The good health of the contemporary opera It necessarily involves American creation. After the generation of Bernstein, Floyd or Barber, the works of living authors such as Glass, Heggie, Davis or Adams have successfully entered the international repertoire with languages that do not always coincide, but have in common – with the exception, of course, of the minimalist Glass – a deep sense of theatrical drama, of the libretto as the backbone of the plot. The composer’s work is intimately combined with the text and the staging, since this other factor also has great weight.
The ‘American Opera’, with a libretto in English, is already exported to Europe, cradle of the genre, whose current creations have not been able to take root; hence its scarce programming in contrast to American opera, although it does not always manage to hit the nail on the head: a good example is ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, by Samuel Barber and a libretto by Franco Zeffirelli inspired by Shakespeare’s play that in 1966 inaugurated the new met in new york. She didn’t know how to survive. On the contrary, this two-act version of the same Shakespearean work that John Adams will premiere in 2022 at the San Francisco Opera (celebrating the company’s centenary) seems to have more possibilities.
A conventional work
The author of the acclaimed ‘Nixon in China’ (1987) – offered this year in two productions in Paris and Madrid – also signs the libretto, now without his usual collaborator, Peter Sellars, resorting for the first time to already existing texts, with fragments written by Virgil and Plutarch. The result is a conventional operawith some scenes more successful than others, to which is added a staging that transports the aesthetics to the golden age of Hollywood, with great prominence of the media, in an especially effective proposal by Elkhanah Pulitzer, with scenography by Mimi Lien, luxurious costumes by Constance Hoffman, lighting by David Finn and videos by Bill Morrison.
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Adams’ music – which looks at minimalism, but without taking it to the limit as a resource for dramatic purposes, even quoting Wagner or Britten– underlines the libretto, the word, reaching its heights in some interlude or in the final reflections of Cleopatra, a character around which the work revolves, splendidly played by a dedicated Julia Bullock – fascinating timbre and credibility–, who takes advantage of the movements and the demanding score. Caesar Augustus’s speech once again affects the value of the text, with a confident Paul Appleby proclaiming the victory of his ‘race’. There was, however, a lack of any scene with a decided lyrical flight, since the eternal ‘arioso’ exhausts his possibilities.
Lack of precision
John Adams himself took the podium of the Liceu for the premiere of his work in Europe, counting on some well-prepared stable groups whose orchestra was joined by the exotic timbre of the Hungarian cymbal; In any case, in moments like the ‘Newsreel’ interlude, precision was lacking. But who better than the author to balance this immense edifice? Everything worked, including a discreet amplification, and the entire cast has managed to defend it, with the splendid and generous Antony of Gerald Finley, the sonorous Enobarbus of Alfred Walker, the profound Carmia of Adriana Bignagni Lesca and Octavia Elizabeth Deshong and an army of extras.