While I won't go so far as Justin Davidson did in his review, I walked away from the world premiere of Tobias Picker's "An American Tragedy" quite disappointed. An adaptation of Dreiser's novel perhaps inevitably fell flat as a piece of theater, not just because of the ever-present need to compact Dreiser's narrative and character development down to a maneagable chunk. (The novel "An American Tragedy" was published in 1925--the same year as Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." And indeed, Dreiser's tale, though based on a true story, plays out like a glimpse of the seamy underbelly to Gatsby's portrayal of social climbers; my most frequent concert companion (MMFCC?) compared the storyline to the Icarus myth, which I think is an interesting idea.
But the core of Picker's opera, written with librettist Gene Scheer, is hollow: where's the dramatic arc? The opera never really plumbs the inner life of protagonist Clyde Griffiths as he relentlessly struggles to climb the social ladder, nor do we feel the friction between the classes that lies at the heart of this tale. Despite some lovely ideas that peep out from time to time before vanishing quickly, Picker's lines drag on and on, making for a very long evening. There aren't obvious cuts to make; instead, everything sags.
On the upside, Dolora Zajick set the stage ablaze with her amazing turn as protagonist Clyde Griffiths' Bible-gripping mother. Nathan Gunn's darkly burnished tone and (ahem) quite nice physique were certainly welcome onstage, and Susan Graham makes the absolute most of what Picker has given her. Patricia Racette's vocal performance was very fine, but I never really felt her presence as an actress.
Over the last thirty-odd years, the Metropolitan Opera has been incredibly reluctant to commission new work; this is only the fourth premiere that the Met has offered since James Levine took the reins. I fear that the thoroughly mixed response (critical and otherwise) that "American Tragedy" has received, even thus far, might scare the company away from doing future commissions. That would be the real American Tragedy.
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Last night, I headed to Miller Theatre to hear Alarm Will Sound offer a composer portrait of John Adams. (I had seen Adams the night before at "An American Tragedy," at which point he claimed to me that he had nearly forgotten one of the pieces that AWS had programmed.) It was a very strange and unrepresentative night for AWS, which is usually one of my most favoritest ensembles on the scene.
It's unclear whether they were 1) too awed by Adams' presence; 2) underrehearsed; 3) tentative about some clearly unfamiliar music (like 1997's "Scratchband"), but it took them waaaay too long to find their groove and click into gear. Scratchband was timid and scattered; while clarinetist Elisabeth Stimpert (and some of her AWS colleagues) had a keen sense of the emotions of "Gnarly Buttons," she had some obvious moments of technical distress. The selections from 1995's stage work "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky" (penned with poet June Jordan) felt more like a high school revue than a real performance, complete with unreliable and even amateurish vocals from guest singers Masi Asare, Evangelia Kingsley, and Alan H. Green. John Orfe's curious solo piano arrangement of "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" made a dense, furiously fast work even more compacted, and I really missed Adams' original rather Ives-ian pile-ons of color. However, their performance of 1992's Chamber Symphony--with fabulous work by violinist Courtney Orlando (who was also the best vocalist in "Ceiling/Sky") was conductor Alan Pierson and AWS at their best: vivid, vivacious, and completely engaged.
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Off shortly to hear Emanuel Ax play Chen Yi, Saariaho, Brahms, Liszt and Chopin at Carnegie Hall. If there is any grace to be had in the universe, later tonight I'll finally get to writing that shamefully late Youssou N'Dour at Carnegie Hall essay overdue from October, for which I wrote an incredibly witty, insightful, and very lengthy essay for Cafe Aman some weeks ago, which I then promptly lost (hitting "save" just as my then-unreliable network connection disappeared).
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