Complications Ensue at Opera Philadelphia

What if you strung together 10 eight-minute opera scenes by 10 composers, threw in one transgender, MacArthur Fellow-winning cabaret star, and put them all on stage at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music? The result would be Complications in Sue, the latest brainstorm of Opera Philadelphia General Director/President Anthony Roth Costanzo and the opening production for the company’s 50^th- anniversary season.

Each of the 10 segments tells the story of a decade in the life of the opera’s namesake centenarian, portrayed throughout by cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond, who suggested the title and rough framework. “The audience isn’t going to be told what to think or how to feel on this strange little roller-coaster ride,” Michael R. Jackson, Sue’s librettist, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The story calls for Sue to save Santa Claus from an existential crisis in a nonbelieving world, fend off aggressive shopping algorithms that try to define her, and deal with more mundane realities like a lonely ex-husband. It is, Jackson says, “a fantasia… with some real people but some abstractions.”

Bond, the center of it all, has what Costanzo describes as “an operatic-scale charisma…. She is very funny very surreal and very herself.” But the real conceit of Complications is the participation of 10 composers, some among today’s busiest.

Credit Costanzo with convincing the likes of Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Errollyn Wallen, and Rene Orth to join in the fun, along with to Nathalie Joachim, Andy Akiho, Alistair Coleman, Kamala Sankaram, Dan Schlosberg, and first-timer Cécile McLorin Salvant. Costanzo recognized that asking any one of them to compose a full-length opera would have likely led to a turndown. But for eight minutes of music, he figured, “How could they say no?”

None of them knew what the others were doing, a potential recipe for chaos as the individual scenes are knit together. But two of the onstage singers, soprano Kiera Duffy and U.K.-based tenor Nicky Spence, are accustomed to edgy works. Spence makes no bones about why he signed up for Complications: “I took the call because it was him,” Spence said of Costanzo.

For his part, Costanzo is not sure that Philadelphia audiences are ready for an over-the-top  personality like Bond and a storyline steeped in LGBTQ+ themes. Might there be pushback? That’s likely, he admits. “Philadelphia is a fierce town…. But,” he concludes, “Opera Philadelphia is for everyone.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer