Luminous Thread

I (Mary) belong to quite a few different groups on LinkedIn for professionals in the performing arts. One of my favorites in the Art of Opera group. Recently I started a discussion by asking the question, “What are the best operas addressing climate change?”

The thoughtful members of this group introduced me to so many fascinating and worthy projects I’ve decided to post on them separately.

One respondent however, didn’t like the question at all, replying that “the question was irrelevant because it had nothing to do with opera.”

As others in the group jumped to my “defense”, I realized I was thankful for the comment, as it represents the point of view of many opera aficionados, and it gives me an opportunity to respond.

Here’s what I’d like to say to all those who feel this way: nobody owns opera.

Nobody has the final say on what opera is and should be. It is an evolving art form. Any art form that is required to stop growing by the experts becomes a museum artifact, a rare and expensive objet d’art, an instrument of elitism that only serves to set those who can afford to patronize it it apart from the “lower classes.”

In our operas, Ben and I try to do the exact opposite. We are giving voice to under-served populations and questions.

We are creating opera that reinterprets history in stories and music that comment on where humanity has been and where we’re going. We delight in knowing that the irreverence and iconoclasm of our “hand-stitched operas” not only keeps the art form alive, but brings it into relevance, builds new audiences, and hopefully gives strength to those whose struggles we portray. We’re part of the history and legacy of opera. If our works can inspire new generations to attend, then we’re serving not only its future, but traditional, historic and historical opera in the best way we possibly can.

 Bill McKibben asked in a 2005 Grist essay on Climate Change: “Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?” http://grist.org/article/mckibben-imagine/

Bill McKibben needs to know about our goddamned opera. It’s an irresistible combination of smart, funny, sexy, and messagey – and, as far as we know, it’s the first full-on opera about climate change. I personally think that a visit to world heads of state by a pod of sexy steampunk mermaid sirens with a message about climate change might actually get the message across.  Bill, if you’re reading this, we have a pair of tickets set aside just for you. See you at the show.

We’re deep into the process of finishing the sea creatures – or so I thought. Every time I work with Liz Baumann, lighted prop and clothing creator extraordinaire, it’s as if we’re shedding our human clothing for a moment, diving deep into the oceans and witnessing what goes on there with the eyes of our invertebrate ancestors. It’s a little something like this:

From a purely aesthetic point of view, there’s no improving on nature. As artists, we’re striving to find a balance between the formalized world view of Victorian science, where Creation is a series of collectibles to be removed to the comfort of the lab or drawing room as curiosities or for further study, and the heart-expanding wonder of life on this planet — all while keeping in mind the materials of the theatre artist of the era, primarily fabric, wood, and paint. Victorian-Edwardian era German botanist and Renaissance man Ernst Haeckel offers some direction:

As designers we’re always looking for the underlying pattern in things that will allow us to interpret them as a whole, to draw them in the same style, as it were. Haeckel’s drawings demonstrate the scientist’s quest for the underlying pattern as well, for repeated and unifying structures. The “line-iness” of his drawing style is a perfect starting place for an oceanscape painted by scenic artists in a cabaret or vaudeville traveling show. Can’t wait to show you some finished designs.

As David Gallo notes, we only even know about a few percent of the species living in the oceans. The question is, can we understand our essential relation to these blinking, color and pattern-changing, whimsically-painted monsters — and how would be behave if we did?

We hope Queen Victoria’s Floating Garden will help to open the eyes of wonder. To order you tickets for the Queen Victoria performances in Boulder and Denver this spring, visit: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/2576365192?s=12544702

We saw Der Kaiser von Atlantis last night performed by Central City Opera and Colorado Symphony. Kudos to Stephen Seifert of Newman Center Presents for the vision and courage to pull this off.

This tiny, painfully beautiful gem was written in Theresienstadt, a walled citadel ghetto concentration camp where 15 to 50,000 German and Czech Jews were held during the holocaust (it was built for 6,000). Most were eventually transferred on to death camps. Many prominent people passed through Theriesenstadt, and cultural activities, such as music, theatre, and poetry were permitted as a way of keeping calm. Most of the artistic output vanished with the residents, but this score was passed between librarians in the camp, the last of whom survived. The libretto was written by Peter Kien and the music by Viktor Ullmann. Both perished at Auschwitz in 1944.

The play was conceived with great economy and use of humor and satire in a sophisticated and surreal allegory — Mary felt it was a “singing Chagall painting.” It captured the wrenching hopelessness without being maudlin, transcending circumstances using art. The death of Death; a simple turn of thought, deftly presented. The authors presumed a literate and mentally engaged audience, without pandering, despite the desperate circumstances in which it was written. With dialog like “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – they’re all the same. I used to change days like I changed my shirts” – “You seem to still be wearing last year” the play snatches a scrap of humor from despair rather than giving in to it.

Ullmann came out of the same milieu as Mahler and Kafka. The musical score is rich and well-constructed, a lush fabric in the Post-Viennese School tradition (Ullmann studied with both Schoenberg and Zemlinsky). Its melodic, repetitive, and percussive elements served the story, deftly applied with intelligence and a light touch. The show opens with “Hello Hello” that returns throughout, bringing a rhythm of levity that one can imagine in the daily life of the crowded shtetl, and reminiscent of the Knock Knock scene from Macbeth in its grim humor.

Der Kaiser von Atlantis is a sturdy chamber opera that will survive the ages. It was a fearless work of art. It’s premiere at the camp was suppressed when the Nazis noticed the similarity between the play’s Kaiser and Hitler. Ullmann died in a gas chamber not long after. The opera was finally premiered in Amsterdam in 1975.

Beautifully performed in the pit and on stage, this was one of the most moving performances we’ve been to in recent memory. Get your tickets for tonight’s final performance here:

http://www.newmancenterpresents.com/der-kaiser-von-atlantis/

A week ago we were sitting in the London Colliseum, appropriately enough, hearing and watching a performance of Detlev Glanert‘s recent opera about the famously fiendish Roman emperor Caligula. This new version of the 2006 work was sung in English by the English National Opera company. Here is a rehearsal video so you can get a sense of it:

Glanert studied with Hans Werner Henze, a prodigious and controversial composer of opera, ballet, and other works who studied and worked in 12-tone and serial music early but also in jazz, popular, and neoclassical styles. Glanert’s own style has moved on from early serial atonality to something carefully described in online sources as “balancing between Mahler and Ravel” – but I am not convinced. Less popular than those two luminaries, Alban Berg’s Lulu is far more obvious as a jumping off place to get to Caligula, which reflects Glanert’s maturing voice as a composer. Like Berg and Henze, Glanert relishes jazz stylings and has extended that impulse in this work to also include Afro-Caribbean rhythms, plus enhanced breathing as a musical effect that made me think of beat-boxing.

All this is fascinating to me because I also took a turn in 12-tone tonality during and after my own studies, working in the tradition of Alban Berg as promulgated by George Perle. Even though I left the “school” it was a marvelous thing to hear and see how the practice has not only survived, but enjoys an audience. The house was not packed, but neither was it empty. Although a piano is heard in the video above, the orchestration is lush and the conductor and musicians knew what they were about. The score was beautifully played.

Some critics panned the show, both in terms of music and theatre (here is one from The Arts Desk). Techniques used in the staging would have been considered avant garde 30 years ago, but today they seemed reliable and suitable to a serious work like this. Neither Mary nor I got offended that they had borrowed New Wave chestnuts like a static public setting — in this case stadium seating (see pic below) and unexplained figures in slow motion perambulation, either naked, with mysterious masks, or costumes apparently unrelated to the scene.

The mix of symbolic and random images combined as intended to get the audience into a semiotic stupor trying to sort intentional from unintentional ideas. Groups like Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds and The Wooster Group introduced these techniques but why should we be surprised to see them appearing now as tried and true techniques for big opera productions? That’s how it’s supposed to go. We enjoyed it.