Lawrence Sumulong
Pay attention, all of us have our regrets. Typically, out of nowhere, I’ll keep in mind that proficient violinist I used to be means too imply about in a collection of evaluations a decade or two in the past, or that opera I used to be means, means too good about, and I’ll really feel a pointy pang in my intestine, and my coronary heart will beat a bit of sooner. In 2021, on the New York premiere run of Eurydice, I pasted a brand new remorse into this psychological scrapbook of disgrace: how extremely onerous I had slept on the music of composer/conductor Matthew Aucoin, whose breathless press and 24-karat résumé (summa cum laude at Harvard, graduate research at Juilliard, assistant conductor on the Met) had me groaning and rolling my eyes the opposite means till I lastly sat my ass down and listened to one of the vital completely conceived English-language operas from the previous quarter century.
Why oh WHY should the hype swirling across the accomplishments of sensible younger individuals with their complete lives forward of them at all times flip me into a type of bitter, resentful critics from some fucking Ayn Rand novel? Effectively, okay, I assume I do know why, however no matter, the purpose is: consider the hype. Matthew Aucoin actually is the whole lot he’s made out to be. Earlier this month, he and his American Fashionable Opera Firm (AMOC*, with an asterisk, like Marvel’s Thunderbolts*) closed out their Working AMOC* pageant at Lincoln Heart with the New York premiere of Music for New Our bodies, an opera/oratorio/track cycle on texts by Jorie Graham, and Aucoin proved once more the depth, richness, and adaptability of his sources as a composer of vocal music.
New Our bodies units 5 poems by Jorie Graham, one in all our most celebrated residing poets and (in fact!) Aucoin’s mentor in school, and every darkish, sometimes cryptic lyric settles closely on the one earlier than to create the cumulative sense of an unlimited, apocalyptic collapse: of the physique, of the self, of the ocean, of the Earth. Director Peter Sellars, who—a lot as he did with John Adams’s pre-Antony & Cleopatra operas—helped conceive the piece along with creating the staging, lent the piece a suitably grim, alienating, sub-aquatic vibe with color-changing LED bars hanging simply over the heads of the performers (a part of designer Ben Zamora’s lighting scheme) and stark, table-like metallic risers as the one set. The performers had been outfitted in primary black—presumably their very own garments. (Victoria Bek was credited as “costume stylist” fairly than as designer.)
By some means, even on this minimally-staged manufacturing, Sellars’ route managed to showcase, as traditional, each his genius for stagecraft in addition to only a sprint of unintentional silliness. Why did the forged use standup mics for spoken passages, once I was pretty sure they had been carrying discreet stage mics for the sung passages? I can’t make certain, however it labored! (And Mark Gray’s sound design—there’s a reputation I’ve been typing rather a lot this 12 months—was strong and discreet, besides the place required to be in any other case.) I cherished seeing the singers and musicians stand collectively, bodily, when their voices and devices had been paired within the rating, and it made musical and visible sense to have the 2 male voices within the quintet seated at a desk for a lot of the present, whereas every of the three girls was positioned on the head of a special little choir of devices: the string part, the woodwinds, and the percussion. (This final was performed by the great Sandbox Percussion quartet.)
Aucoin describes his piece as an “opera,” within the bigger sense of that phrase, and I received’t argue, although to me the piece felt extra like a e-book of darkish madrigals, with every of the singers representing an inner dialogue fairly than totally different characters. The impact on this staged efficiency was one thing like a late Samuel Beckett drama, or Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, the place the multiplicity of voices suggests the shards of a shattered psyche.
Lawrence Sumulong
However infrequently, the characters could be unified by some type of stage enterprise, to various levels of success. Did we want everyone to whip out their telephones, early within the piece, like these scientists within the Adams/Sellars Physician Atomic dutifully trooping onstage with the sandwiches and low talked about within the libretto? Did we want everyone to flop round on the ground like fish out of water throughout the third motion, “Deep Water Trawling?” It appeared a bit of… Mickey-Mouse. I considered an article I learn years in the past the place a musicologist scoffed on the notion that there was one thing “queer” about feminine voices singing about stunning girls in Renaissance madrigals, since in spite of everything, we didn’t think about that Monteverdi’s five-part settings of Petrarch meant Laura was being wooed by a would-be polycule. These little, too-specific moments broke the spell, and put me in thoughts of poor Laura and that amorous quintet.
However the singers dedicated absolutely to the enterprise and, much more importantly, to the music. The vocal texture was dominated by scrumptious ensemble writing, however a couple of voices did catch the ear greater than others—the sensible shade of Aucoin’s music comes from the thick, dissonant shut harmonies within the highest registers, and so Track Hee Lee’s spectacular coloratura soprano singing was a particular deal with, notably juxtaposed towards the excessive woodwinds, the place Aucoin’s clusters generated Ligeti-like psychoacoustic results. Megan Moore’s earthy mezzo lent a human heat and pathos to her solos, and I discover myself falling extra in love with Paul Appleby’s vibrant, excessive tenor instrument each time I hear it — which, to his credit score, appears to be increasingly more as of late. The authoritative bass-baritone of Evan Hughes and the candy soprano of Meryl Dominguez rounded out the ensemble.
The actual star, although, was the composer, whose command of vocal and instrumental writing gave each second a pyrotechnic sparkle. Graham’s usually advanced and fragmented verse sings naturally in his settings, and all of her most transferring (or upsetting) traces flew unerringly dwelling. This, from “Prying,” a poem during which the speaker prepares to be anesthetized earlier than surgical procedure for most cancers, hit me proper within the soul: “They’ll / study the whole lot about me whereas I sleep.” It’s all there, the alienation of sickness, of recent drugs, of the very thoughts, lurking with a dreadful irony in an nearly childishly easy flip of face.
Lawrence Sumulong
And Aucoin’s bag of tips is completely bottomless. I namechecked Ligeti’s woodwinds a minute in the past; the writing for metallic percussion jogged my memory of Boulez and his excessive modernist compatriots. However the music is at all times grounded, with roots in tonal concord and in pulsing rhythms that turn into much less and extra obvious as required however consistently supply the requisite emotional push and pull. There was a second the place I assumed he’d strayed into cringe, with a percussionist out of the blue enjoying a barely hokey pop beat, the singers doing jazz chords, and the lights flashing totally different colours like a disco—after which, as if studying my thoughts, he instantly struck again with a harsh pattern of digital noise.
The piece moved with exceptional swiftness for 70 uninterrupted minutes with no plot and no characters, however then, it was created by a composer and a director who’ve every demonstrated a deep understanding of learn how to form and stage musical materials for optimum dramatic affect. And the top, when it got here, turned to a musical language of real heat and reassurance, providing some hope, some comfort, after all of the darkness and doom.
The hybrid type of Music for New Our bodies, says Aucoin, is one thing of a departure for him. I’ll admit that after his masterful comedy and pathos in Eurydice, I can’t look forward to him to return to “actual” opera ( what I imply), however this cycle demonstrates that no matter type his subsequent theater piece takes, it can make sure you enthrall.
