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Not a Bio-opera After All
By George Loomis
MusicalAmerica.com
May 11, 2010
SEATTLE -- Daron Aric Hagen is probably best known to opera goers for his 1993 opera “Shining Brow” about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, so one can be forgiven for expecting “Amelia,” which had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera on May 8, to be a bio-opera about Amelia Earhart. It is not, although the aviatrix is the source of the heroine's name and even turns up (though not specifically identified) among its characters.
Speight Jenkins has run the Seattle Opera for 27 years, but “Amelia” is his first world premiere. In a forward to the printed libretto, this savvy administrator suggests his determination to avoid the pitfalls of other recent American operas. “An opera that simply sets the text of a play to music wastes time and money,” he writes.
"Amelia" was long in gestation, with Jenkins playing an unusually active role. Once a composer and librettist were in place, he settled on a brand new story by stage director Stephen Wadsworth, which happened to be inspired by the life of the opera's librettist, Gardner McFall.
"Amelia" is an opera about ordinary people in a roughly contemporary setting. But its principal subject is the psychological rebirth of Amelia, whose father, a Navy pilot named Dodge, went missing during the Vietnam War when she was only nine. Nearly 30 years later, now married and pregnant, Amelia still wrestles with the loss. But in some miraculous way, the process of giving birth supplies the jolt her psyche needs to rid it of the baggage of the past.
It is an unusual opera subject, to say the least, and it was initially hard to warm to. With lines like “the risk is worth the love” (apropos of flying), the libretto's syntax is rich, as if McFall were pushing her poetic inclinations as far as they would go in a libretto. Her text is also interestingly structured by providing for the simultaneous presentation of diverse episodes. For instance, in the first scene, the young Amelia's farewell to her father occurs at the same time as a black automobile arrives to bring news to her mother of his death.
Act 1 is slow moving and, especially early on, rather sentimental. Emotive strings accompany Dodge's departure, with harp joining in for his final lullaby to Amelia. The next scene introduces the Greek myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus, who attempt to effect their escape from the labyrinth by fashioning wings. But, situated in the bedroom of Amelia and her husband Paul, the mythological characters prove almost literally to be strange bedfellows. Drama and music become more incisive in a subsequent scene recounting a trip years before by Amelia and her mother to Vietnam, with an internal flashback recounting Dodge's grisly treatment by the North Vietnamese.
But in Act 2—“Amelia” follows the statutory format for a new opera of two acts, each an hour long—it suddenly behaves like an opera. Amelia storms into Paul's office (he is an aeronautical engineer) in a confrontational scene that is not entirely credible but still forceful. After a diatribe addressed to her father, sung unaccompanied, she collapses unconscious, thereby creating suspense about whether she will survive childbirth. In the marvelously chaotic hospital scene that follows, Dodge appears to Amelia in a vision that brings closure; a father (Daedalus) loses his son (Icarus), an accident victim in an adjacent bed; Amelia's Aunt Helen stirringly sings a version of the Navy Hymn (John B. Dykes's “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”), distorted musically and textually; a Flier (Amelia Earhart) appears exuding joie de vivre notwithstanding her untimely demise; and the suddenly revived Amelia insists that her baby's delivery be natural, not Caesarian, as recommended by her doctor.
Jenkins wrote that “he was looking for a composer who walked the narrow line between the kind of post-romantic music that has become increasingly popular since 1990 and a harder-edged, more twentieth-century sound.” No argument there—a new opera needs both, although a composer shouldn't have to so much walk a “narrow line” as draw freely on both idioms as needed. Hagen responds to the growing demands of the drama by doing just that, broadening the expressive range of his music to accommodate the cascade of divergent emotions as the opera presses on to its conclusion—turbulent dissonance one moment, compelling lyricism the next. The opera culminates in an ethereal life-affirming unaccompanied ensemble for the nine principal singers.
Stephen Wadsworth stages the opera adroitly within Thomas Lynch's realistic sets, some with striking natural backgrounds. The rising mezzo Kate Lindsey sang and acted superbly as Amelia. William Burden brought a well focused tenor and sympathetic manner to the role of Dodge, and the fine baritone Nathan Gunn was similarly sympathetic as Amelia's husband Paul, not least when reading aloud Dodge's final letter to her. Jane Eaglen lent her potent soprano to Aunt Helen's declamations, and Ashley Emerson sang the Young Amelia with a perky, bright soprano. Young soprano Jennifer Zetlan contributed brilliantly as the irrepressible Flier. Gerard Schwarz's conducting blossomed during the course of the opera, just as “Amelia” did.
By George Loomis
MusicalAmerica.com
May 11, 2010
SEATTLE -- Daron Aric Hagen is probably best known to opera goers for his 1993 opera “Shining Brow” about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, so one can be forgiven for expecting “Amelia,” which had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera on May 8, to be a bio-opera about Amelia Earhart. It is not, although the aviatrix is the source of the heroine's name and even turns up (though not specifically identified) among its characters.
Speight Jenkins has run the Seattle Opera for 27 years, but “Amelia” is his first world premiere. In a forward to the printed libretto, this savvy administrator suggests his determination to avoid the pitfalls of other recent American operas. “An opera that simply sets the text of a play to music wastes time and money,” he writes.
"Amelia" was long in gestation, with Jenkins playing an unusually active role. Once a composer and librettist were in place, he settled on a brand new story by stage director Stephen Wadsworth, which happened to be inspired by the life of the opera's librettist, Gardner McFall.
"Amelia" is an opera about ordinary people in a roughly contemporary setting. But its principal subject is the psychological rebirth of Amelia, whose father, a Navy pilot named Dodge, went missing during the Vietnam War when she was only nine. Nearly 30 years later, now married and pregnant, Amelia still wrestles with the loss. But in some miraculous way, the process of giving birth supplies the jolt her psyche needs to rid it of the baggage of the past.
It is an unusual opera subject, to say the least, and it was initially hard to warm to. With lines like “the risk is worth the love” (apropos of flying), the libretto's syntax is rich, as if McFall were pushing her poetic inclinations as far as they would go in a libretto. Her text is also interestingly structured by providing for the simultaneous presentation of diverse episodes. For instance, in the first scene, the young Amelia's farewell to her father occurs at the same time as a black automobile arrives to bring news to her mother of his death.
Act 1 is slow moving and, especially early on, rather sentimental. Emotive strings accompany Dodge's departure, with harp joining in for his final lullaby to Amelia. The next scene introduces the Greek myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus, who attempt to effect their escape from the labyrinth by fashioning wings. But, situated in the bedroom of Amelia and her husband Paul, the mythological characters prove almost literally to be strange bedfellows. Drama and music become more incisive in a subsequent scene recounting a trip years before by Amelia and her mother to Vietnam, with an internal flashback recounting Dodge's grisly treatment by the North Vietnamese.
But in Act 2—“Amelia” follows the statutory format for a new opera of two acts, each an hour long—it suddenly behaves like an opera. Amelia storms into Paul's office (he is an aeronautical engineer) in a confrontational scene that is not entirely credible but still forceful. After a diatribe addressed to her father, sung unaccompanied, she collapses unconscious, thereby creating suspense about whether she will survive childbirth. In the marvelously chaotic hospital scene that follows, Dodge appears to Amelia in a vision that brings closure; a father (Daedalus) loses his son (Icarus), an accident victim in an adjacent bed; Amelia's Aunt Helen stirringly sings a version of the Navy Hymn (John B. Dykes's “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”), distorted musically and textually; a Flier (Amelia Earhart) appears exuding joie de vivre notwithstanding her untimely demise; and the suddenly revived Amelia insists that her baby's delivery be natural, not Caesarian, as recommended by her doctor.
Jenkins wrote that “he was looking for a composer who walked the narrow line between the kind of post-romantic music that has become increasingly popular since 1990 and a harder-edged, more twentieth-century sound.” No argument there—a new opera needs both, although a composer shouldn't have to so much walk a “narrow line” as draw freely on both idioms as needed. Hagen responds to the growing demands of the drama by doing just that, broadening the expressive range of his music to accommodate the cascade of divergent emotions as the opera presses on to its conclusion—turbulent dissonance one moment, compelling lyricism the next. The opera culminates in an ethereal life-affirming unaccompanied ensemble for the nine principal singers.
Stephen Wadsworth stages the opera adroitly within Thomas Lynch's realistic sets, some with striking natural backgrounds. The rising mezzo Kate Lindsey sang and acted superbly as Amelia. William Burden brought a well focused tenor and sympathetic manner to the role of Dodge, and the fine baritone Nathan Gunn was similarly sympathetic as Amelia's husband Paul, not least when reading aloud Dodge's final letter to her. Jane Eaglen lent her potent soprano to Aunt Helen's declamations, and Ashley Emerson sang the Young Amelia with a perky, bright soprano. Young soprano Jennifer Zetlan contributed brilliantly as the irrepressible Flier. Gerard Schwarz's conducting blossomed during the course of the opera, just as “Amelia” did.
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