My Year of Opera (I): Iannis Xenakis, "Oresteia"

A bit ironically (given that I live only a short subway ride from the Metropolitan Opera House), the first opera I attended was not at the Met, but at the tiny Miller Theater at Columbia University. There, at the beginning of September, I saw the American premiere of Iannis Xenakis' bizarre, terrifying, intense opera, Oresteia. While the Greek tragedies on which Xenakis's work is based are complex, Xenakis instead focuses on a few key portions of the narrative, mainly, Cassandra's challenge in being clairvoyant but having nobody believe her, the guilt Orestes feels before and after murdering his mother, and Athena's decree and the turning of the Furies into the Eumenides. To tell this story, Xenakis used primarily percussive instruments (with a few woodwinds and one cello mixed in), a men's, a women's, and a children's chorus, and one soloist (a bass). Additionally, this particular production included ballet dancers providing interpretive dance for some of the key narrative passages, and a large screen hovering over the right side of the stage, with random abstract images occupying it throughout the performance.

I had never heard any recordings of the opera, and it was remarkable and unlike anything I'd ever heard before (which is saying something). The real highlight was the second "movement," "Kassandra," composed strictly of a solo percussionist and bass Wilbur Pauley providing narration both as the leader of the Greek chorus in his natural bass, as well as the dialog of Cassandra, offered in a falsetto, leading to the bizarre-but-captivating effect of one man dialoguing two narrative voices with himself. Pauley's delivery of that mono-dialogue was extremely absolutely spellbinding (he would also do this later on as he took on the role of Athena decreeing the fate of Orestes and the Furies), and its intensity was matched only by the solo percussionist behind him. While a men's chorus and a women's chorus also provided narration and vocal context, it was really Pauley who had the meat of the material, and who stole the show.

In between Pauley's two solos, the men's and the women's chorus took turns furthering the narrative, with the men doing so in the first part of the opera and the women taking over halfway through. The men's chorus was very good, but it was the women's chorus that had the most memorable part of the whole opera. As Orestes is dealing with the torment of the Furies, the 25-30 female voices all sang different, conflicting, discordant notes, shrilly, at the top of their lungs, all at once, in a cacophony so terrifying that I thought to myself (without hyperbole), "Combine this sound with actual feelings of guilt, and this is what hell feels like, right here." I had goosebumps all over my body. I don't know how, but in that one bit alone, Xenakis hit the rawest, most terrifying, most emotional music I've ever heard in my life (and fortunately, that moment is recorded on the 50-minute CD version of the opera).

And that wasn't the only instant of such intensity. Throughout, the percussive music gave the opera a cutting edge that made everything tenser, and as the opera came to a close, the combination of percussion, winds, the men's, women's, and children's chorus (the latter portraying the Eumenides), all joining together at their loudest, resulted in a wash of sound again like any I heard, one that made me want it to never end, so intense, so raw, so emotional, and so unlike anything else I'd ever heard was it. Without question, the music was what made the spectacle such an event, so amazing.

That said, the other portions of the opera were none too shabby, either. I really enjoyed the dance, which surprised me somewhat. The thought of interpretive dance never seemed like it would be that interesting to me. Admitedly, I'd never seen any interpretive dance (save for the Dude's landlord, Marty, and his cycle in The Big Lebowski), and I was amazed by how fit and fluid the dancers were. In some other musical or theatrical contexts, their movements may have seemed ridiculous, but it fit the mood and music perfectly.

As for the (translated) libretto, it was sufficient enough to move forward the narrative in an understandable way. It wasn't particularly poetic in the traditional sense, but it didn't need to be, and Xenakis did a great job of keeping a sense of the Greek poetics of their tragedies in tact. Due to the length of the opera vs. the original plays, there were obvious gaps, but they weren't a detraction; indeed, the flowing, ephemeral, abstract narrative actually went quite well with the visual and musical components of the show, as did the abstract (and apparently completely unrelated) images projected on the screen.

If there was one complaint I had for the opera, it was the space. Miller was amazingly intimate, and so in that regard, it was great - even though I was in the last row of the balcony, the seats were way better than anything I could afford somewhere like the met. Still, part of the choreography called for the dancers to move out into the audience on the first level, and so they were out of my line of sight. Additionally, Miller's balcony is layered in such a way that an elderly woman directly in my line of sight in the first row of the balcony kept leaning forward for a better view, often times obstructing my view with her (unusually large for New York) hair. Still, this wasn't a total loss, as the fact that there was so much going on to watch (the televised images, the choruses, Paulley, the dancers, and the musicians) that I didn't lose any major component of the opera for too long. Still, ground level seats probably would have been much better.

In all, my first opera was a rousing success. Of course, there are few out there (at least that I'm aware of) that are like "Oresteia" in instrumentation, length, or presentation, but I don't really know what they are, so it was something totally new for me. It was hands-down an amazing spectacle and one of the best productions of any medium I've ever seen, period. After the show ended, it was clear that, while the "modernism" of the opera satisfied many (like myself), many others were of the persuasion of "what the hell was that?" or even "ugh - who could like that?!" But I was definitely impressed, and thought all the performers did a great job, especially Paulley and the musicians.

And for those who are interested in some other views (generally by people who know what they are talking about much more than I do), the Times, Opera Today, and this blog all had pieces on the Miller Theater performance.

An eerie start

I am in Norfolk, Virginia this month for rehearsals and a performance of part of my new opera at the Virginia Arts Festival. The work, Heroes, Monsters, Humans, deals with the Iraq War from the perspectives of, by turns, a young Iraqi girl, an American soldier, and his wife back home in the States. The work is, as my stage works tend to be lately, political in nature (last year, the Arts Festival performed scenes from my comic opera, The Most Fortunate Son, which is a satirical critique of class privilege in America, as told through the ascendancy of George W. Bush).

In any event, this trip has been framed by two very different and very poignant experiences. While flying from Atlanta to Norfolk (which is a large Navy town), I sat by a 22 year old returning from Iraq for fifteen days of leave. We talked for the whole hour of the trip; he had been flown from Iraq to Germany to Ireland to Atlanta to Norfolk, a trip that had taken him almost three days. He is stationed in Southern Iraq, where things are calmer. His perspective was interesting; he had volunteered for duty in Iraq because of the money (he is paid more over there for hazard pay), and made a point to say that he wasn’t “tied up” in all of the “other stuff”—meaning the politics. I imagine it would be a great benefit for one to have that kind of disengagement, which he extended to the dangers of his work there as well. He told me that driving around those roads, he just thinks of them like normal highways, not letting his mind think about the risks.

As we got off the plane, I asked him what he was planning on doing on leave. He said he was going to drink beer and go camping. Camping would be the last damn thing I’d want to do after living in tent in Iraq for the last seven months, and I think he picked up on my amazement. He said, “I want to be near some trees”.

Talk about taking things in my life for granted.

Three fun things I learned from him:

(1) There is no alcohol in Iraq

(2) Everything there smells like shit and diesel

(3) It takes the Navy over three days to get you from Iraq to the States; it takes them 18 hours to get you from the States to Iraq

After arriving and checking into the hotel here, I stepped outside to try to find a place to eat lunch. As I was looking around, a young man standing outside the hotel looked at me and just started talking. The first thing he said was “What the fuck are you looking at?”, which left me rather stunned. As we began to talk, his hostility left as quickly as it had come.

His name was Kevin, 23 years old, also in the Navy. There was something haltingly wrong with him—drugs, alcohol, PTSD, I have no idea—but something was very wrong. He would begin to talk about his inability to say things, vague language about hiding things, and various other secretive and veritably strange phrases. He started crying at one point, and then immediately smiled and told me the bag I was carrying made me look like a “fag”. It was the strangest conversation I have ever had in my entire life. It was like an emotional rampage—up, down, angry, sad, defeated, aggressive—all in the span of about half an hour. Even stranger was that his language was so vague. He said very little that was not abstracted, and several times offered me cryptic advice about secrecy (?!) I cannot capture the nature of this conversation very well, but suffice is to say it was very odd, frightening, and in a way, moving.

These experiences would have been very poignant in their own right, but having them as the first experiences of this trip, which is centered on my Iraq War opera, is a very strange feeling. It somehow seems fitting.

A Little Bit of Opera on Saturday Afternoon

For those who are interested, I can't recommend strongly enough the radio program "Metropolitan Opera with Margaret Juntwat." I'm sure there are multiple stations where you can hear it (I'm currently enjoying it via WCLV's live feed on the internet). I never knew of this program; I stumbled upon it when I learned that I am able to hear Philip Glass's (out-of-print) opera Satyagraha in its entirety for the first time. (The opera is about Ghandi - the first act just ended, and it's amazing). What really makes Juntwat's program great, though, is what happens prior to the show and during the intermissions. I've never had any opera contextualized so strongly, and during the intermissions, they have included items like an interview with Glass upon the production of Satyagraha at the Met this month, an essay on Tolstoy's influence on Ghandi, and others.

And even if you don't like Glass (or even opera) that much, you still get to listen to a live opera at the met on a Saturday afternoon for free, instead of paying a minimum of 85$. And how cool is that?

RIP--Beverly Sills

One of the last great popular opera divas has passed. Beverly Sills, soprano extrodanaire and the face of opera for a generation died of lung cancer today. She was 78. Though she retired on the stage in 1980, she became director of the New York Opera and chair of the Metropolitan Opera, also guest hosting such programs as The Tonight Show and The Muppet Show (back in the day when people like Sills and Dick Cavett could host a show like that). Most importantly, she cared about spreading the beauty of opera, something that has been forgotten in the wake of singers like Andrea Bocelli or Charlotte Church and "composers" of new opera such as Robert Ashley. Unfortunately, there's currently nobody to take her esteemed place.