on the other hand, provides a flat, horizontal layout, with only the bomb hanging for vertical depth, and the seasickness-inducing ondulating line of the New-Mexico mountains in the background. The other emotion produced by the American Tragedy set, other than awe, was comfort: there was no clue to decipher, no interpretation to make: what we saw is what we got. The same goes for Francesca Zambello's stage direction: she played it straight, with no mimes or dancers interrupting the action à la Peter Sellars. The only faux-pas was the underwater struggle of the drowing Roberta, with Patricia Racette hanging from strings, shown from a window into the depth of the lake: her rabid convulsions looked like those of a fish on a hook, yes, but one fished out of the water. We chuckled when we should have been terrified.
Music Aside from the west coast-east coast divide, different influences separate both composers. Adams' score called up impressions of Varese and Stravinsky. Picker's one seems to use motives which hinted ever softly at Bernstein, or Gershwin. Adams' music sounded more powerful to us --admittedly due in part to the military/masculine dominated theme. Picker's score, while pleasing to the ear, did not seem to break into new territory the same way Adam's did. Sure, American Tragedy delivers plenty of strong moments: a delicate seduction scene in the moonlight between Clyde and Roberta; a love scene between Clyde and Sondra while the lower class Roberta laments below; a fabulous Act II entrance of Clyde's mother by a phenomenal Dolora Zajick (yes, this mezzo is coming to San Francisco too, for the Maid of Orleans later this spring); or a witty scene where Roberta talks to her co-worker, but means for Clyde to overhear: all her sentences end on a long vibrating note, which opens up and envelopes the all stage.
However, American Tragedy seemed to chose the easy road, veering towards cliché many times. While Adams eschews the big musical detonation of the bomb at the end of his opera, Picker provides not one, but two bangs: when the "guilty!" verdict is announced, and when the electric chair is actioned. The ouverture opens with a slow and wavy bowed bass line: a sure sign a tragedy will develop. Clyde's innocent younger self, who opens the opera with a candid religious hymn, meets him again at his execution, a trite symbolism of redemption and a forced effort to book-end the performance. Picker serves his New-York audience with a crowd-pleasing yet embarrassingly indulgent ode to New-York, an aria sung by Sondra. When Roberta, tired of being played by Clyde, sends him an ultimatum, the screeches of Psycho soundtrack appear. An ultimatum it is!
Both American Tragedy and Dr Atomic provide fine entertainment; but only the latter seemed intent on blazing new trails and taking chances. Sellars and Adams made many gambles, lost a few, but came away with a challenging yet successful opera. American Tragedy, on the other hand, is a glossy production, which is as literal as Dr Atomic was intellectual. It offers a first hand, immediate pleasure, the comfort of being in familiar surrounding, narratively and musically, the satisfaction for the audience of being able to predict what will happen, the impression of having heard the piece before even though it is a new creation. What it does not provide, unlike Dr Atomic, is a lasting impression.