Reaction review: Girls of the Golden West go critical

John Adams’ new oeuvre, Girls of the Golden West does for California romantic gold rush mythology what his earlier opera, Dr. Atomic, did for the idea that the Manhattan project was a smoothly run scientific operation. It blows it apart.

Premiered in San Francisco opera house on 21st November, I saw its fifth, slickly delivered performance.

Adams has based his opera upon three well documented historical events that are a disturbing commentary on the brutal mores of the times and a stark warning from the past for anyone unconcerned by today’s burgeoning prejudices and vendettas.

“Well, Wilbur, I thought that was never going to end”, squeaked the lady behind me as we headed out of the Memorial Opera House into the rain post performance. “I know what you mean”, warbled Wilbur, “ but that’s what modern opera’s like, dear.”

Librettist and director, Peter Sellars, is not everyone’s cutting edge cup of tea, especially with his Basil Brush haircut. Adams and Sellars, who also directed other Adams’ ground-breaking modern operas, notably Nixon in China, Klinghoffer and Dr. Atomic, will not likely be on Wilbur’s Christmas card list.

They will be on mine, though, as “Girls” is a timely marker in the operatic sand for so many reasons. It is part of Mr. Adams’ continuum, using the powerful tool of opera to illuminate current events, so enhancing its relevance.

Isn’t this new opera also a riff on Puccini’s turn of the 19th century “La Fanciulla del West”? Go on, you can do the translation yourself (now, now, no “Googling”). That is coyly denied by Mr. Sellars, but he wasn’t very convincing on the point at his pre opera talk in San Francisco.

Girls of the Golden West is hard history. In contrast  Puccini’s La Fanciulla was hokum. As a representation of the gold rush days Puccini’s plot is nonsense on stilts. The music rambles, too, except for the bandit Ramerrez’ aria, “Ch’ella mi creda.” It is mostly pleasant but un-memorable.

Puccini, commissioned to write about a gold rush in a land he never visited, grabbed the cheque and produced with his librettists Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini a “homey” story about a virginal saloon-keeper, Minnie, who taught the bible to the miners who frequented her saloon. Meantime, she was keeping her first kiss for “Mr. Right”, who turned out to be a bandit.

Really? Yeah, sure, well. Virginal, bible-thumping female saloon-keepers were all the rage in 1850s gold-rush California, especially the sassy middle-aged spinsterish sort. Common as gold nuggets in a stream were those darlings! And, when they fell in love, it was always the bandits wot got’em.

Opera comes in many forms, some buffo, some seria, some verismo, but perhaps “opera absurdo” in the fashion of Puccini requires a gentle corrective. Here, from Adams, we have it. Although there have been denials all round that “Girls” is aimed at putting Puccini fans’ noses out of joint, and setting the record straight, it does just that – and sounds warnings that resonate today.

There is some ironical hat-tipping to Signor Puccini. The opening scene of Act 2 sees a group of rapt miners – all proficient in quoting Shakespeare in chorus – watching a performance of Macbeth “on the Sequoia stump,” a direct poke at the scene in “Girls” when Minnie holds an audience in her saloon of pissed miners enthralled with scripture. Very funny, if a tad “insider”.

It’s clear from the look of the production that this is an American story Messrs. Adams and Sellars wanted to tell in an American way.

The production draws deeply on the American mid west tradition of “Shaker” stark simplicity, captured by Aaron Copland in Appalachian Spring. It is worth looking again at Martha Graham’s original ballet performance on Youtube before seeing “Girls”. It’s free. Here’s a link to a good version.

Like Appalachian Spring, Girls of the Golden West is about honesty, exposing American life through the lurid and often tragic stories of the varied hopefuls who headed west – and north – to California.

This is the intro to the synopsis from the programme. Bear with me: “Events and characters in the opera are drawn from miners’ ballads, the letters of the writer Louise Clappe (aka “Dame Shirley”, one of the principal characters), the diaries of Ramón Gill Navarro, the memoirs of fugitive slaves, poems by Chinese immigrants, (Songs of Gold Mountain), Shakespeare (eh?), Mark Twain, the Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni, a speech by Frederick Douglass, biographies of Lola Montez and the works of the preeminent Californian historians Hubert Howe Bancroft and Josiah Royce. Most of the incidents depicted actually occurred during the Gold Rush, in 1851, in Rich Bar and in Downieville, on the first Fourth of July in the new state of California”.

Painstakingly recording the sources makes the point about Adams’ determination to root the action in life events. During the interval I happened across a display case unabashedly showing memorabilia of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilence, established in 1851 (I’d never heard of it), replete with certificates of service honouring those who rounded up “baddies”, their numbers, and an ominous noose. Cleaning the swamp, in Trump’s phrase, is nothing new.

Even the stage set for this production is rooted in history – literally. Act 2 is dominated by a huge Sequoia tree stump, on which much of the action, including a dance to celebrate the Fourth of July, takes place. There are contemporary photographs of said tree on record and it’s a metaphor for the raping of the land by gold guzzling prospectors. Cue presidential dismantling of National Park boundaries – if you believe Adams has prescient precognition.

The background to the blistering pace of events in Act 2 is established in Act 1, which is a contrasting, tranquil exposition of the principal characters and their complex interrelationships.

Those are: “Dame Shirley” and her doctor husband, Fayette en route from New England to Gold Bar. Their marriage is a marriage of convenience to share the coach-miles. She heads off in a wagon – after falling of a mule – with a fugitive black slave, Ned Peters, now a cowboy. A pointer to the impending Civil War.

Joe Cannon is a broken-hearted miner, dumped by his previous girlfriend for a Missouri butcher and now lusting after Ah Sing, a vivacious Chinese prostitute who is determined to “go legit” A pointer to racial prejudice.

Ramón and Josefa are Mexican lovers and gamblers who work the bar tables, hustling miners out of their hard won nuggets. A reference to dodgy double entendre, envy and simmering disappointment among contemporary Yanks that there is not already a wall on the border with Mexico.

Clarence takes the Macbeth soliloquy – “Is this a dagger that I see before me?” – as authority to contemplate mass murder of the Mexicans, Chileans, and Peruvians. Those Shakespeare Tweets are dynamite.

Now, a précis of the plot lines: on the Fourth of July (cue irony) American miners plan to massacre large numbers of Mexicans, Chileans and Peruvians, depriving them of their mining claims. Ah Sing and Joe are acknowledged as husband and wife to cries of, “Get out, yellow skins, get out”.

Clarence decides to whip up vigilantes to shave the heads of the Chileans. Ned – remember, a black slave – speaks out and is carted off and killed for his pains.

Josepha fears she and Ramón will be the next targets, so when a drunken Joe Cannon attempts to rape her, in the ensuing struggle she kills him in self-defence and is lynched. The tableaux all share a common thread of irrational prejudice and grievance.

It is easy copy to depict “Girls” as a blistering critique on the times of Trump. Many liberal commentators have hysterically pounced. But, that would be fake news. Everyone is on the hypocrisy hook here.

Did I enjoy Girls of the Golden West? That is the wrong question. Rather, the opera left me profoundly disturbed, so it probably served its purpose. “Enjoy” would be – in today’s parlance – “inappropriate.” But, with the dissonances ringing in my ears I left determined to see it again when it comes to the Met in New York. This unsettling and thought provoking piece is a contemporary commentary rooted in American history, apparently condemned to repeat itself.

Following Nixon in China and Dr Atomic, this latest opera underpins Adam’s reputation as a sharp-eyed, brutally honest chronicler. He is to opera what Ken Burns – of The Civil War and more recently Vietnam – is to television documentary.

But, as Adams is not an entertainer, sadly, I don’t think that members of the audience behind me, Wilbur and his companion, are going to get to see “Girls” again anytime soon.

Gerald Malone is Reaction opera critic.