West Edge Opera: Claude & Marcel preview concert

As an addition to its summer festival, West Edge Opera headed over to the Wattis Theater at SFMOMA to present a preview concert, minimally staged but with singers & orchestra, of next season's world premiere, Claude & Marcel, based on the lives of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, two (not necessarily in this order): stepsisters, best friends, lesbian lovers, Jews, surrealists, poets, anti-Fascist resistance fighters, & general shapeshifters. For more information on their lives, check here (or buy a ticket next summer to the finished opera); in this space I will be talking about last Sunday's performance.

The preview lasted about an hour & though there was no official announcement of what portion we were seeing, I think, based on a closing surtitle saying it was the end of Act 1, that we were seeing the first half of the opera. Of course what we heard is contingent & in process & incomplete, but I found it powerfully persuasive & am very excited to experience the completed work next summer. Alyssa Weinberg is the composer, Stephanie Fleischmann the librettist, Jonathan Khuner the music director, Elkhanah Pulitzer the stage director, & Chris Steele the dramaturg; Nikola Printz is Claude, Laura Bohn is Marcel, Angela Yam is Charlotte, their maidservant, & there is a chorus made up of Samuel Faustine, Glenn Healy, Laurel Semerdijian, Kyle Tingzon, & Matthew Worth.

When I entered the nondescript grey & black of the Wattis Theater, I was a bit alarmed to note an amplifier on stage, but it is used mostly for what I'll call, for lack of a better term, sound effects used as music, which would not otherwise carry into even a small space: breathing, for example. We open with rhythmic breathing, which summons up not only (obviously) breath, but the sound of a heart beating (the basic things of life) & merges into natural sounds, the breeze & in particular the ocean. In the spirit of its protagonists, anything can be appropriated & turned into art, into music & drama. Even the conventional orchestral instruments take on new colors, often being played in extreme ways, with a skittering & flittering effect that sounds like the frayed edges of music & the natural world; it is a beautiful, liminal world, in an unworldly light – like Debussy on acid. You hear traditional forms being bent, stretched, transformed, making the music a mirror to the surrealist view of the world, & as such, this is the sound world of Claude & Marcel.

Charlotte has music that is much more flowing & melodic; I don't mean it to sound condescending or dismissive when I say her music is more conventional. It's quite beautiful, & mirrors Charlotte's attempts to understand the two strange mesdames who have hired her for a job she desperately needs. The class & social differences between the two artist-outsiders, both from wealthy backgrounds (which is why they can afford a big house on the Isle of Jersey), & their farmgirl helper are examined with subtlety & care. Charlotte clearly is a bit nonplussed by these odd birds, but willing to accept what might even be their scandalous ways (are they just stepsisters? who are very close? or something more?) & to defend them to overly curious villagers, sometimes by dismissing their accurate guesses as to what the two ladies are. The ladies in turn can be, with the authority of their class, peremptory towards servants, though there's also the defensive fear of revealing themselves too far to possibly traitorous outsiders, even if the outsiders are economically dependent subordinates.

The chorus is sometimes villagers, sometimes occupying soldiers from the German (Nazi) Army. The two blend together. The villagers are curious about the very strange women who have moved in. The Germans are as well. There is no sentimentality, either positive towards the villagers or negative towards the soldiers; both groups are shown convincingly as a mixed bag of ordinary people. The extended sound-effects continue, with stamping feet as one of the musical effects, & also much laughter among the soldiers, as another interesting musical effect. The soldiers are not overdone villains: they are bullies who can threaten & sneer & cause serious harm, but they're also boys far from home, in a place that isn't going to feed them the propaganda they grew up on. I'm not suggesting that the presentation of the Germans is sympathetic, but it is nuanced, which is a good thing. Given their presentation as in many ways ordinary young people, you can see why & how Claude & Marcel's subversive acts could sway them; these are not convinced members of an alleged Master Race, but ignorant boys forced into positions of power they aren't suited for.

The relationship between Claude & Marcel is deftly handled: their low-level squabbles, their uncertainty in the face of the looming Nazi threat, their abiding love of each other & commitment to each other & their mutually-made art. I listed the singers above, & if you are familiar with those names, you know the very high level of singing & acting & commitment we were given. There were indications in the surtitles that the staging will involve some surrealist-dream-style dissolves between locations, & as I mentioned earlier the music flows between the natural world (particularly the sea) & the psychological / social reality of the characters. This was a preview performance, so the piece is in flux, & more no doubt can & will be said about the finished product. What I say here is even more provisional than usual. But I found the hour quite absorbing, with many intriguing possibilities; it will be very exciting to see how they play out in the completed work.

West Edge Opera: American Apollo

The third & final opera of the 2026 West Edge Opera Festival was American Apollo, a new opera with music by Damian Geter to a libretto by Lila Palmer, offering & examining the relationship between John Singer Sargent & Thomas Eugene McKeller, a young Black man employed at Sargent's hotel in Boston, who served as a model for the painter for a set of murals in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. McKeller's body served for various Greek gods & heroes, though his skin, his face, & sometimes his gender were switched, which is not unusual for models, of course, but Sargent also left a radiant portrait of a naked McKeller as himself, a portrait that he kept in his own possession & passed on to close friends. It did not surface into the "official" story of Sargent until the 1980s, when it was acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the same museum whose sub rosa renditions of McKeller still greet visitors on the grand main staircase.

The 1980s were the years I spent in Boston; this story resonated with me on several levels, as I was familiar with the splendid Sargents in the MFA's collection as well as the work of another major character in the opera, Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose eponymous museum, located just a few blocks from the MFA (& not that far from my last apartments) is one of my favorite places on earth. (Many a reverie of mine has been if not resolved then ended as I thump down to earth on the thought, Goddammit, why don't I have a Veronese Room?) Sargent gave Gardner an album of sketches of McKeller (signed, unlike many of his sketches: what might that signify?), which she did not display publicly but kept in her Museum. The rediscovery of these sketches led to the exhibit Boston's Apollo, which I missed seeing because of the pandemic; the catalogue is an in-depth look at Sargent & McKeller & worth reading for anyone intrigued by the subject. That exhibit brought new prominence to the relationship between artist & model.

I found the opera a subtle & layered work, & I'm glad I saw it twice. Nobody knows for sure what the relationship was between the painter & his favored model; even bohemian & wealthy artistic circles could be discreet, & passing time always erases life in its wake (a number of scholars have done heroic work piecing together what can still be known about McKeller's life). Time may erase life, but art can linger; there is, above all, the now celebrated nude portrait of the model not as a god or hero but as a man (who radiates godliness & heroism in his joyful nakedness). Probably drawing inspiration from that painting, & its history of being kept privately by the artist, this work tells a definite & probable story of a romantic relationship between the two men. It's not the only possible story from what hints remain to us, but it's convincing & compelling.

The music is lovely & sometimes approaches the perfumed & languishing air of salon music; I assume this is a re-creation of the sophisticated artistic atmosphere of Sargent's & Gardner's wealthy, cultured, Euro-American milieu (I don't know any of the composer's other music, so I don't know if this is his sound or the particular sound he chose for the particular period he is dramatizing). The scenes involving interactions among the Black characters are subtly different, with echoes of a jazz bass & horns (it's lightly done, though, without a gross distinction between the worlds, which interact & flow together). There's quite a lot of harp in the score. The harp is an interesting instrument. It has a fairly ethereal reputation – society girls plucking it as they hunt for husbands, chubby cherubim plinking away around the celestial throne, that sort of thing – but its sound has a surprising amount of tensile strength, & it can sound both glittery & strong, like sequins made out of steel. The final sound of the opera is one last spritz from the harp, vanishing into the silence.

Geter also insets Reynaldo Hahn's song À Chloris. It's a bold move, incorporating another composer's work, but it not only strengthens the period feel, it also resonates thematically here, in an opera about taking from different sources, different cultures, different ways, & shaping what you've taken into something of your own (even as you're adding to, being subsumed in, another tradition). It's worth looking at the lyrics & music of the song: setting a fairly banal celebration of triumphant & reciprocated love by the Renaissance poet Théophile de Viau (you can find the words here), Hahn transforms the text into something new & deeper with his music (a sound which is simpatico with the aura summoned by Geter's for this opera), providing an exquisitely melancholy Bach-like tune, adding a deeper dimension to the words, as if even in the moment of wild first joy the speaker knows that his love, this nacreous bubble, will soon vanish, its momentary beauty gone except for memory & concomitant regrets. Sargent sits down at the piano during a modeling session & starts playing & singing the song. He explicitly compares what Hahn is doing to what he (& McKeller) are creating: a new twist on old, very old, themes. McKeller doesn't know the song, but he knows enough French & enough music to pick up the score & sing the rest of it. Sargent tells him he's full of surprises. The wistful song, with its sense of a blissful love lost, will ripple through the orchestra as the work proceeds.

The opera itself works with surprises & indirection. The story plays out on stage, but the more you know about the situation the more implications you see. McKeller has moved up north from Wilmington, North Carolina, a city which, when McKeller lived there, was the site of a White Supremacist coup against the elected local government. You don't have to know this to know about the racial prejudices & pressures that would cause a young Black man to move away, but it is one of those things that opens out the world of the opera, which begins with a group of Black men lamenting (angrily, despairingly, stubbornly, resignedly, factually: a lot is being conveyed) their racial status in the United States.

The racial difference is a running theme, & how could it not be, but so are differences in age & class & background & worldly experience between the two men. There is a real connection there, as we see when McKeller collaborates with Sargent during their sessions, which become like a director & an actor puzzling out a drama together, but how much of a chance would these two really have together, in their world or ours? A former valet / model (&, presumably, lover) of Sargent's shows up & threatens him & McKeller. He makes dismissive references to Sargent's taste for "exotics" (meaning men of color), as if the jaded aging man needed increasingly spicy dishes for his palate to taste anything, & as if this young American Black man were some sort of fancy foreign import instead of a refugee from North Carolina.

Given all the complicating factors, Sargent & McKeller do not have a steady affair. Reality intervenes, as reality does. Sometimes the intervention is tragic, as when the First World War convulses the globe; German bombs kill relatives of Sargent's; McKeller enlists in the American army. Sometimes the intervention is positive, as when Isabella Stewart Gardner brings the men back together, as she sees how powerfully McKeller has inspired her friend's art. (Even her commitment to art, though, has sadness underpinning it; she sings of how she dedicated herself to beauty after her little son, barely two years old, died.) With her keen eye & abundant spirit, she does with artist & model what she did with artworks in her museum: she arranges, she juxtaposes sometimes unlikely elements, creating out of existing objects something new, a vivid spark of the memorably gorgeous.

And don't artists always have the last, or at least the lasting, word? As the painter & his model go from "Mr Sargent" & "Mr McKeller" to "John" & "Tom", the model wants to be seen as himself: that is, not as a model. A model has an artistic function that often involves metamorphosis & erasure. McKeller knows what the deal is, of course; it's a wish to be in a different world, a different relation to Mr Sargent / John. In the very moving final scene, McKeller hears of the painter's death (by then he's left the hotel for a job as a postal carrier, & his close friend Ida Mae shows him the newspaper when he stops by on his route). He goes by his studio to pay his respects. That part is historical fact. What is perhaps speculative, but certainly compelling, even overwhelming, is that it's only then that McKeller discovers the portrait of him that Sargent did. He is overcome by this proof that the artist's transforming eye had in fact seen him for who & as he was.

This was a rich work. Like the Gardner museum, or Sargent's paintings, it would repay repeated visits. On the surface, it's a conventional story of an artist & his model. (Is the relationship exploitation or celebration? or both & something else besides?) But, as in the scene in which McKeller starts singing Hahn's art song, it's full of surprises. Sargent is now a celebrated figure, but his reputation has dipped & swooped over the years (too many portraits of rich society ladies, perhaps). But it's worth remembering that painting murals featuring Greek gods & heroes was a strangely, stubbornly outmoded artistic choice in the years between 1916 & 1925, when Sargent dedicated himself to what he saw as the capstone of his career. Matisse had painted Femme au Chapeau in 1905. Picasso had painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (a work openly, assertively, famously influenced by African art) in 1907. The western tradition was twisting & splintering under Sargent's feet (& in fact, the Gardner museum was the first American museum to own & display a work by Matisse). The ground is always shifting under us. Nothing here is as it seems.

You can't present a rich & subtle work without rich & subtle artistry. If artists have the last word, as Sargent did viewing McKeller, here are some of the artists who had the last, or at least latest, word with their viewing of Sargent viewing McKeller: Kedrick Armstrong led a gorgeous performance of the gorgeous score, & Nataki Garrett molded it all on stage. Baritone Markel Reed performed Thomas McKeller; he doesn't particularly look like McKeller, outside of both being Black men, but he has a commanding stage presence & a rich, resonant, honeyed voice; this must be a really taxing role, given the length of the opera & the demands it places on him, but he had the strength & power to make his ending liebestod, in which he sees Sargent's portrait of him & realizes its implications, deeply moving. Tenor John Bellemer performs John Singer Sargent, with great beauty of tone & delicacy of touch. He makes the famous man both surprisingly tentative around his models & authoritative in his artistic vision. Isabella Stewart Gardner is not an easy role – there's always the danger of slipping into a caricatured Eccentric Rich Lady mode, sort of a haute monde Auntie Mame (I hate Auntie Mame, by the way), but soprano Marnie Breckenridge brought warmth, wit, & understanding to the performance. Alexandra Armantrading creates a warm, compassionate Ida Mae McDonald, indelible in her few appearances, as does Leberta Lorál as Thomas's mother (as well as another minor role). Matt Hidalgo brings cynical anger & some floating high notes to Nicola D’Inverno (the former valet / model / lover); he also portrays Mr Sparhawk.  Philip Harris, Wilford Kelly, Michael Belle, & Alex Taite are all memorable in small roles. Outstanding work all around.

West Edge Opera: Rinaldo

I cannot gush enough about West Edge Opera's witty & astute production of Handel's Rinaldo. I have been going to Handel operas for over 40 years (I saw baroque operas before I saw any of the mainstream repertory) & this is one of the all-around best productions I have seen; everything – concept, costumes, sets & lighting, acting, singing, playing, dancing – worked at a remarkable level.

I was reminded of one of the first operas I saw, the Peter Sellars production of Handel's Orlando at ART in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1982. His idea was to set the work in Cape Canaveral, saying that the contemporary marvels of moon flight were an apt equivalent to the fanciful machinery of baroque opera. The result, propelled as was this production by a cast of superb singers, was so clear & persuasive that a year or so later a co-worker of mine swore it had been performed in English. As those were the days before surtitles, I had thought long & hard, in my opera-going infancy, about whether I wanted to sit through three hours of a drama in a language I basically did not understand. So I told her that I was "pretty sure" (meaning dead certain) it was performed in Italian. She kept telling me I was wrong. A few days later, though, she did grudgingly admit that she thought "perhaps" I "might have been" right about the language. I gave my usual response in such situations, a bland smile, but insert internal eye-roll.

I mention this because there is no real "performance tradition" of these operas; they sank out of sight, mostly, after the eighteenth century & have only been revived in our day. I've seen productions that range from powdered wigs & period-appropriate stage machinery to high-concept modernist shenanigans. One of the many advantages of baroque opera is exactly that there is no performance tradition; the works are flexible & sturdy enough to take on all kinds of approaches.

Just as Sellars set Orlando in Cape Canaveral, so this production, devised, directed, & choreographed by Keturah Stickann, transfers the action of Rinaldo to a comic-book / graphic novel world in which evil (but sexy) villains fight the Police Commissioner & the local superhero for control of the Big City. The original (the libretto by Giacomo Rossi is loosely based on an episode in Tasso's epic Gerusalemme liberata) is set during the Crusades, which feels a bit awkward these days. It's not that the original audience of 1711 really cared about the Crusades, but they would have a pretty clear general sense of who were the good guys & who the bad & whom they should support. Today's audience, by & large, if it feels anything about the Crusades, feels the opposite of the original audience. (I realize I am simplifying a great deal here, as we have contemporaries who care passionately about the Crusades, & are very certain of the right side, & would like to resume the fight, but those people are unlikely to be attending baroque operas in Oakland California.) Setting the action in a comic-book world clarifies which side is which. Most comic books & superhero movies are all about titanic & deeply felt clashes between Good & Evil. And they're very serious about it.

And that's the most astute thing about this choice: it doesn't diminish or mock the material. Just as Mark Morris in The Hard Nut used the graphic style of Charles Burns to shed fresh & illuminating light on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, so the comic-book setting here not only clarifies the drama but gives it a contemporary intensity it might lack in a less considered new setting. The vivid colors (lots of dark purple among the wicked, a peacock-blue body suit for our hero) & the bold graphic backgrounds (handled by shifting & skillful projections, designed by Yuki Izumihara), with fights illustrated as in the 1960s Batman TV series with Pow! & Blam! in graphic bubbles, all lie easily on the sumptuous & varied music of Handel's rich score (conducted with verve & authority by Emily Senturia).

The entire ensemble is superb, starting with the dancers, playing various policemen, furies, & suchlike attendants & background personnel; they had a verve & precision that brought all their roles to vivid life, & their Keystone Kop antics were, rather surprisingly (& unlike many of the antics of the original Sennett Kops) very funny. The dancers were Ellis Broderick, Eden Magana, Elena Martins, Devon Martirez y McFarland, Christopher Nachtrab, Max van der Sterre, & Livanna Maislen. Their sense of being vividly, actively present in each moment was shared by the singers: to the splendid singing was added deft characterization, with subtle touches throughout.

As our massively strong & righteous titular superhero, countertenor Kyle Tingzon, clear & pure & true of voice & person, justified the baroque preference for high-voiced heroes. As with many heroes noted for physical strength – Hercules, Samson, Ajax – there's a comic angle to the treatment of him, & a bit of obtuseness in his make-up (both are amusingly illustrated in his battle with the little birds during his picnic with Almirena). He is constantly flexing, grinning, standing with hands fisted on hips Superman-style, striking poses. What you see is what you get, mostly, though he does have his suffering arias, which Tingzon delivers as movingly as you could wish, piercing through the heroic exterior to display a genuine heart within. The posing is actually pretty remarkable; I've seen dramas in which someone playing a boxer has clearly studied his pugilistic choreography but in between those moments lets himself go slack. Tingzon was alert & on point throughout, while also delivering fountains of glittering vocals, a remarkable feat of physical & mental concentration.

Contralto Sara Couden plays Goffredo, here recast as a Commissioner Gordon type, head of the metropolitan police, with an impressively bushy walrus moustache & even more impressive low notes. There's an amusing running gag in which Rinaldo, unaware of his strength, obliviously crushes the Commissioner's hands during a handshake, or unsettles him with the heartiness of a backslap. The Commissioner tries gamely to keep up. He's also a bit appalled by some of Rinaldo's more crotch-centric poses, but that's what you get with superheroes. Shawnette Sulker plays Almirena, the Commissioner's adorable daughter & Rinaldo's love, with pert & appealling comedy, though she also can pluck heart strings with her rendition of what is possibly this opera's most famous aria, Lascia ch'io pianga. (Funny how often in comedies it's the moment of sadness that stands out; to take an obvious operatic example Una furtiva lagrima from the otherwise lightly comic L'Elisir d'amore.) To complete the roster of good guys, we have Gabi Esquinazi in a couple of striking smaller roles, as a Siren & a Magician who helps Goffredo & Rinaldo defeat the forces of evil, transporting them to their magic lair (their supervillain hideaway) on a magical craft: a tandem bicycle. As the Magician, Esquinazi was in a glowing pink ensemble & seemed to be making a play for the Commissioner in various subtle ways, hints the Commissioner decided not to take.

To these forces of righteousness we have opposed the villains: Nikki Einfeld as the enchantress Armida & Efraín Solís as Argante, here the head of a syndicate aimed at eradicating superheroes & otherwise generally being bad guys. Armida, her dark hair swirling high above her head & dark purple flounces cascading down her hips, with a shiny black leather corset & shiny thigh-high black leather boots, surrounded by demons in matching shades of purple literally dancing attendance, is a cross between a dominatrix & a drag queen. Argante wears the classic gangster's dark pin-striped suit, with the surreal touch of rose-pink petals covering the shoulders & the trouser legs. (These petals are a running motif in the costumes; Rinaldo has them as well, though in a shade of blue that matches his outfit, & here I will mention that Bethany Deal did the striking & witty costumes.) Argante has an arrogant & precise formality, at least when dealing with his secretary, or the Commissioner, but he also has a puppy-dog horniness. While embracing Armida he waggles his butt against her, when thinking about her while alone he slides his hands down to his midsection, he is immediately smitten by the charming Almirena. Both Einfeld & Solís command the stage effortlessly; their scenes have a real spark.

I could rave on & one, with details that instead will be stored in memory, to be replayed over & over. this performance (which, as with all the West Edge productions, I saw twice) was pure joy from beginning to end: even the somber moments are done with such talent, such conviction, such brio that they contribute to the overall sense of joy. I have seldom left a theater with quite this level of exhilaration. If only they could bottle this essence & sell it. Would I restrict myself to a few sips a day. or just heedlessly down the heady elixir?

West Edge Opera: The Turn of the Screw

The West Edge Opera Festival is in full swing; as I did last year, I will be seeing each show twice, as I volunteer at the Saturday matinees & am a ticket holder for the Sunday matinees. I have now seen my two performances of Britten's The Turn of the Screw, based on the famous ghost story by Henry James as adapted by librettist Myfanwy Piper. Company music director Jonathan Khuner led a strong performance, with committed, exciting singing from the cast: Laura Bohn as the Governess, Alex Boyer as Peter Quint, Erin Neff as Mrs Grose, Aléxa Sessler as Miss Jessel; James Coniglio & Noah Hajduk alternate as Miles, & Siena Coniglio & Roya Agarwal as Flora (I saw both sets of children). Company head Mark Streshinsky directed a provocative but sometimes puzzling staging.

Plentiful use is made of projections & scrims. I know some people who are immediately put off by scrims on stage, but I am fine with them, especially for a work like this, in which they act as a physical representation of the haziness, the out-spreading ambiguities, of the story & the layers of memory & interpretation or misinterpretation through which that story unfolds. They also provide a useful screen for the plentiful projections, through which this production tells much of its tale; the ghosts, for example, are always projections, never appearing physically on stage until they take their bows. Those singers are sequestered in a discreet curtained booth way up in the auditorium & off to the side; I probably would not have noticed it but someone pointed it out to me & told me what it was. (There is enough weirdness in the Scottish Rite Temple so that this particular oddity didn't stand out.) The physical dislocation between the projected figures on stage & the sound of their voices helps create an otherworldly air about them (this is true also of the amplification of the children's singing, which lends, as amplification usually does, an odd, slightly flattened effect to their voices).

Some of what is shown on film, though, falls under the "puzzling" category I mentioned earlier. When the Governess meets the handsome, romantic guardian of the two children, with his somewhat odd injunction that whatever happens, she, a young & inexperienced woman, must deal with it on her own, without contacting him, the two of them are shown on the scrims in passionate physical embraces. The Governess looks disheveled & a bit distraught. This seems to be something that we are meant to understand is actually happening & not just a (literal as well as metaphorical) projection of the Governess's fantasies about this mysterious figure (he is literally masked, wearing a carnival black mask, which presumably also is meant to differentiate him from Peter Quint, as the same singer performs both roles). When I see moments like this, which I do fairly often in contemporary stagings of works from different, less accommodating times, I wonder if anyone these days knows what "sexual repression" really means. It doesn't mean being a bit discombobulated by a brief & unsatisfying affair; it means that even the notion of such a thing, when it inevitably starts creeping into the susceptible mind, is hurried out of sight, pushed down out of conscious thought, into the murky depths of longing that act as the hidden springs of our outward actions. This story is one that springs in that way from repression. I don't understand what is gained by making the Governess's barely acknowledged desires, or even just her romantic feelings towards the guardian, into actual physical embraces. It seems too crudely obvious.

We are also shown several times footage of Miles at school. He is cowering near a sink, obviously in a bathroom, being pelted by unseen but presumably fellow-student hands with wadded balls of paper. Miles has, of course, been expelled from school, for reasons that are never officially explained. In classic horror-story style, this allows our imaginations to float free, though they mostly head in the direction of some sort of sexual corruption. The footage here, as with that of the Governess & the guardian, is too explicit & also too trivial: this is the sort of thing that gets the perpetrators a stern talking-to, not expulsion. Spelling things out kills the mystery & the haunted atmosphere. Also, it looks as if Miles is the victim, so why would he be expelled? I am assuming the boy we are shown is meant to be Miles; we are not shown his face, which he clutches in his hands, because of course we have two separate Miles (Mileses?) performing. It's not impossible that the unseen Miles is meant to be leading the victimization of another boy, but, again, what happens doesn't seem to warrant expulsion. The scene, whether Miles is victim (as I think he's meant to be) or perp, goes against everything we are told about him: that he is a boy who is very popular with other children & adored by adults. And if he were being bullied & ostracized in school, why would he be so eager to go back?

There are also many projections of the still-living Quint & Jessel in their time with the children. These are literally sunny & quite wholesome: Quint playing catch with Miles (using an American baseball glove, rather surprisingly), sitting with the children in church, teaching them to play the piano, gently touching the swollen middle of an apparently pregnant Miss Jessel. In many of these scenes, Quint is wearing a light tan sweater vest. No man can look insidious, corrupt & corrupting, in a sweater vest. This is simply a fact. I may not know much about fashion, but I know that.

During my second viewing of the production, it occurred to me that perhaps this was a deliberate move, a signal to us: Quint & Jessel are actually not, & were not while living, corrupting influences; they were, instead, positive role models of a healthy sexuality. I think what we have here are essentially two separate sets of ghosts: the wholesome ones &, later on, dressed in serving-man attire & more luridly lit, the evil influences of the Governess's fevered imagination.

This is an interpretation that seems almost comically perverse, but then this is an opera that exists in perversity, that is, in speculation, nuance, & eerie alternatives that go beyond our surface & conventional assumptions. Sometimes what seems perverse is merely unexpected.

I had to parse all this out after seeing the show twice & reading the director's note in the program & thinking between my two performances about the implications of what we are shown. Some elements I haven't mentioned yet went into this, so I'll spell them out now. The Governess (who throughout wears a sort of odd ensemble of plaid skirt & white blouse, like an overaged Catholic schoolgirl back when such girls wore school uniforms) is disturbed by her encounter with the guardian. When she arrives at the lush estate of Bly, the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, who is apparently intended as a sort of Mrs Danvers figure, kisses her ("with your permission") full on the lips. This triggers the already emotionally vulnerable Governess, who picks up on Mrs Grose intense disgust at the former & now dead valet, Quint, & his relations with the former governess Miss Jessel. The Governess then projects her sense of sexual danger & corruption onto these two, hallucinating their appearance as ghosts who are still capable of corrupting Miles & Flora; in the later scenes, when this more threatening Quint appears, we see the Governess off to the side, mirroring his actions in a herky-jerky way (but which is the marionette & which the puppet master?). The Governess determines to protect the children, with increasing hysteria (yes, I know the origin of the word) & dire results.

At least, I think that's what we're supposed to see here. Questions are raised & there are no definite answers, which I suppose is only suitable for a work rooted in a story by Henry James.

I re-read the tale before going to the opera. It is, as any English major can tell you, a celebrated example of the potential ambiguities of a first-person narration: are the ghosts real, or are they a projection of a lonely, repressed young woman? (No other adult actually sees them, & we only have the Governess's word for it that the children do.) It occurred to me this time that there is a third way: the ghosts are indeed a corrupting influence, but what the Governess sees as the corruption of the Innocent is what Blake would have termed Innocence turning into Experience (in this light, Quint's longing appeal to Miles, comparing himself to a wild horse on the shore, is particularly telling). In other words, given what is usually read as the sexual nature of the ghosts' influence, the Governess is trying to keep them artificially innocent, out of adulthood, confined forever in the stylized innocence of the children's folk rhymes that form an important part of the score. The Governess actually succeeds in her aim, but with tragic results. This move from innocence into an adult consciousness expanded by the knowledge of how vicious people can be is certainly one of James's great themes; The Ambassadors & The Golden Bowl & The Wings of the Dove, that massive trio from late in his career, explore this theme with ever-expanding subtlety. How can the good not only remain good but become better exactly through confronting the evils of others?

The idea of Mrs Grose as a repressed lesbian is definitely not in James, but that's OK. It struck me as an intriguing possibility. In the novel, Mrs Grose, as her name indicates, is a sort of salt-of-the-earth, good-hearted but not particularly imaginative woman ("gross" in the sense of solid & not refined, not in the sense of "ooh, icky!"). She functions as the "normal" person who is mostly willing to go along with an educated young woman like the Governess. Interpreting her as a further turn of the Governess's screw ratchets up the general sense of perversity, which certainly works for this opera, but it also removes any sense of a "normal" world, outside of what we see of the living Quint & Jessel.

When I saw this production the first time, I felt the kiss came out of the blue & went nowhere. I did notice in my second viewing that there is a scene when Mrs Grose tentatively & briefly strokes the Governess's hair, but that still isn't a lot. The key mechanism here – the transference of Mrs Grose's obsessions to the Governess – did not occur to me until I read the director's note ("When the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, who has her own problems of obsession, expresses to the highly suggestible Governess her deep-seated anger toward the memory of the late valet, Peter Quint, we are launched into a perfect storm of psychosis."). I'm pretty sure I would not have picked this up from staging alone. I'm not wild about the Hitchcockian notion of the insidious lesbian, but I can see the possibilities here. (But if it's Mrs Grose's lesbian attraction that rouses the Governess, why is the latter so fixated on Miles & not on Flora?)

Perhaps we are meant to understand the source of the problem not as Mrs Grose's sexuality, but her repression. But "repression" doesn't really come across here. It's inherent in the original material, just because of when it's set. And it is very unclear when this production is meant to take place. I asked a number of people what they thought, & pick a decade from 1890 to the present day & someone suggested it, but no two people listed the same one. I think this matters because ideas of sexual corruption & therefore what should be repressed & therefore whether repression is "good" or "bad" have varied wildly over those years. Miss Jessel's out-of-wedlock pregnancy, as shown here, would be a life-destroying tragedy in one decade & a lovely occasion for a congratulatory party in another. There is no single standard. One thing that has not changed is horror at pedophilia, but honestly I never felt in this production that the ghosts posed any kind of sexual threat to the children; as I said, they seemed to be the only healthy role models they had. (I should mention that some people at the same performance disagreed with me about this.)

There are occasional hints of sexual confusion, or perhaps just gender play: when the children are introduced to the Governess, Flora bows & Miles gives a dainty curtsy, but this seems more like mischievous fun than any sort of "corruption". The libretto uses words that would have carried a subtextual weight when the opera premiered in 1954, a subtext which now comes across more as text: gay, which is used to describe the guardian (making his making-out with the Governess either more or less effective, depending on your point of view) & queer. What do those words mean in the context of whenever this production is set?

The lack of an identifiable time period also reduces the way class differences play out among the characters; again, in some decades the class distinctions are vital & in others not so much. One reason Mrs Grose defers to the Governess is the latter's higher class, & one reason she disapproves of Quint is that he aimed above his station: she asserts that Miss Jessel was a lady & therefore too good for him, but this sort of proto-D H Lawrence theme doesn't really come through here.

The Turn of the Screw is inherently a work (whether original tale or operatic adaptation) of radiating ambiguities. There were several points when I felt this production offered not ambiguity but confusion. I have seen the opera before, heard recordings, read the original story & other works by Henry James (not just in college but recently), read the program notes, & saw the West Edge production twice, & it was still sometimes unclear to me what we were supposed to be seeing. And I wonder how many others will see the opera twice, or have the other background I have just listed. I will speculate that this is a case in which the artists involved were so immersed in the material that what was crystalline to them is murky to those less immersed. But I'm not sure the oddities & confusions are altogether a bad thing. I have pondered this production far more thoroughly than I have more superficially pleasing shows; it led me down previously unexplored paths I would have otherwise missed.

When I started telling myself something in the staging was "wrong" I started wondering why I found it so, exploring different implications & suggestions, & I (mostly) ended up thinking that what I saw was not "wrong" so much as an alternative that I needed to consider. If some things don't quite fit in, & some things seem too obvious & others too vague, if  some confusion & uncertainty remain, that's not really unsuitable to a story like this. This is after all a ghost story, & wondering where the solid ground is & what just happened seem like the essence of a haunting.

West Edge Opera: Wozzeck

The final opera in this year's West Edge Opera Festival was Alban Berg's Wozzeck, with Hadleigh Adams in the title role & Emma McNairy as Marie, conducted by Jonathan Khuner & directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. I am always glad for a chance to hear anything by the Second Viennese School composers, & this powerful, rich, & resonant score is always welcome, & though I had some reservations about some aspects of the production, on the whole this was a strong performance of a modernist classic.

My reservations mostly had to do with some aspects of the staging. The single set is a bank of chairs, with a clinical greenish look, as if we were in an operating theater or a lecture hall. You get a sense of surveillance, often with an educational veneer, & pedagogic techniques made omnipresent & intrusive – all very well, but the seats weren't actually used much. People rarely sat in them or watched from them, so it was more of a potential metaphor than an actual piece of stagecraft. There was a large drain in the center of the stage that was used for a number of things (the site of experiments on Wozzeck, when water is poured on him; the site of Marie's murder, when buckets of symbolic blood are emptied on her; the site of the pond in which Wozzeck dies) & it is, again, suggestive of lives going down the drain, of wasted resources & abilities, but it wasn't quite the centerpiece of the staging that I was expecting.

This brings us to the topic of what we've heard about a production before we see it & how it influences our viewing; I had been told that the drain was absolutely essential & that the use of it was the reason the opera was, against usual practice, performed with an intermission. Maybe I'm missing something (I say that sincerely) but I didn't see how its use made the intermission necessary, & though I was grateful for said intermission (the first time so I could move away from the people next to me – seriously, who brings a bag of crinkly snacks to Wozzeck? – & the second time so I could relieve the ache in my arthritic knees by standing & walking), it really does lower the dramatic temperature to have a break after only about half an hour.

We open of course with Wozzeck shaving his Captain (Spencer Hamlin), who berates him for pretty much anything he does, because he can, being a Captain & all, &  then Wozzeck goes to the Doctor (Philip Skinner) who pays him pennies (to Wozzeck, essential income) for participating in bizarre experiments, such as not urinating (the need to urinate is purely mental!). Both the Captain & the Doctor, strongly sung, very present, are absurdly, cruelly funny in their limited vision & their way of berating & controlling their social inferior. Then the Drum Major (C Michael Belle), with whom Marie will have an affair, comes on. He is plump & preening & very very pleased with himself. The absurdist, cruel-edged humor should continue. Instead, this staging has the Drum Major smack Marie around & then sexually assault her. It's a shame they went for this generic, not to say cliched, approach to this character, as it removes one element of the strange acerbic comedy of the piece by making the Drum Major just another violent abuser instead of a self-satisfied Maker of Cuckolds. Someone like him wouldn't feel that he has to abuse a woman to win her over. And why is Marie attracted to him if he treats her so brutally? Yes, that could & does happen, but that's a different story, not the one the music tells here. (I'm guessing this is a directorial choice & Belle could have provided a different vision of the character.)

The staging, though often evocative & poetic – I particularly liked having the chorus of children coming in on all fours, backs arched, like the feral animals children are, before straightening up & doing their thing – is, as I realized when discussing it with some audience members who maybe hadn't seen the opera as often as I have, perhaps a production that works best if you're already very familiar with the action. The staging of Marie's murder & the discovery of her body is particularly confusing, as she gets moved away from the drain/lake but is still supposed to be in the forest so the children can go gawp at the dead woman – you really have to know the appropriate action already for the staging here to make sense.

McNairy is a commanding presence as Marie (making it even more puzzling that she would just continue accepting the Drum Major after he assaulted her), though it's believable that her life is so emotionally impoverished that the pompous Drum Major could win her with a few earrings. The handsome Hadleigh Adams is an affecting & unusually elegant Wozzeck, though perhaps a bit recessive. That's not an inappropriate choice for a character who is so dominated & beaten down by the world around him & its cagework of social systems, but when he breaks out in violence towards Marie at the climax it's undercut because we've already seen the Drum Major behaving the same way. It becomes just more of the same.

All that aside, any chance to hear this score (led with strength by Khuner) & to see these superb performers is a pleasure. Obviously I didn't agree with all the staging, but better a production that makes you ponder why you don't like something rather than one that makes you sit back & see just what you expect to see.

West Edge Opera: David & Jonathan

For those who love baroque opera as I do this is a bit of a golden age, but even so works of the French baroque are still a bit rare, despite their great beauty, & I assume it's because staging works originally financed by an absolute monarchy are more demanding on modern budgets than those paid for by the fickle audiences of London, so I was excited to have the opportunity to see Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David & Jonathan at West Edge Opera, directed by company director Mark Streshinsky & led musically by Adam Perl.

I decided to prep by listening to the recording I was sure I had, though as I dug through the boxes & boxes & piles of CDs (if you saw the quantity you would understand why I was so sure I had a recording already) I realized that somehow I had missed this one. Of course I forthwith bought a couple of recordings, one of which came with a blu-ray of a production done in Versailles, which is musically beautiful & gorgeous to look at but frankly incoherent even for someone familiar with the Bible & Handel's Saul. So let me say right off that Streshinsky & Pearl have shaped the work into something that made sense, had dramatic & emotional flow, & was extremely moving, so well done West Edge.

The work's potential incoherence lies not only in the original libretto by the Jesuit priest François Bretonneau – as a work written by a priest for a Jesuit college, he doesn't need to spell out certain plot elements, such as the reason the Witch of Endor is startled & angry when she discovers Saul's identity – but also in its original performance circumstances, as it interlarded a spoken drama in Latin on the same subject that presumably clarified identities & relationships. To add to the confusion, Jonathan in our day is often played by a soprano, & though cross-gender casting is frequent in baroque opera, & even one of its appealing characteristics, it makes more sense to have a tenor play the role, as was done at West Edge (Aaron Sheehan was Jonathan & Derek Chester was David, & both performed with sweet sincerity & plangent beauty).

This version opens at the court of Saul, King of Israel (as everyone who knows the story knows, Saul is a plum dramatic role, intensely sung here by Matthew Worth). There is a celebration of David's victories; we start by seeing his defeat of Goliath re-enacted, to the delight of the court, by a giant puppet of the Philistine champion &, playing David, one of the four agile dancers prominently featured in this production (Marcos Vedoveto, Christopher Nachtrab, Max van der Sterre, & James Jared, & unfortunately I do not know which danced David; the choreography is by Benjamin Freedman & the puppet design by Paul Hayes). There is some initial comic by-play between the two combatants, including puppet Goliath literally knocking David over with his Big Swinging Dick, until the famous slingshot is produced & David beheads the puppet foe, to the delight of the court of Israel (& that of the West Edge audience).

This is a striking & clever opening, as it sets the tone for what we're going to see: a theatrical representation of a story that is already well known, played in a dramatic, stylish way in front of a court that is also theatrical & on display, with a cheerfully explicit sexuality. As David & Jonathan watch the battle, it is clear that they are in love with each other. This production is what would nowadays be termed joyfully queer. There is a certain element of fantasy to this approach – any dynastic power is going to demand at some point that its heir get together with someone who can produce a succeeding legitimate heir, & never in the history of royal favorites has any favorite, male or female, been greeted with the simple, clear, & genuine joy with which the court, as represented by the chorus, greets this pairing. But the approach makes basic emotional & dramatic sense & I went with it. (I heard some in the audience later criticizing what they felt were overly explicit moments in the staging but there was nothing that we haven't seen staged plenty of times with male/female couples.)

David & Jonathan go through a coupling ceremony, but David soon has to flee the court, as Saul's jealousy, suspicions, & instability grow. He goes incognito to see the Witch of Endor, who gives him an oracular & striking session (sung with smooth power by Laurel Semerdjian). I know this scene is supposed to take place at night, hidden away, but this was one of several moments when I wished the lighting had been a little brighter, if only so I could fully appreciate the wild black loops & Spanish-moss-like hangings of the Witch's outfit (Marina Polakoff designed the costumes). The Ghost of Samuel (Richard Mix) shows up in white, & gravely gives Saul the news he guesses & we already know: he has been jettisoned by Jehovah.

The helpful titles let us know that time has passed; David & Jonathan have been forced by circumstances to separate, & David has found refuge with the Philistines, now fighting for them & their king Achis (sung with easy presence by Wilford Kelly, & the queering of the story continues, as Achis is usually accompanied by handsome young men, in the shape of our dancers). Joabel (a strong Benjamin Pattison) of the Philistine court doesn't like or trust the arrangement with David, & works to incite a war that will end with the deaths of Jonathan  & Saul. From there the story unfolds with grace & sorrow, & many of the gorgeous laments beloved of the baroque period; as David is crowned King of Israel, he sobs over the loss of the man he has loved. The story & its ending are both known, but reframed here in a powerfully emotional way.

A little re-arranging, a little re-visioning, & we have a dramatically successful work, beautifully staged. This year's West Edge Festival really went from strength to strength. I'm already looking forward to next season, which will include Handel's Rinaldo.

West Edge Opera: Dolores

I went to all three operas at this year's West Edge Opera festival, seeing each one twice. First up is Dolores, centered on labor leader Dolores Huerta, with music by Nicolás Lell Benavides & libretto by Marella Martin Koch. I heard West Edge's preview of part of the opera two years ago (my post on that event is here, &, while I have your attention, here is my post on a New Century Chamber Orchestra concert with a different premiere from Benavides). I was very enthusiastic about the work then & after seeing it complete & fully staged I am even more enthusiastic; a few elements that gave me (minor) pause in the preview, particularly the extended victory speech for Senator Robert Kennedy. made sense to me once I saw the whole design. I go to as many new operas as I can & few of them have struck me as so musically & dramatically complete as Dolores. This is a meaty work that audiences will be pondering for quite a while.

I won't repeat (most of) the points I made in my earlier post, so I'll start by discussing the attention given to RFK in the second half of the opera. The day after the premiere, before the first performance of the festival's second opera, I ended up discussing this aspect of the work with someone who objected to the RFK material, wanting more Dolores. First, it's a tribute to the character that the audience wants more of her – much better than wanting less. It's in the spirit of Huerta to be collaborative & to share the spotlight with others, so the opera, by shifting focus, is enacting her personality. And the focus on RFK is necessary because you can't understand why his assassination was such a blow to the farmworkers' movement & to Huerta herself unless you understand the hope he offered: the sincerity, the compassion, the charisma. Though many in the audience clearly remembered the historical events, we are far enough from them so that you can't take for granted that people will grasp who RFK was & what he meant (especially when the name is now associated with the idiot destroying America's public health). When RFK is first mentioned, I heard in the brass subtle echoes of that Virgil Thomson / Aaron Copland "Americana" sound, giving an aural democratic halo to his arrival (though at the first performance – at this point, do I only hear with ironic ears? – I thought I detected a very subtle criticism in this music of the whole concept of "Americana" & political heroes).

References to RFK increase during the first half, but we need to see, hear, & feel him in person, & that's why we need the extended victory speech, in which, along with random little jokes & banalities, you hear him reaching out to what we'd now call marginalized groups (the immigrant farmworkers, mainly Mexican & Filipino; the Black populace) with charm, grace, & inclusiveness. I'm old enough to remember the grape boycott that is a major feature of the opera (my family boycotted grapes, as my mother was a long-time subscriber to Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker paper), but I do not remember RFK & his assassination, or many of the participants in the story other than Cesar Chavez & Nixon. Before the audience can weigh the magnitude of the loss, we have to feel the weight of RFK's presence.

But there is some irony in the treatment of RFK & what is now called the mainstream media. We, attending an opera titled Dolores, know that she is the story here: Huerta, & Itliong, & Chavez, & the workers they fight for.  We learn that they've been struggling for years, getting traction only slowly. When does the press show up? When a glamorous politician, a handsome man from a powerful family, shows up & teases running for the Presidency. That's the story the press cares about: the top levels of power, who's in, who's out, & not those toiling anonymously at the bottom of the pyramid. (There was a bit of this going on at the second performance, when State Attorney General Rob Bonta made an appearance, to much buzzing.)

So the events around the grape strike & the RFK assassination are clearly laid out, as prior knowledge cannot be assumed, but there is a certain memory-play aspect to the opera which works powerfully, freeing it from a documentary / straight narrative style into something more suggestively dreamlike, even, at moments, surreal. The dead RFK will appear to Huerta. There are elliptical suggestions of the lives going on out of view while the work gets done. The repeated choruses of No grapes / strike (in both English & Spanish) are a powerful way of suggesting the passage of time. And the on-goingnesss of any lengthy effort – the boycott has been underway for three years when the opera opens – is a difficult thing to convey theatrically, where activities that last for years, whose essence is their grinding, relentless dailiness, must necessarily be compressed into the two hours' traffic of the stage (this is a problem with pretty much every work-related drama I've seen). These chants rise fluidly from the music & action, from the emotions at play, rather than from specific situations; they echo throughout the action.

A good example of what I mean by the almost dreamlike aspect is the treatment of Tricky Dick. His scenes arrive like great slabs of weirdness in between the scenes of the union struggles. Initially he doesn't directly attack the Union or the boycott. Instead, he sings, in sinuous, insinuating tones, about the lovely tastiness of grapes. As he sings, the projection screens behind him show gloriously lit, sparkling, nearly erotic shots of green grapes. Maybe because of that imagery I kept picturing Tricky Dick as the snake in the garden. His music is sprightly, appealing, with a little touch of Weimar cabaret, & a bit of a lounge singer's louche seductiveness. It is indicative of what a powerful, disturbing creation he is that both times I saw the opera the audience, though clearly all-in for Huerta & the farmworkers, burst into applause at the end of his first scene.

Tricky Dick is on a platform, raised above the action. With each reappearance, his message gets a little more sardonic, a little more direct in attacking the Union, though he remains physically above the fray (he does have one appearance on "the floor" during the first act, but he is alone, spotlit on a darkened stage). By the end of the first act, he has grown more direct; he practically snarls in support of "the squares" & the "silent majority" & speaks with increasing stridency about the need for Order & Discipline. So when there is a moment in the second act, after RFK's assassination, when Tricky Dick & Huerta finally confront each other, face to face, down on the floor of the stage & we see what the opera has been building up to, the moment is breathtaking. She defies him with continued calls for a strike. And though we see him go on to become President, we see that she will continue to fight. As she says, the fight isn't over until we win.

The irony, of course, is that Tricky Dick uses words like Order & Discipline as code words for keeping down the people who are already down. They are, in fact, the ones who live lives of discipline & order: we've seen Huerta, a single mother of a large brood, struggling to support her family, pinching pennies, stretching dollars, continuing to work hard every day in the face of injustice & cruelty. That's real discipline, of a kind the politically scheming climber Tricky Dick doesn't understand, or appreciate despite his political success.

Calling the character Tricky Dick rather than Richard Nixon emphasizes the archetypal, recurring nature of the character: he's practically a trickster god, though on the side of complacency & evil. No matter what he does, the ultimate beneficiary is always meant to be himself (I've read Paradise Lost, I recognize the type.) The naming also allows for the freedom to add some Trumpery touches to the characterization: he holds a Bible, but upside down, as in the infamous Bible photo-op, & along with documentary photographs from 1968 we see video from recent No Kings rallies (just in case anyone was missing the sad fact that this opera, set in 1968, is frighteningly relevant now, in 2025).

Let me spring back to the beginning of the opera to look at the character of Dolores. The opera opens with quiet but tense music, as she is being driven (her car is in the shop & she can't afford to get it out until payday) by fellow labor leader Larry Itliong. She refers to her children, & says that her divorce has been hard on them. It's a normal, workaday conversation, & the only other (possible) reference we hear to the divorce is her passing comment later that her children have seen the effects of farm work, & the way farmworkers are treated, on their father. The opera does not give a Wikipedia-style bio of Huerta, but you will get a clear sense of who she is as a person: strong, resourceful, resilient. And very much a person who is about "people power": the power of unions, of uniting, of forming alliances & coalitions.

Her approach is subtly contrasted with that of her fellow leaders, Itliong & Chavez. Itliong is very much about his own ethnic group (the Filipino workers) & has a short fuse, which is sometimes amusing & satirical (as in his sarcastically chipper number about the politicians who talk-talk-talk, while on the screens behind him the jaws of various politicians waggle back & forth in time) & sometimes short-sighted (as in his angry explosions at Huerta & Chavez when things don't go the way he thinks they should). Chavez is a bit messianic, a bit of a loner (he decides on his hunger strike without consulting the others), very much immersed in Catholic ideas of redemption through self-sacrifice (there is an interesting Catholic undercurrent in the opera: as a link between Kennedy & Chavez, as the source of understanding & strength – Huerta calls on Our Lady of Guadalupe as well as Our Lady of Sorrows, for whom she is named).

Huerta is the one who sees the need to keep the workers going with something more light-hearted than self-sacrifice & righteous anger. She suggests a mariachi band, which leads to some lively music & a contrast in dramatic mood, as well as to a lilting & extremely catchy setting of "Are you registered to vote?" It's very danceable; in face we see the three labor leaders dancing to it. It's so catchy that some political group ought to license the rights before the next election.

But there are also drawbacks to Huerta's collaborative approach: is it wise to put all the eggs in the Kennedy basket? There is a bleak chorus before RFK appears warning her not to count on him, that he will be killed the way his brother was. We hear the news of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, with a somber chorus to Aeschylus's words from Agamemnon about suffering into wisdom through the grace of God. This chorus will be repeated to powerful effect when RFK is shot (the reference to the great Greek tragedian deepens the sense of world-historical suffering & sorrow here).. After he has been shot but is not yet officially dead, Itliong already wants to come up with a new strategy. This is the sort of cold-blooded calculation politicians need. Huerta, though, cannot bring herself to recalibrate so soon. She is dealing with a deep personal as well as political blow – the loss of the first major politician who seemed genuinely willing to listen to them, include them, & help them with actions as well as words.

We get the social / political / community view of things, but there is also a powerful scene of Huerta's inward reckoning. As she prepares for bed, praying, she reflects, thinking of her children, wishing she were with them, knowing that she needs to keep fighting for them & others. The brass instruments  have been commenting throughout the opera, sometimes inspirationally, sometimes satirically. But for this scene, they recede, & we have a string-heavy section, interior & searching, with a lovely solo violin floating above. Then as Huerta sleeps, the music changes as Tricky Dick appears again, looming on the platform directly above her, as in an evil dream.

There is another string-heavy scene with violin solo: the aria of the busboy Juan Romero, who cradled RFK right after the shooting. He sings of his recent arrival in America, & of how rare it was for him to be treated with the respect with which Kennedy had treated him the night before, when he delivered room service to him & his wife. This scene shows us the genuine empathy of RFK, the ability to connect with people (or just to notice people) that most others ignore. As with Dolores's nighttime reverie, it is meditative, complex, beautiful: the real life of people, as opposed to what the politicians say or the media report. It is in a generous spirit that this moving aria is given to someone who could be seen in the wider sweep of things as a minor character.

(from the second performance: Huerta in black in the center; to her right is Mark Streshinsky, General Director of West Edge Opera)

The entire cast is strong & deserved the enthusiastic cheers they received; I'm just going to list names (I discuss the main performers more specifically in the preview post mentioned above): Kelly Guerra as Dolores Huerta, Phillip Lopez as Cesar Chavez, Rolfe Dauz as Larry Itliong, Alex Boyer as Senator Kennedy, Sam Faustine as Tricky Dick, Chelsea Hollow as Helen Chavez / Ethel Kennedy, Sergio Gonzalez as Juan / a Journalist, Caleb Alexander as Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers: all superb, all memorable. The staging by Octavio Cardenas was masterly & Mary Chun conducted the score with power & tenderness. Dolores Huerta herself was there in person, & spoke after the two performances I saw. She is still powerful, still fighting; the opera ends with her resolution to continue fighting despite the loss of their great ally RFK, & the communal cries of Sí ,se puede ring out so bravely that I felt sure the audience was about to join in (maybe they did, it was hard to tell); the cries end somewhat suddenly, but with the feeling that they are actually still sounding around us. What a memorable event this was! Congratulations to all involved, to West Edge Opera for midwifing, & to Benavides & Martin Koch for producing such a powerful work.

West Edge Opera: Le Rossignol / Erwartung

My third Sunday afternoon at West Edge Opera was spent with Stravinsky's Le Rossignol (The Nightingale) & Schoenberg's Erwartung (Expectation), both conducted by Jonathan Khuner (who also prepared the orchestral reduction for Erwartung) & directed by Giselle Ty. When I first saw the West Edge 2023 schedule, this was the offering I was most excited about, as, contrary to the bizarre complaints that are, or used to be, common about the iron & unforgiving grip of Modernism on the concert hall, chances to hear music like this live have been relatively scarce even over my decades of dedicated concert-going. This lack is especially gaping when it comes to live performances of Schoenberg's music, though I did hear Erwartung live once before, in 1986 at the Boston Symphony, with Seiji Ozawa conducting & Hildegard Behrens as soloist (a combination which a friend of mine felt was echt '80s, & in retrospect I guess it was).

The set for Le Rossignol

Musically the afternoon was outstanding. The sets & costumes for Nightingale were as gorgeous to look at as the music was to hear. I was a little less happy with the staging. I remembered enough both of Andersen's source story & the libretto to follow the action in broad outlines, but from a stage story-telling point of view it wasn't always quite clear who was doing what & why. (This is a frequent occurrence with opera direction, though; there does seem to be a presumption that we're all so familiar with the story that the staged action can take off in sometimes fanciful directions.) There seemed to be some sort of ecological theme added on; in the lobby beforehand, as I was finishing my glass of free wine (a lovely & generous feature of West Edge performances) a petite young woman with a plastic garbage bag came up & offered to take our trash. Her hair was short & particolored & she looked as if she had stepped freshly from the world of anime. It turns out this was none other than our Nightingale, Helen Zhibing Huang, & once the show started I realized that the trash-collection was more thematic metatheatricality than mere housekeeping. But the significance was still unclear to me. One problem is that, as with Zambello's "American" Gotterdammerung, in which the deterioration of the environment is also shown by piles of plastic water bottles, those piles, stacked up & lit dramatically, tend to look on stage like a glamorous modern art installation rather than mere trash.

That didn't matter much, though. Huang had an exquisitely crystalline, though also strong & flexible, voice, suitable for the famously captivating song of the Nightingale; no wonder she entranced the surprisingly young & hunky Emperor (Patrick Scully) (or has the Emperor Altoum from Turandot just conditioned me to assume that stage emperors of China are wizened elderly men?). The whole cast was strong: Kevin Gino as the Fisherman, Kristin Choi as the Cook, Alice Chung as a formidable Death, Chung-Wai Soong as the Chamberlain, Wayne Wong as the Bonze, & David Ahn, Michael Kuo, & Brieanne Martin as the Foreign Emissaries. It was a feast for eyes & ears.

The set for Erwartung

Erwartung is a one-woman show, & Mary Evelyn Hangley as the possibly delusional, possibly wandering, possibly murderous woman was a tower, shaping the dramatic action easily for the duration of the monologue's roughly 30 minutes. I had found the staging for Rossignol, though not always clear as to action, quite enjoyable to watch, but I found the staging of the Schoenberg disappointing. It was set in a hospital, which I think restricts & guides our assumptions & reactions too narrowly. There were dancers, & though some friends of mine objected to them, I did not (& one of them danced wearing eyeglasses, which you seldom see & which I liked). But some of the dancers entered smoking cigarettes, which I guess is to show us they're figments of the woman's imagination, as it's been decades since smoking was allowed in hospitals, but I have a visceral dislike to smoking on stage; as it's generally unnecessary, as well as tacky & conventional, and, again, defining the figures as imaginary limits our possible interpretations of this piece's ambiguous interplay between subconsciousness & outward reality. But given the power of Hangley's performance & the gorgeous playing Khuner elicited from the orchestra, it was easy enough to ignore the stage trappings. On the whole the double-bill was an excellent end to an outstanding festival.