Three Decembers /Sacramento Bee, The (CA) December 13, 2008 A bracing 'Three Decembers' in Berkeley Author: Edward Ortiz REVIEW In Jake Heggie's witty, poetic, and poignant opera "Three Decembers," the sins of a self-centered mother are visited upon son and daughter. That dramatic focus is writ large in the San Francisco Opera's smartly crafted and engagingly performed chamber opera that opened Thursday evening at the University of California, Berkeley, Zellerbach Hall. In Heggie's hands, the tale is given a fresh and lyrical take. Much of that is due to the urbane libretto by Gene Scheer adapted from Terrence McNally's short play "Some Christmas Letters" and the sophisticated but economical direction of Leonard Foglia. The story of "Three Decembers" is occurs over three decades, punctuated by son and daughter reading the self-obsessed Christmas letters of the mother, which reveal a flippant approach to her son's gay relationship with a lover dying of AIDS. None of it would play with any spark without the blessings of a powerful cast. And this production has that. Here, the still-enchanting mezzo-soprano of Frederica von Stade commands center stage in a role made for her. As the veteran actress Madeline Mit! chell, von Stade conveys both tragedy and wit, tying them together with a bow of fiery intelligence. And while her vocal clarity sometimes is wanting, her mezzo radiates that trademark von Stade warmth throughout. The bracing baritone of Keith Phares and the expansive and sure soprano of Kristin Clayton, as Madeline's adult children, prove potent matches for von Stade. A co-production of the San Francisco Opera, Cal Performances and the Houston Grand Opera, this intimate two-act opera clocks in at under two hours, including intermission. But its brevity is counterweighted by the tragic consequences of a family vexed by a powerful secret and the self-obsessions of the mother. This is no heart-heavy tale. In essence this chamber opera owns a fetching buoyancy. Often, it feels more like a musical, with its small orchestra and two pianos anchoring the rear of each set. Heggie's breezy, inviting music and the cabaretlike staging seem light at first, but t! his does not last long. In this opera, the breeziness often tu! rns on a dime, invaded by stark dramatic music and dramatic revelations. There is much memorable music in this opera. Most notable is a wonderful duet at the end of Act I, in which son and daughter reminisce about their dead father by the windy suggestion of the Golden Gate Bridge. The duet demands the strongest singing of the evening, and Phares and Clayton do not disappoint. Clayton's soprano makes a big impression, and she gives her role much depth. Here the music is finely crafted and economical, the vocal lines intermingling elegantly, like long feathers on a sleek bird. Heggie proved with his first work, "Dead Man Walking," that he can deliver in the large-canvas opera format. With "Three Decembers" he proves that opera on an intimate scale can be equally as compelling and entertaining. And that's a very good sign for the small-scale opera, whose less-expensive demands may make it a common sight on opera stages in the near future.
By JAMES R. OESTREICH Published: September 19, 2008 DALLAS — Leave it to the classical music world, so often obsessed with anniversaries of composers, performers and institutions, to spot a nonmusical milepost little noted elsewhere. Lyndon B. Johnson would have turned 100 on Aug. 27, not that you would have known it from watching the Democratic convention in Denver that week. (In contrast, Leonard Bernstein’s 90th birthday, on Aug. 25, has occasioned a two-month citywide celebration in New York, beginning on Wednesday at Carnegie Hall.) But the Dallas Symphony Orchestra saw the Johnson anniversary coming two years ago and decided to do something about it. To honor its fellow Texan, it commissioned Steven Stucky, a composer with strong Texas connections, to write a major work commemorating the Johnson centenary. And that work, “August 4, 1964,” a 70-minute oratorio with a libretto by Gene Scheer, had its premiere here at the Meyerson Symphony Center on Thursday night, with the orchestra conducted by its new music director, Jaap van Zweden. It is a complex tribute to a complex man with a deeply divided legacy. In his research for the work at the Johnson Library in Austin, Tex., Mr. Scheer hit on a remarkable confluence of events on Aug. 4, 1964: the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers missing since June 21 in Philadelphia, Miss., and Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam after reports of attacks on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. (A destroyer fought with North Vietnamese vessels on Aug. 2, but reports of attacks on two destroyers on Aug. 4 proved erroneous.) The Mississippi incident gave major impetus to Johnson’s drive to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, culminating in a speech after further incidents in Selma, Ala., in which Johnson grandly invoked the phrase “We shall overcome.” The Tonkin incident, occurring while American troops were serving principally as advisers to South Vietnamese forces, began a series of escalations that led first to heavier bombings, then to ever larger infusions of combat troops. The rest is a history summarized by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream”: “In speeeches, legislation and continuing proposals, Johnson took the most advanced position on racial issues of any president in American history; appearing, at times, ahead of the civil rights movement itself, until, sadly, the war in Vietnam extended its paralyzing hand to this as to his other domestic ambitions.” The Tonkin subject matter gives the oratorio a potentially incendiary currency at a time when another president from Texas finds himself bogged down in another intractable military conflict based on misinformation, though the work’s creators have disavowed any intention to exploit that currency. In any case, prominent politicians were nowhere to be seen at the premiere. Nor, the orchestra said, were any Johnson family members or intimates in attendance. Still, it was quite an occasion. The work lived up to its outsize ambitions, and Mr. van Zweden led a beautifully prepared and dynamic performance. Mr. Scheer’s text consists largely of the actual words of characters represented — Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and the mothers of two of the slain civil rights workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman — drawn from a variety of sources, including official White House tapes. Weaving in other elements — a postcard from Mr. Goodman to his mother; a poem by Stephen Spender cherished by Mrs. Goodman; an application to work for the Congress on Racial Equality submitted by Michael Schwerner, the third victim — Mr. Scheer created a tapestry of overlapping streams of consciousness, and Mr. Stucky responded with a varied, colorful and mercurial score. In a preconcert lecture, Mr. Stucky said he had avoided obvious references to music of the time, like jazz and rock, beyond a reference to “We Shall Overcome,” and even that was treated subtly. But in a sense the whole piece is a reference to that time, for it lives and breathes the conservatively post-tonal style that many considered passé in the 1960s but that has become perhaps the dominant mode among American composers of Mr. Stucky’s generation. You can hear ghosts of Bernstein in the jazzier or bluesier moments, and you can hear Benjamin Britten in the flesh. The cascading brass figures in the Schwerner number, “I Wish to Be a Part of That Fight,” are right out of Britten’s “War Requiem” of 1962, as are many other gestures throughout. But Mr. Stucky has assimilated it all in a distinctive voice that speaks as compellingly and vividly to our time as it might have to Johnson’s. Mr. van Zweden, hailed in his debut as music director a week before, scored another triumph here. And the orchestra’s assured and gritty performance was rivaled by that of the large Dallas Symphony Chorus, both corporately and individually, in shifting solo snippets charting the course of the fateful day. The strong cast, mildly amplified, was robustly led by the Johnson of Robert Orth, last heard as another president in John Adams’s “Nixon in China” in Denver in June. Laquita Mitchell and Kelley O’Conner, wearing period hats, were touching as Mrs. Chaney and Mrs. Goodman. Understandably, the taxing role of a high-strung McNamara took a small toll on the tenor of Vale Rideout in his late aria. “August 4, 1964” will be repeated on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at Meyerson Symphony Hall in Dallas; (214) 692-0203, dallassymphony.com.
By Richard S. Ginell, Special to The Times June 3, 2008 With 22 seasons under its belt, Pacific Serenades still makes a major point of trying to freshen the chamber music repertoire with newly commissioned works. Sunday afternoon in Pasadena's Neighborhood Church, the series presented its 90th commission -- the U.S. premiere of "Friendly Persuasions," a song cycle for tenor by Jake Heggie (composer of opera's "Dead Man Walking") built on a great idea. Working in a form crammed to overflowing with sentimental love poetry, Heggie and his lyricist, Gene Scheer, deal instead with snapshots from the life of French composer Francis Poulenc in imaginative ways that ring true. In the first song, Poulenc has a frantic conversation with the pioneering harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, who gives him love advice -- go after that young man whom you fancy -- while demanding that he finish his new concerto for her (which turned out to be the Concert Champêtre). In another, Pierre Bernac, the baritone for whom Poulenc wrote many songs, looks on in horror as Poulenc destroys a draft of a new song. Heggie deftly and quickly sketches the multiple musical personalities of Poulenc without imitating him per se: the manic clown in the Landowska and Bernac songs; a nostalgist in the slow waltz that ends the song lamenting a female friend, Raymonde Linossier, who died young; a serious citizen in the martial air of the song featuring French Resistance poet Paul Éluard. Heggie and Scheer also give their tenor a chance to do some vocal acting as if this were an opera, a freedom that the gifted Nicholas Phan exercised to the hilt. And the unusual ensemble for which Heggie wrote this version -- harpsichord, oboe, flute and cello -- relates directly to Poulenc's sound world (the London world premiere in April was for tenor and piano). With the configuration for Heggie's songs as a base, Phan, flutist Mark Carlson, oboist Leslie Reed, cellist David Speltz and harpsichordist Patricia Mabee were elsewhere deployed in various combinations in a clutch of Baroque sonatas, trio sonatas and arias. Phan's fresh lyric tenor found more expressive outlets in three arias from J.S. Bach's Cantatas Nos. 99, 73 and 78. Reed expertly articulated everything she touched in Boismortier's Trio Sonata in E minor, Opus 37, No. 2, and Vivaldi's Sonata in C minor, RV 53. Carlson displayed graceful Baroque chops in Bach's Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030. Speltz brandished a light, leathery, period-performance-influenced tone, and Mabee underpinned everything with solid rhythmic playing. Overall, though, Bach provided more in the way of substance and ingenuity here than his Baroque colleagues.
Commissioned by Music of Remembrance, Jake Heggie's song cycle with actors, "For a Look or a Touch," is a masterpiece. Receiving its world premiere Monday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, the half-hour work is based on the diaries of gay men incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, and specifically the journal of 19-year-old Manfred Lewin, the lover of Gad Beck, a camp survivor. Lewin was one of the 15,000 gay men killed, and Heggie's work imagines the meeting between Beck, now 80, who only wants to forget, and Lewin's ghost, still 19, who wants him to remember not just the horrors of the camps but the love they shared and the fun they had in the bright life of prewar Berlin. Gene Scheer's strong libretto is much of what makes this work so telling, while the music gives the colors and shape. It's sung by baritone Morgan Smith as Lewin, with actor Julian Patrick in Beck's spoken role, accompanied by a quintet of piano (Craig Sheppard), violin (Mikhail Shmidt), cello (Amos Yang), clarinet (Laura DeLuca) and flute (Zart Dombourian-Eby). The music is tonal and evocative, with the pain and terror caused by the Nazis offset by a lively midsection where the young men's love affair and the jazz-dance scene of 1930s Berlin are brought to life. Smith sang compellingly, Patrick's tired old man rang true, and the balance between musicians and voices always allowed the words to come through. This is an impressive piece of work. It tells the tale musically and vocally without waver or waffle, and deserves many hearings.
Activism strikes chorale Composers craft eco-fable based on Greek comedy for impressive local troupe By Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News (Contact) Wednesday, June 11, 2008 Members of the Colorado Children's Chorale portray a group of young people moved to environmental protest when a favorite spot for fishing is polluted by a factory. The Boettcher Hall stage tonight will be filled with angry young people on strike, marching about, waving placards and singing songs of rebellion. But fear not - it's all in fun. The kids are members of the Colorado Children's Chorale, performing the premiere of an environmentally conscious musical fable, A Stream of Voices. The piece was written by respected librettist (and opera singer) Gene Scheer with music by Oscar-winning composer David Shire. The two were commissioned by the chorale to write something, with no suggestion as to what it should be. For Scheer and Shire, the chance to create a stage work for the group was met with open arms - and then with puzzlement as to what the project would become. "Gene and I had been looking for about a year, searching for something to do together," Shire said. Scheer, too, grappled with the invitation from the chorale. Artistic director Deborah DeSantis, he said, "was looking for some compelling theater music." Composer and librettist started tossing ideas around, each one instantly discarded. Finally, Shire, a prolific composer who'd won an Academy Award for the song It Goes Like It Goes from Norma Rae, suggested a youth-oriented take on the plot of Lysistrata, the ancient Greek comedy of Aristophanes: As her husband marches off to war yet again, the title character unites with other anxious wives to go on strike, essentially calling on their husbands to make love, not war. Scheer understood the chorale project would naturally have to stay clear of sexual politics, but the concept looked promising. "I came up with having an environmental event trigger the kids to go on strike." In Stream, a group of young folks is moved to action when a favorite spot for fishing becomes polluted by a factory. Their voices are united, as placards are waved in protest, and the "strike" soon spreads across the globe. For all the potential of such a feel-good story, Shire and Scheer quickly realized the pitfalls. "That was the toughest part - finding and developing the idea," said Shire. For one thing, the size of the chorale caused worries about an overpopulated stage: "The main character would have to be 40 young people," Shire observed. To avoid clutter, Scheer wanted to focus on a few kids, so he settled on a handful of fishing "instigators," led by a young girl named Sarah. Soon, he got another idea - a side story. "We wanted to portray the difficulties of making big decisions," he said. Scheer zoomed in on Sarah, whose father works at the offending factory. "We wanted to create a sense of conflict. The kids want the plant to shut down, but when that happens, people lose their jobs." Adding to the drama: Sarah had recently lost her mother and had just moved to this new community with her father. This, then, is no superficial tale of young innocents bravely saving the planet. Evidence of that is found in Stream's conclusion: a "Brechtian" montage of suggested endings meant to cause the audience to ponder the fact that the world is not such a simple place. The creative team also had to grapple with the challenges of presenting new music to the chorale. Not a problem - much to Shire's relief. "I was amazed at the breadth of what they do, and could do," he said. "I was more delighted when I met them. They're so talented, so dedicated. Suddenly, I worried that the music was too simplistic." Scheer, too, was amazed at the talents in the group. "They're so disciplined. I gave them tough things to do - I have them singing in Chinese, in Italian. And, of course, all that acting and moving around. But they're used to that. It didn't take us long to understand that whatever we asked these kids to do, they could do it." The two men were so inspired by the success of the project that they pursued a related dream: Creating a Web site that would involve young people around the world in the cause of environmental protection. The site has been set up - in fact, there's a reference to it in the libretto. Scheer and Shire are not stopping there. "I'd love to have this performed in schools," the composer said. His librettist also sees the potential. "We chose a good subject for kids to get excited about," Scheer noted. "When I spoke to (the chorale) and saw their enthusiasm, I knew we did the right thing. Now, I'm thinking, 'This could be a movie.' "
The new piece, "For a Look or a Touch," is based on a diary by 19-year-old Manfred Lewin, written for his lover Gad Beck. Lewin, like many gays, died in the Holocaust, but Beck is still alive today. Their story inspired Heggie and his lyricist, Gene Scheer, and the result is a sharply poignant, deeply affecting work for baritone (the young Lewin) and actor (the present-day Beck, who is visited by the ghost of his young lover). Morgan Smith and Julian Patrick take the breath away as Lewin and Beck, in deeply moving music and lyrics that pull no punches. They're supported by a first-rate ensemble, with Craig Sheppard (piano), Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby (flute), Laura DeLuca (clarinet), Mikhail Shmidt (violin), and Amos Yang (cello). DeLuca had some terrific jazz solos in a segment where both men remember the "golden years in Berlin."
This opera, (AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY)at nearly three hours, holds your attention and conveys the story. Mr. Scheer's libretto must necessarily compress Dreiser's complex 900-page novel, with its long ruminations on status, envy and compulsion. But the essential elements are there…with an effective libretto by Gene Scheer based on Theodore Dreiser's landmark 1925 novel, "An American Tragedy" has its own kind of sweep and passion...
GEORGIA ROWE: CLASSICAL NOTES Baroque performance taps the past, present By Georgia Rowe TIMES CORRESPONDENT Over the last 25 years, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has introduced Bay Area audiences to dozens of rarely performed 18th century operas and oratorios. Thursday night, the early music ensemble unveiled another kind of first -- the world premiere of a 21st century opera composed specifically for Baroque instruments. Jake Heggie's "To Hell and Back," which revisits the myth of Persephone in a modern-day setting, was the radiant centerpiece of the orchestra's program at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Commissioned by Philharmonia Baroque in 2003 to mark the orchestra's 25th season and Nicholas McGegan's 20th anniversary as music director, the one-act opera is the organization's first commissioned work, and the first contemporary score McGegan and the orchestra have played on a Philharmonia Baroque program. It was a bold experiment, and at Tuesday's vibrant semi-staged performance, the results were magnificent. The performance repeats Saturday and Sunday in Berkeley. Heggie, who is best-known for his full-length opera "Dead Man Walking" (commissioned and premiered by San Francisco Opera in 2000), has given the orchestra a decidedly contemporary 40-minute score, one with echoes of Britten, Barber, Bernstein and Copland. It was fascinating to hear how he's used the Baroque orchestra's valveless horns, vibratoless strings, plaintive woodwinds and the all-important harpsichord (the latter expertly played by Hanneke van Proosdij). The musical language was current, while the sound world was Baroque; the effect was akin to seeing a favorite painter suddenly switch from oils to watercolors -- the same vision, with a whole new palette. Heggie's subject is the ravages of spousal abuse, and he and librettist Gene Scheer have borrowed elements of the Persephone myth (as told by Ovid) to set the contemporary tale in motion. Told in five scenes, the opera centers on Anne (Patti LuPone) and her daughter-in-law, Stephanie (Isabel Bayrakdarian), whose loving relationship is shattered when Anne is forced to acknowledge that her son is Stephanie's abuser. "To Hell and Back" will come as a surprise to those who think modern opera isn't sufficiently tuneful. Heggie has given the score some of his most arresting orchestral writing -- a turbulent overture, a lovely melody for the happy times the women have spent gardening, a lithe motif for a blanket that is Stephanie's symbol of hope. And, as always, Heggie writes beautifully for the voice. High points, incorporating Scheer's eloquent prose, include a tender duet, a potent cabaret number for Anne, and a penetrating, grief-drenched aria for Stephanie. McGegan and the orchestra -- who are unparalleled in whipping up the big dramatic moments in Handel's operas -- gave the score a fervent first performance, and the soloists rose to the occasion admirably. Bayrakdarian was especially impressive; singing with pure tone and an astonishing range of vocal color, the soprano brought Stephanie to life in thrillingly dramatic terms. As Anne, LuPone applied her considerable skills as one of Broadway's great singing actresses and turned in an utterly convincing, touchingly nuanced performance. Interestingly, Heggie and Scheer give her character the last word -- one that suggests there's a terrible price to pay for denial.
Rich cultures cross at Congo Square Musical collaboration in New Orleans involves jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, locally based drummer Joined by members of numerous brass bands from throughout the city, musicians from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Capital Region-based percussion ensemble Odadaa! marched into historic Congo Square in classic New Orleans parade style Sunday as hundreds of concertgoers danced along behind them. The occasion was the world premiere of "Congo Square," a collaboration between jazz giant Wynton Marsalis and African drum master Yacub Addy that blended American jazz with intricate African rhythms. Addy, a 75-year-old Ghanian drummer who leads Odadaa!, for the past dozen years has made his home in the Capital Region. As much a party as it was a concert, the free performance took place on a stage decked out in red-and-yellow banners as thousands -- locals and tourists, music fans and the just plain curious -- filled Congo Square and most of the rest of Louis Armstrong Park. It was the same site where, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the city's slaves were allowed to gather on Sunday afternoons, just across North Rampart Street from the French Quarter. In the open-air marketplace known as Congo Square, they were free to dance and play the music they had carried from their various homelands. Eventually the various African strains intermingled with music of the European brass traditions, a cross-pollination that led to the development of jazz. All that history -- and the more recent devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina -- was rolled into the multi-movement musical work that can only be called sprawling. Originally estimated to be an 80-minute composition, it grew steadily as Marsalis continued to work on the music last week in his hometown. Sunday afternoon, it swelled to 145 minutes. In sunny, 85 weather with no concession stands nearby, the music marathon was a trial, but the faithful were rewarded with a rich, impressive, cross-cultural musical experience. As a composer, Marsalis is nothing if not ambitious, and he clearly went all-out for the task of weaving together a cohesive work for 27 musicians from two diverse musical and cultural backgrounds. The afternoon began with "Peace of Mind," for which Marsalis sang a gospel-esque chant accompanied by a lone tambourine. The musicians sang back at him in traditional call-and-response style, and the lyrics addressed the concerns of current New Orleanians with no punches pulled: "Shame on FEMA, shame on the Red Cross, shame on the government," Marsalis sang. Despite his dominance as a trumpet player, for "Congo Square" he restricted himself to conducting and providing those opening vocals. But if the opening volley set a decidedly angry tone, the rest of the music focused on harmony, representing a cohesive one-world music. The powerful percussive attacks of Odadaa! were the foundation for the jaunty blues stroll section known as "Home," overlaid with growling, muted trombones and silky-smooth saxophones. One of the essential cornerstones of jazz is the ability to improvise, and certainly New Orleans' residents -- both those who returned to the battered city and those who remain scattered across the country -- have become masters at the art of improvisation. There were numerous standout solos throughout the long afternoon, including Addy's leading of the a cappella chant "Awo," bassist Carlos Henriquez's work on the Latin jazz movement "Sunday Market," and Ted Nash's squalling sax work during the loose and raucous "War" section. One of the brightest highlights was Odadaa! vocalist Imani Gonzales, who delivered Billie Holiday-like heartbreak ("The pain I feel, it never goes away"--Words by Gene Scheer) in a torch song that was much deeper and resonant than just another love-gone-wrong ballad. "Congo Square" -- like the city of New Orleans itself -- isn't about the devastation, but rather the determination to survive. The beat goes on. Greg Haymes
Over the weekend in December that poet Gene Scheer attended the opening of the opera American Tragedy at the Metropolitan Opera in New York—he supplied the lyrics for Tobias Picker’s music—the composer Jake Heggie was half a continent away overseeing the premiere of another of his new pieces. Scheer and Heggie created the song set Statuesque for the mezzo soprano Joyce Castle. It had its premiere in December at the University of Kansas in Lawrence-- about 40 miles west of Kansas City. The 20 minute piece was in five movements; each representing a different sculpture—works by Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, an ancient figure of the female pharoh Hatshepsut, and the Greek Winged Victory. The confluence of words and performance was well aligned. Scheer a well known songwriter and librettist—besides An American Tragedy, her wrote the book for Tobias Picker’s Therese Raquin, and his song American Anthem was something of a hit for Denyce Graves. Heggie is the compower of many songs, and the operas Dead Man Walking and The End of the Affair….. Statuesque was the featured piece on an Art themed recital by Castle… Castle’s voice took on an operatic weight in Statuesque, performed with a septet of winds and strings from the university faculty, with Heggie at the piano. Scheer’s intelligent poetry succinctly dissected the art works at hand. His verses about Giaccometti were especially enlightening. There’s a sadness pulling at my flesh. An anguish we all know. He has burned away the surface to bedrock far below. I do not see myself, But who I am is there. The beauty of the spirit in an elegiac prayer. Heggie’s music was tonal but with angular sharpness. It eddied naturally around Scheer’s words, not mimicking the poetry per se, but always illuminating the flow and weight of the text. …The orchestration was crisp and minimal, with the edgy swing of Weill spiced by the rhythmic jauntiness of Bernstein in some sections. The final movement “ We’re through” )Winged Victory was a tour de force, a Weill inspired tango in which Castle took on the disgruntled voice of the sculpture. At the denouement she angrily dismissed an inattentive lover. You don’t seem to notice or care That I don’t have a head. Stauesque was an invigorating set, with Castle confidently conveying its sense of serious fun.
Picker's librettist, Gene Scheer, has done a remarkable job boiling down Dreiser's novel of nearly 900 pages into 15 scenes spread over two acts that run just over three hours including intermission. He and Picker have remained true to Dreiser's vision in seeing Clyde as both the embodiment and victim of the American dream of hard work and upward mobility.
Gene Scheer's libretto ( AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY) is, to a fault, literate and considerate of composer, singer, and audience.
The power of Dreiser’s story (AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY) which Gene Scheer distilled into a dramatically effective, tautly constructed libretto of love, betrayal and murder.
LIbrettist Gene Scheer does an admirable job of condensing the lengthy novel.
For Mr. Picker’s opera,(AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY) Dreiser’s long novel has been reduced to a skillful libretto by Gene Scheer. All the proper elements are here.
I cannot really believe that the song cycle “ Voices form WWII” by American composer Gene Scheer (born 1958) is better than Robert Schumann’s Eichendorf Liederkries,” Op.39. But classic or not, Scheer had a stronger impact than Schumann in baritone Nathan Gunn’s song recital for the Vocal Arts Society on Tuesday evening at La Maison Francaise. Scheer’s five songs, based on the reminiscences of World War II veterans, are tragic, touching, mildly amusing and sometimes horrifying. They include memories of a solidier in the pivotal landing on Omaha Beach stumbling over the body of a friend;a sailor whose life ( with those of his comrades) was spared by a German submarine captain who let them row away in lifeboats before sinking their ship;an American having tea in a London home when the German bombers come over and the children are tucked under a specially reinforced kitchen table. Gunn who sang the world premiere of this cycle earlier this year, has been deeply affected by the songs, and his intense emotional identification is shared with the audience….He was born to sing American songs and the Scheer cycle was born to be sung by him.
The painful and the light-spirited were juxtaposed more starkly in Gene Scheer's "Voices of World War II." In five concise movements Mr. Scheer describes a child's view of his elders' trepidation when war is declared; a sailor's gratitude to a German U-boat captain for allowing a crew to leave before sinking its ship; and a harrowing description of the landing on Omaha Beach, flanked by descriptions of a soldier's leave in Hollywood and London. Mr. Scheer's eclectic music evokes the period without becoming a pastiche, and Mr. Gunn found ways to convey the texts subtly but directly.
"As composer Tobias Picker writes, Emile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin "exudes 'opera' from every page," and indeed, it has inspired Picker to compose a marvelously effective new work. Picker has a sure command of, in his words, "the language (he) discovered in the space between tonal and non-tonal worlds." He, of course, is not alone in mining this territory, but he mines it especially well... "Much of Act 1's score is frankly romantic but laced with a pulsing undertone of foreboding. Dissonance plays it's part; a rousing entreaty to begin a weekly domino game produces an unexpected burst of discord, and the run-up to the drowning of Camille is downright harrowing. Although it would be oversimplified to say that Act 1 is mostly tonal and Act 2 mostly atonal, there is a palpable change after intermission. (The murder is the Act 1 curtain) The opening music of Act 2 is virtually Webernian, signaling the upheaval the murder has only begun to cause. "Soon Thérèse and Laurent experience what can only be called the worst wedding night in all of literary and theatrical history. Though Laurent begins by putting on a brave front ("My poor angel. Let me warm you. Why are you trembling?"), their lives are now completely dominated by the murder they committed. Acrid mutual recrimination commences immediately, culminating with the disembodied voice of Camille's ghost singing from offstage. The ghost's voice floats seamlessly and chillingly out of a wedding night "serenade" sung by two family friends, cheerily wishing the married couple "good night." The dead Camille's voice added to this tipsy but heartfelt toast is good, scary fun, and it is only a warm-up for his subsequent appearance onstage. When Thérèse ends the scene by singing "The sun is coming up. Our wedding night is over," it is as miserable an utterance as any I've heard in contemporary opera. The disintegration of the relationship continues through the remainder of the opera, chronicled scrupulously by penetrating and harshly descriptive music. "Immediately after the wedding night, Camille's ghost appears before his mother and sings a superbly off-kilter aria ("Betrayed"), a motorically creepy, strangely lyrical combination of Stravinsky, Britten and Bernard Herrmann. Realizing that her son has been murdered by his wife and his best friend, Camille's poor old mother has a stroke and becomes paralyzed. Fortunately, Picker and Scheer were smart enough to retain the book's most nerve-racking scene, wherein the wheelchair-bound Madame Raquin (Diana Soviero) summons just enough strength during one of the weekly domino games to move a pen across a piece of paper, spelling out with excruciating slowness, as everyone watches, "Th»rÀse and Laurent are m....," but lapsing back into paralysis before she can complete the word "murderers." "The Dallas Opera Orchestra under Graeme Jenkins thunders and pulses magnificently."