In one week, two alternative operas, two visions, two extraordinarily good productions.
For L.A. Opera’s “Satyagraha”, Phelim McDermott provided just the right amount of stage business to provide something to look at during Glass’ rigorous pattern-spinning without becoming a distraction.
Julian Crouch’s sets – the puppets! – were attractive and clever. Big effects generated by simple means. Except for a few characters ascending into the sky, all the special effects were done by hand.
The music fits the libretto perfectly: abstract states rather than personalities and conflicts: joy, terror, ecstasy, meditation. Glass does not bother trying to “express” running a newspaper, or civil disobedience. Rather, what’s behind them. The thread through all the noise and distraction. And so with all the other tableaux. The effect is always the same: the discovery of the permanent within the ephemeral.
McDermott’s puppets, coming together and splitting apart, visualize a sense of the world and ourselves as temporary situations within a longer process. Glass’ music made the longer process audible. The flow and fluctuating changes. Coming together and falling apart.
Then, a few days later, L.A. Phil’s production of “Europeras 1 & 2”.
We were seated in bleachers inside Sony’s soundstage #23. The bleachers took up half the space. In the other half, all the elements of the performance were visible: a freestanding structure from which the curtain and backdrops rose and fell. The orchestra faced the audience, divided in two groups on each side. (Dressed in their formal wear, appropriately, since they were also "on stage".)
The performance space floor was a square divided into a grid, each square of which contained a number (1-64?) but not in numerical sequence. All the space around the orchestra and the performance grid was filled with lighting equipment, large props, and a long table on which smaller props were organized. On each side, and behind the audience were large monitors that presented digital clocks, counting the time: 90 minutes in the first part, Europera 1, 45 for Europera 2.
It was structured like a vaudeville review. Singers sang arias from 50 operas, Aleko to Zauberflöte, Handel to Britten. Instead of the originally intended instrumental accompaniment, the arias were presented as a self-contained a cappella performance, while the orchestra played unrelated fragments from other operas.
The other elements of the staging were similarly reshuffled:
The singers wore costumes that had nothing to do with the aria they were singing. This being Hollywood, the costumes were more cinematic than operatic: a cowboy, Fifties housewife, an astronaut, a drum major, samurai, a football player, 19th century ship captain, motorcycle racer, the “Scream” villain, Nosferatu, a high school student, Wonder Woman, Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, even the The Dude Lebowski …. But I think I also saw Lulu and Princess Turandot. (The program thanks Western Costume and the costume departments of Warners and ABC, among others.)
While singing, the performers engaged in activities that had no connection with the aria. Sometimes it just seemed like yet another non-traditional staging gimmick. But most of the time the effect was both comic and poetic:
- A woman taking a yoga class sings the Queen of the Night’s “O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn”
- “Remember me” from Dido and Aeneas while walking with a book balanced on her head
- Toreador Song from Carmen while videotaping a hair restoration video (Honest!)
Sometimes the activities did not seem to involve singing at all:
- An astronaut lies down in a hospital bed
- A hunk in pink pants, floral shirt, and bright red cocktail suns himself on a lounger
- A woman in Tyrolian dress gets a dental examination (in a dental chair)
- Dorothy from Wizard of Oz strapped into a noisy vibrating strap machine, while sipping a Coke …
At the same time, scenery came and went. Backdrops were constantly dropping down and rising. Sometimes they only descended half-way. Often they blocked the view of singers engaged in an aria. But not necessarily. There was coordination enough to keep them from knocking people on the head.
Also dancers would bring out bits of scenery. It was beautiful to see a woman carrying a streetlight out and stand it up. Then two flats of tall grass.
Even the program participated: it included a hilarious “Synopses” of operatic tropes: “He ignores the warnings at one of her brilliant supper parties when an astrologer arrives terrified by pangs of conscience….”
The performances were engaged, accurate and – it seemed – complete.
The singers were marvelous. They presented fully-realized performances, despite the obstacles put in their way. Despite the absence of the usual musical and visual support. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the event was the way the singers were able to focus and create a distinct episode. This focus was the triumph of the production. It gave the whole an intensity and earnestness that kept it from collapsing into improvised goofing around.
Yuval Sharon, the director, kept an extraordinary number of balls up in the air, with grace and style. Everyone had exactly the right mix of focus and grace necessary for a successful John Cage performance.
In the end it was not a recital or review. Often it was impossible to hear the singing. There could be three or more singers on stage at the same time.
The orchestra never got loud enough to drown out the singers, but there was a prerecorded tape – “Trukera” – that periodically obliterated everything. It was a roar that made your innards vibrate.
The singers and dancers proceeded from task to task in a manner that was meticulously choreographed for maximum efficiency, but also graceful. Event followed event with an unhurried but steady and insistent pace. It was the opposite of a scratch performance; the whole was impressive in its discipline and harmonious efficiency.
The flow became the theme, the unifying thread. One thing after another. But in a way that was entertaining rather than depressing.
And so, in the end, it was not a satire of opera, or a spoof, but a satire of the lives we lead.
It wasn’t making fun of the Queen of the Night or Princess Turandot, or Mozart or Puccini, or the opera world. It was observing with bemusement the blind fury with which people go through their days. Absurdist comedy – light rather than dark – in the tradition Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Molière.