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Tuesday March 29, 2011 – Tonight was my first visit to New York City Opera as a member of the press. I’ve been going to NYCO since 1966; my first evening with them at Lincoln Center was the opening of GIULIO CESARE when Beverly Sills made her sensational splash as Cleopatra. But even before that I had seen the Company on tour up in Syracuse and Oswego NY – I even saw Beverly before she was Beverly, singing Rosalinda in FLEDERMAUS.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s I went to NYCO as often as to the Met; I experienced several operas at the State Theater for the first time: CAPRICCIO, MEFISTOFELE, BALLAD OF BABY DOE, PRINCE IGOR, THE MAKROPOULOS CASE, the Donizetti/Tudor operas and many more. Singers from the Company became top favorites of mine: Maralin Niska, Patricia Brooks, Phyllis Curtin, Johanna Meier, Gilda Cruz-Romo, Beverly Sills, Susanne Marsee, Frances Bible, Beverly Wolff, Placido Domingo, Enrico di Giuseppe, Dominic Cossa, William Chapman, Richard Fredricks, Robert Hale, Norman Treigle.

In recent seasons I have gone less and less to NYCO; of couse the Company have been thru exasperating times of late,  but let’s hope now that their future will be a bright one. Tonight’s triple bill of 20th/21st century works for solo female voice looked fascinating on paper, and I asked my longtime opera-companion Paul to join me.

Aside from the three principal singers and an ensemble of dancers in MONODRAMAS, the key elements of this unusual evening were the direction of Michael Counts, the choreography of Ken Roht, and the conducting of NYCO’s stalwart maestro George Manahan. The visual aspects of the evening were the work of video artist Jennifer Steinkamp, motionographer Ada Whitney, and as an homage to laser artist Hiro Yamagata.

There was one aspect of the production that I felt should be re-thought. About ten minutes before the curtain rose, a young man and woman dressed in tuxedos walked onstage before the curtain to pose and gaze about the house with in a somewhat bored manner. When the curtain rose on the Zorn the music didn’t start til these two had sauntered around the stage a while, removing the bhurkas of a couple members of the ensemble and then of the soprano. They continued rather pointlessly to participate in the action during the opening work.

After the Zorn there was an interlude in which a digitized film of flowering tree branches (quite lovely) was shown as insects buzzed and chirped quietly. While this alluded to The Woman’s lines in the Schoenberg about the garden at evening and the sounds of crickets, it went on a bit too long and then The Couple returned and removed more bhurkas to expose the women of ERWARTUNG in white dresses. All this business seemed stagey and self-consciuous and too drawn out; yet it might have worked had the orchestra then gone directly into the Schoenberg. But instead when the pit lights came up, they took a tuning break. Whatever dramatic connection was being sought between the Zorn and Schoenberg was thus lost. The Couple appeared later in NEITHER but simply as members of the ensemble, thus diluting their (pointless) presence as a link between the three works. In general, the movement group added a shifting visual dynamic to the staging; it would have been more potent in my opinion to maintain this ‘choral’ effect rather than trying to interject them as individuals into the ‘plot’.

Beyond this each work was uniquely and impessively staged, the orchestra dealt persuasively with all the demands placed on them, and the three sopranos did their utmost to assure the success of the evening. The audience were extremely attentive and focused; why can’t NYCB audiences behave like this? 

The evening opened with John Zorn’s LA MACHINE DE L’ETRE, having its staged premiere in these performances. In this rather brief wordless piece, the Finnish soprano Anu Komsi gave a truly impressive rendering of the demanding vocal line. Jagged coloratura roulades occupy the vocalist for most of the work’s duration; she also whispers, speaks and screams. There is no plot, no meaning, no message other than the music itself – colorfully orchestrated with piano, celesta and a variety of percussion effects. 

Backed by a ‘chorus’ of bhurka-clad dancers, Ms Komsi not only sang compellingly but moved with statuesque grace. I’d love see her again in a more familiar piece, the better to judge her capabilities.  

Above: Kara Shay Thompson as The Woman in Schoenberg’s ERWARTUNG, the only one of tonight’s three works with which I am somewhat familiar, having seen a peformance of it at the Met in 1989 with Jessye Norman, James Levine conducting. That production remains vividly in the mind – the stage setting consisted of a grand piano and hundreds of white candles – as does Ms. Norman’s powerful singing. Tonight at NYCO, The Woman was portrayed by Kara Shay Thompson whose voice at first seemed more lyrical in quality than one might expect to hear in this music. She proved however to be an accomplished vocalist, taking the demands of the piece in stride.

Red rose petals fell gorgeously against the deep blue sky throughout this piece in which a deranged woman wanders thru the woods in the depths of night, seeking her lover. She stumbles upon him…literally; his corpse has been abandoned on the forest path. The Woman speaks of another Woman, a rival. Which of them is the murderer? Or are they one and the same?

Schoenberg wrote of his work: “In Erwartung the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.” Based on a case study of Freud, The Woman’s multiple personalities are here evoked by six identically dressed woman who cunningly slip down a trap door as the opera draws to a close.

When I worked at Tower, Morton Feldman’s NEITHER was a much-sought-after item; the one existing recording at the time came and went from the distributor with maddening uncertainty. If a definitive recording were to be made today, it should most surely feature Cyndia Sieden who tonight turned the fiendish vocal writing of the work into a personal tour de force. The libretto of NEITHER is actually a poem by Samuel Beckett:

“to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
—
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither
—
as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again
—
beckoned back and forth and turned away
—
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other
—
unheard footfalls only sound
—
till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other
—
then no sound
—
then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither
—
unspeakable home”

Feldman met Beckett in Berlin in 1976 and asked the writer to provide a text for a vocal work commissioned by the Rome Opera. After replying that he didn’t like having his words set to music, Beckett finally agreed to style a brief libretto based on “the theme of my life”. He mailed Feldman the poem a few weeks later; the composer meanwhile had already started to write the music. The result, nearly an hour-long, is a unique and challenging work – challenging both the singer and the listener.   

New York City Opera‘s visually rich production sets the protagonist and ‘chorus’ surrounded by high walls of textured reflective material above which are suspended mirrored cubes which fall and rise above the action. The cubes reflect dazzling light into the auditorium while the walls are illuminated in rich hues: green, mauve, yellow, red, purple by turn. In this dreamlike space the tuxedoed choristers move with stylized gestures as Ms. Sieden, in a striking black gown with train, takes on the aspect of a priestess.

I first heard Ms. Sieden singing Mozart in the film ANDRE’S MOTHER; later she was a Met Lulu and Queen of Night. It was exciting to re-connect with her tonight and find her on such thrilling form. The vocal writing lingers in a very high tessitura – clarity of diction cannot thus be expected, and the super-titles here compensated – and Ms. Sieden proved not only a mistress of the heights but also produced tone of unusual beauty, almost sweetness, with some lovely taperings of dynamic.

Watch a video featuring the three protagonists of the MONODRAMAS here. Three performances remain to catch this unusually powerful and rewarding triple-bill of music and theatre: March 31, April 2 matinee and April 8.

Production photos by Carol Rosegg, courtesy of New York City Opera.