The new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera('s American premiere), their "Magic Flute" Mar 21 '07 (Updated Dec 28 '09)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line Look for it soon in New York and London and on disc! Especially since I listen to opera recordings far more than I see operas, the most important part of opera is the music. Even for operas sung in English, I frequently do not pay much attention to the words and plots... and, of course, don't hear the staging. To have seen the American premieres of two operas within the space of a month is not just unusual for me, but had never happened before. The first was (a revised version of) Lou Harrison's The Young Caesar. The more recent one was the sixth collaboration between composer John Adams and stage director Peter Sellars, "A Flowering Tree." Like the previous one I saw, "El Niño," the premiere was a "semistaged," multimedia performance on a San Francisco Symphony subscription concert at Davies Hall, not across the street at the Opera House, where I saw the first production of "The Death of Klinghoffer" (and didn't see "Nixon in China," the first, or "Doctor Atomic," the most recent one before "A Flowering Tree." Since this was posted, I have seen a DVD of the Peter Sellars production of "Doctor Atomic" and Penny Woolcock’s filming of “The Death of Klinghoffer.”) In the cases of both "El Niño" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," I thought that Sellars's stagecraft provided (welcome!) distractions from not particularly interesting music by John Adams. My first impression of "El Niño" was supported by subsequently listening to the audio CD of it (I've never listened to "The Death of Klinghoffer" on audio recording) There was a whole lot of shakin' goin' on onstage--above the orchestra on stage right and on the whole of stage left--in "A Flowering Tree," with three classical Javanese dancers and three young, rising-star singers mixed in the first act or matched in the second, and elaborate lighting effects. But rather than covering for bland music, this time the music was often compelling--and quite beautiful. I don't know for certain that the music will stand alone in recording, but I think that it will, particularly the singing of Jessica Rivera. As in "Young Caesar," there is a (bass) narrator who does a lot of telling rather than showing. In both cases, the male vocalizing seemed insufficiently distinct even though split between a tenor hero (in both), a baritone (Nicomedes, the King of Bithynia in "Young Caesar"), and the bass narrators (in both). Especially since Jessica Rivera was the vocal standout in "A Flowering Tree," I thought that it would have been better to have more for her to sing. (She was onstage basically all the time, but immobile much of it—and not just when she was playing a tree.) The Story is a Tamil (southern South Asian) fairy tale dating back at least two millennia. The oral tale was rendered into English by R. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993). Adams and Sellars also drew from other Tamil (and Kannada) poetry translated into English by Ramanujan. The story is very stylized (it is an opera). It involves two daughters of a poor widow. The girls learn how to transform one, Kumudha (Jessica Rivers), into a tree--and back into human form. They then sell flowers in the market. The Prince (Russell Thomas) manages to see this and wants the magic--and Kumudha--for himself. Kumudha does not want to leave her mother and sister (neither of those two roles is sung; they are danced and there is a dialogue between the mother and Kumudha that is--very peculiarly--assigned to the chorus) but has no choice. In human form, she is deflowered in pantomime (with suitably suggestive music). What despoils her, however, is not her princely husband, but his jealous elder sister, who also wants in on the magic. Kumudha is turned into a tree carelessly and not brought back. The Prince despairs and becomes an itinerant beggar... and, being a fairy tale, eventually finds the log that is his wife, and there is a musically glorious recognition and radiant final transformation providing Ye Olde Big and Ecstatic Ending. The music for the four transformations is quite gorgeous--with orchestration that reminded me more of Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" than of Richard Strauss's "Daphne," although there is a fairly protracted musical quotation from the latter (which also involved transformation of a beautiful woman into a tree). I'll predict that the final one will be detached (as "The Chairman Dances" has been from "Nixon in China") for inclusion on symphony programs and/or a suite using the music from the four transformations will be carved out. In that there is prominent celesta and percussion, the transformation music also resonates with Bartok's marvelous "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta." I've already lauded soprano Jessica Rivers. I was able to tell her at a reception (I have connections!) that not only did she sing beautifully and act compellingly, but I was very impressed by her managing the physical demands of Sellars's staging, including projecting her voice lying on her side. (I thought but did not tell her that she was more beautiful close-up and in person than onstage, which is not true of many operatic sopranos!) She laughed and thanked me and said that others (in Vienna and Berlin) had marveled at her singing lying down, but that singing lying down was easy. She added that she wore kneepads to withstand the prolonged kneeling and had many bruises. I was also impressed with the booming bass Eric Owens, who created the role of Gen. Groves in "Dr. Atomic." Along with the multihued orchestral writing for the transformations, I thought that Adams's choral writing was (again—as especially in "Harmonium") notably outstanding. The words the chorus sings are mostly in Spanish, and supertitles were welcome for the English, as well as for the Spanish. There was some very percussive use of strings, though also using them more like Sibelius or Bruckner than like Bartok. Two-note drops at the conclusion of phrases was notably recurrent. Adams's symphonic and operatic writing has some traces of his earlier minimalism (repetition but not the addiction for arpeggios of Philip Glass). The repetition/embroidery of lines was mostly given to the chorus, so that (as in "The Young Caesar") it seemed that there was a lack of arias. (The exception was the rapturous "Kumudha's Prayer.") There was lots of sung dialogue and sections or a single singer that did not feel like arias to me (just as was the case in "Young Caesar"). "A Flowering Tree" was also like "Young Caesar" in emphasizing narration, sung dialogue, dancers, growing up, and East/West fusion. In a pre-performance lecture, Sellars was very explicit that "A Flowering Tree" was a relief after "Doctor Atomic," the notably talky and very turbulent and angst-ridden Adams/Sellars collaboration about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the first atomic bomb. He quoted Adams as saying, "I felt the need to do something about hope and simplicity" (after "Dr. Atomic"). That very dark opera would not make anyone think of "The Magic Flute," whereas the representation of young love deepening through traumatic events in "A Flowering Tree" does. Not to mention that it was made for New Crowned Hope, a festival that Sellars organized in Vienna last year, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. (The festival title is an allusion to Masonic lore, which is all over "The Magic Flute.") Sellars said that he agreed to organize the celebration on the condition that nothing by Mozart be included. Sellars wanted to promote new music. It's certainly not that he has any antipathy to Mozart, having staged in modern-dress the three great Mozart/La Ponte opera (now available on DVD), but, he said, that Mozart was writing new music and the best way to celebrate him was to encourage living composers. (The world premiere had a Venezuelan chorus, which accounts in part for the chorus singing in Spanish, though Adams speaks Spanish and also mixed Spanish and English in "El Niño.") © 2007, Stephen O. Murray I have written about Kent Nagano's recording of Adams's El Dorado (et al.) and Edo de Waart's of The Chairman Dances et al. I've been meaning to listen to  watch the DVD of "El Niño" so may write more, now that I feel Adams has gotten out of his 1990s' slump (accompanied as it was by increasing fame and number of performances of his works). I doubt that I'll attempt to write critically on "On the Transmigration of Souls," Adams's commission from the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the World Trade Center dead.

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