Cincinnati — A turbulent adaptation of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet” performed at the Metropolitan Opera two months ago, but it’s still in my ears.
Almost literally: it’s a loud, chaotic score, collecting batteries for percussion and the electronic effects that surround the audience, complex polyrhythms, and clever special-tech battles. In all these qualities, it represents a wide range of modern operas (some good, some bad) defined by being overwhelming. They are shocking, awe-inspiring, chaotic and embarrassing hurricanes.
Gregory Spears Music — Its Sensitivity “Caster and patience” Commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera and premiered here on Thursday night — the opposite.
The orchestra of his work has a warm, stable, subdued, firm tone and tends to quietly repeat the material of small cells without the strange use of strange or traditional instruments.
Self-facing is a Spears style, as the dull drone at the beginning of this new piece emerges without a pause from the tuning of the ensemble by chance. The overall effect is a smooth-spreading carpet on which the voice soars.
And soar, and soar. The anguish and joy of “Caster and Patience” at the Corvette Theater of the Creative and Performing Arts School until July 30th seems to be the anguish and joy of less organized Puccini. Even vocal lines that are not shy and angry, such as “Tosca,” “La Boheme,” and “Madame Butterfly,” bring us closer to the character in a torn situation. A part of the land.
It’s valuable because I bought it freely because I had a hard time winning it. This action takes place on an unnamed island off the southern coast of the United States, settled by former slaves after the Civil War. Among their descendants, Caster left with his parents and moved north. His cousin, Patience, was with her.
Decades later, both are adults with their own children. It was 2008, and Caster borrowed far beyond his means, like many in the years leading up to the Great Recession. The only way he can get out of financial ruin is to return to the island and sell some of his inherited shares, perhaps becoming a white buyer who intends to build a seaside condo. .. It is the result of tradition-oriented patience that cannot be followed.
It is a battle between the old way and the new, past and future, monitored by the ghosts of their ancestors and the lasting echo of their oppression, leaving and staying. (As one character sings, “living means remembering.”) The basis for this story is well-known, with the echo of “raisins in the sun,” gentrification. There is a difference in storage.
However, Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet winner Tracy K. Smith wrote a script that wasn’t as flashy as the Spears score. Her text, which is the original story, rather than one of the variants of the existing material that is currently clogging the opera world, is mostly prose and never purple. Modest arias naturally arise from dialogue. Burned into aching music — the 38 orchestras are performed by Casem Abdullah with gentle confidence — the results are passionate, at the same time clear, focused and humble.
Both Spears’ two most prominent early operas have been achieved. “Paul’s Case” (2013) is based on Willa Cather’s story about a restless, dandy youth, with a properly stylized form of Stravinsky’s “Lake Progress.” rice field. That sense of neoclassicalism (even in the New Middle Ages) extends to the more naturalistic “fellow travelers” (2016) in the midst of the anti-homosexual witch hunt of the Macarsi era. increase. However, the almost intolerable heightened lyricism of the “Paul’s Incident” felt a bit repetitive and lethargic on the wider canvas that followed.
Six years after being forced to cancel the planned premiere of the pandemic to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Cincinnati Opera, “Caster and Patience” is more intense and relaxing than either. The “Pole’s Case” was 80 minutes long and the “Fellow Travelers” was 1 hour and 50 minutes. The new opera has passed it for more than 30 minutes, but it doesn’t feel laid-back, unwaveringly long. You can get to know the characters and sit with them.
These figures are also very vivid thanks to the devoted cast led by baritone Reginald Smith Jr., anguish caster, and soprano Talise Trevigne.
Jennifer Johnson Cano of mezzo-soprano sang with mellow power, bringing humanity and nuance to Caster’s wife Celeste. Raven McMillon, especially Frederick Valentin, gave bristle to compelling teens as his daughter and sons Lucy and Judas. The children of patience, West (Benjamin Taylor) and Wilhelmina (Victoria Okafor), were calm but stimulated a guide to the satisfaction of the island and family life.
Their overflowing sounds are so enthusiastic and the melody is so sweet that they are more or less likely to shed tears with random lines. Especially in the first act, it is both an impressive and sometimes overkill result. But by the second act, tensions have risen mercilessly, resistance to work is very friendly, soft, and frankly seemingly useless. In the outstanding traditions of Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Carlisle Floyd, if it’s emotionally manipulative, it’s clever.
Vita Tzykun’s set spreads the façade of the house across the stage, but cuts off the lower half in a jagged pattern, revealing the foundation and wetland grass beams. This is a dreamlike world of hell where characters from the 1860s and 1960s mix with the 21st century. Kevin Newbury’s work uses some furniture and some hut suggestions to remind us of different parts of the island. If it’s not completely exciting (with vague predictions), it’s at least efficient and easy.
So is the plot mechanism. The conflict here is as old-fashioned as Arthur Miller’s play, but like Miller’s work, it just ties your stomach. Unlike the version of this script he probably wrote, the true tragedy does not appear in the story of Spears and Smith. At the end everyone is alive.
And the secret revealed near that point is not Barn Burner. But it provides a real explanation for why Caster’s parents went north — reminding us that migration is not only an abstract sociological phenomenon, but also happens on a family-by-family basis for individual reasons.
There is no clear solution for the plot. In the final scene, you’ll see Caster, Celeste, and Lucy on the ferry back to the mainland. (Judas decided to stay.) It seems to mean that they will eventually return to the island, but we are not sure. In the final aria, an expressive and elegant poetic oasis from Smith after many descriptive prose, patience rejects the possibility of choosing either the past or the future. We are always in the middle.
Due to all the vague peace that this ending offers, a bitter undercurrent pull: In America, especially black America, ownership is basically sparse. You can never run fast or far enough to escape the power you have decided to drive you away. To make matters worse, “something can feel like trying to erase me,” Caster sings. If he finally returns to the island of Patience, it is not only a return home, but also an approval of defeat for people and the country.
“No more,” the opera asks at the last quiet moment, “Do I have to give up before I’m free?”
Caster and patience
Until July 30th at the Corvette Theater at Cincinnati’s Creative and Performing Arts School. cincinnatiopera.org..
