A whistlestop guide to the latest American opera

A week is a long time in American opera, from Washington National Opera’s Written in Stone and Cosi fan tutti at the Kennedy Center to Manhattan’s Armory on Park Avenue and Upload. (A Dutch National Opera online version of Upload was reviewed in Reaction back in January).

The real McCoy was unmissable. And the span in variety, from a well-beloved Mozart Cosi to cutting edge Michael van der Aa’s (his parents were determined he come first on the school roster), Upload is proof that opera can address the social questions of the 21st century with as sharp an eye as it did those of the 18th. 

Let’s begin by writing in stone. Washington National Opera (WNO) offered four world premieres of short tableaux referencing well-known monuments in the capital. Forget, composer/librettist. Think creative teams.

Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran presented Chantal, a curtain-raising prologue. Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, Rise, Kamala Sankaram and A.M. Homes, it all falls down. The lower case “i” is intentional. Indeed, mandatory. Woe the ignoramus who capitalises. And serves no purpose that I can divine — arty-farty self-satisfaction apart. And Carlos Simon and Marc Bamuthi Joseph gave us The Rift.

These were intimate and interwoven works, reflecting debates that have always raged around the capital’s monuments and national travel destinations in their own rights. 

An introductory prelude, Chantal is an investigation of the motives of monuments — what they are, what they do, what we expect from them. The piece centres on a surveyor (Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo) on-site at a conspicuously leaning monument — “coming face to face with how much it leans and what we can do to save it.” 

Note the use of “save”. When monuments lean against the new mores of modern times in Washington, the instinct is to question, understand the history and interpret. In Bristol, flash mobs chucked slave trader Edward Colston’s statue into the harbour. Would that uncomfortable history could be blanked out so easily.

Rise takes as its inspiration Adelaide Johnson’s 1921 Portrait Monument in the Capitol rotunda, depicting Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony — and one face left tantalisingly uncarved, the unknown soldier of the women’s rights movement.

Unkindly, some have mused Hillary Clinton plonked a reserved sticker on it, for becoming the first female American president. Too bad. Too soon. And, don’t hold your breath, Kamala.

Peruvian and Mexican American soprano Vanessa Becerra portrays a Girl Scout lost in the Capitol building who encounters a security guard (mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges), a “Powerful Woman” (mezzo-soprano Daryl Freedman) and the monument itself (American and Canadian soprano Suzannah Waddington).

The Rift, confronts head-on the origin of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, imagining a dialogue between architect, artist and designer Maya Lin (soprano Karen Vuong) and, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war, Robert McNamara, (two-time Grammy nominee, singer and actor Rod Gilfry). 

There’s a Vietnam War veteran (tenor Christian Mark Gibbs) and a Vietnamese refugee (mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen). The story of how the unknown Maya Lin won a “blind” competition against better-established figures, against all odds, is a cautionary tale to establishments everywhere. Her simple, gleaming black granite rising from the earth reflects reverent memory. That war is silently, damningly condemned. Just what America needed in those divided days.

 It All Falls Down pairs Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon with the Center’s vice president and artistic director, Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

The piece depicts an encounter between a Black conservative preacher (bass-baritone Alfred Walker) and his less conservative homosexual son (Gibbs) — also a preacher, but newly out of the closet — at a rally before the Supreme Court on the verge of its legalisation of same-sex marriage. 

Hang on! Where’s the monument? I searched the stage for one in vain. I suppose the Supreme Court itself was on display.

Joseph described it in a statement as, “an American story, a Black Love Matters sermon, a coming out narrative in defence of a future norm, an opera living between the Guardian of Law and the contemplation of Justice where, in the end, love over-rules.”

This overcomplicates it. The brave conclusion when the preacher’s father refuses a reconciliatory handshake from his son is affirmation that this is an unresolved story with legs. Happy endings are for the birds. It will run and run. 

I suddenly felt uneasy. I was an intruder, viewing a Washington dilemma, crafted for a Washington audience, who does not take their custody of the nation’s memorials for granted. I found it interesting. Everyone around me seemed totally engaged.

As a nation perhaps we Brits are too cynically casual about our history. Stroll around DC’s National Mall any day, and there are busloads of school kids, veterans and general sightseers, understanding and coming to terms with their past. 

No need for sub-aqua activities in the Potomac to confront American statuary. The music was, disappointingly, unexceptional, driven intellectually, not emotionally. A backdrop rather than an additive means of expression. Grant and award driven composers play it safe these days, to secure the fellowship that provides peer recognition and brings home family bacon. 

The next day, on to a Sunday matinee performance of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutti. I will take the synopsis as well known.

How was it to be staged? The Eisenhower Theater is small, and the stage had been extended over what passes for an orchestra pit. Solution? Place the audience behind the singers, hidden by an opaque screen. 

The screen moved up and down occasionally to reassure that the orchestra was still there. Halfway through I expected to see it had been replaced by a top-end CD player. The screened troupers played on.

For the audience, it seemed seamless. 

I had the privilege of dining with Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto (Don Alfonso) that evening and he told me the arrangement was a nightmare for the cast. Despite the deployment of strategically placed TV monitors the conductor was well-nigh invisible to the singers.

German maestro Erina Yashima, ex Philadelphia Orchestra and recently appointed First Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper Berlin, for the 2022-23 season, trimmed the WNO orchestra ship capably. But there was no getting away from the fact that the Kennedy Center had demoted WNO from its opera house to a side theatre.

Why? Riverdance was showing and a better certain bet to put more jiggling bums on seats than stone artefacts, or 18th century costume drama. I hope WNO fight for their schedule more successfully next season. 

Although the chamber version of Cosi was delightful, the juxtaposition of cast and orchestra just doesn’t work. Whatever. Porsche put an engine in the back of their 911, then spent 40 years wondering how to get around the problem. Worked!

On to the I-95 interstate highway, Manhattan-bound. The Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan, is a converted jewel, only a couple of blocks away from the world’s richest apartment building, lionised in Michael Gross’ 740 Park, built in 1929.

Those were the days when New York’s gilded set didn’t muck about. Just keep an armoury close by, in case that pesky Brooklyn Bridge lets depression troublemakers in. 

The performing space in the now fascinating museum is ideal. A black, cast iron vaulted hall, with sharply tiered seating allows every audience member a perfect line of sight. 

Upload was stunning visually on screen. Live, it was even more wondrous. 

Brief recap, for those too lazy to use the link! 

A man undergoes the transformation from a living being to an immortal digital entity. He visits a techno-Dignitas and has a digital version of himself made, hoping this will make him — and his daughter — happier. 

The last step is renouncing his physical body, after which he can live on as an upload. The ungenteel spade/shovel brigade calls it suicide.

In this manifestation, he comes back home to his daughter. Interestingly, no-on explains how, de-bodified, he put himself on the sitting room Alexa.

Never mind. She didn’t know about her father’s decision to have himself uploaded and she tries to come to grips with him. Why did he decide to do it? Is he the same person? And will it be possible for them to carry on like this?

The live performance “showed the working”. The Father, again British baritone, Roderick Williams, sang mostly from a booth located stage right, away from the action, but in view. It was full of sci-fi kit, swivelling cameras and microphones, all matt black, and lit eerily from above. Meanwhile, his holographic image appeared to his daughter, sometimes in more than life-size closeup, centre stage.

American soprano, Julia Bullock reprised The Daughter, brilliantly. I suppose even traditionalist stick-in-the muds (me) must concede if the full force of theatrical trickery and illusion could be brought to bear on the 18th century stage — old-fashioned wooden wheels, wooden gutters and wooden balls recreating the sounds of a thunderstorm — to enrich proceedings, why not a disintegrating, pixelated baritone today?

No dispute. This is a visually beautiful production. The image swept and danced to the music. This was opera as abstract art. So compelling, that when the audience tottered down the raked stairs — this was not a spry crowd — I couldn’t resist the naughty thought. There had been a misunderstanding. Many were off to ask for sales brochures.