IS THIS SOME trite attempt to subvert the Santa Clausian sublimity of Handels Messiah with perverse postmodernism? (Adams, after all, is the guy whose 1987 opera Nixon in China gave Tricky Dick an aria about hamburgers.) Or to replace a patriarchal, English-only narrative with a more inclusive, woman-centered text? Well... wrong. Just about no one whos heard El Nino has been able to resist its house-rocking rhythms and its rich variety of melodies and textures: from the astringent medieval harmonies of a trio of countertenors to the lush, operatic outpourings of its two Marys, the silver-toned lyric soprano Dawn Upshaw and the golden-toned mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, to a heaven-shaking adult chorus and an achingly gentle chorus of children. Its probably too soon, but we might as well say it: this was a great rendering of a great work by a great composer. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Its like those medieval churches, where theres way too much going on. Marys giving birth here, shes dying there, shes received into heaven there. That sense of simultaneity, that theres always something more than you can graspI love that.
PETER SELLARS director |
In fact, even to call El Nino an oratorio is misleading. Thats what itll be when a CD version comes out, but last weeks North American premiere with the San Francisco Symphony was a sort of multimedia opera, directed by Peter Sellars, who did Nixon in China and Adamss even more controversial 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. The principal singers, Upshaw, Lieberson and the titanic bass-baritone Willard White (both Joseph and Herod), move in elaborately choreographed dramatic gestures and are shadowed by a trio of dancers; high above the onstage orchestra and chorus, a silent film by Sellarsshot in both digital video and wonderfully funky Super-8tells a parallel story, with the same dancers and a teenage mother in East L.A. All this visual information makes it impossible to give Adamss music your full attention. Conductor Kent Nagano, another longtime Adams collaborator, recognizes that this overload was Sellarss intention, but as a musician he cant help adding that hes always been a firm believer in opera being performed in concert. First and foremost, its a musical form. Sellars has a different agenda. Im not interested in opera per se, he says. What Im interested in is collaboration. Its like those medieval churches, where theres way too much going on. Marys giving birth here, shes dying there, shes received into heaven there. That sense of simultaneity, that theres always something more than you can graspI love that. WRITING FOR VOICES But Nagano and Sellars agree that El Nino is a major breakthrough for Adams. Nagano calls it if not the greatest, certainly one of his greatest accomplishments. Its very much a development of Johns musical language. (The piece seamlessly integrates Adamss trademark touches: the hypnotic repetitions of short phrases and the harmonic simplicity of his early minimalism, the complex melodies of his later romanticism and the spiky modernism of his work in the early 90s.) Sellars believes that for the first time Adams has become a true vocal composer. Hes previously been an instrumental composer who puts vocal lines in his music. Adams laughs when this is repeated to him. Well, of course theyll say that, he says. Every piece is a breakthrough. He laughs again, then he proceeds to agree, sort of, with both of them. I dont want to typecast myself, and I may regret saying this, but I have a feeling that Ive been going through a synthesis of all that Ive done. The major breakthrough in this piece is just writing naturally for voice. But something more radical has happened to Adams: hes become, without having intended it, a sacred composer. I dont think the word sacred ever came into my mind when I was writing El Nino, he says. And now I suddenly find myself in interviews having to answer a lot of alarmingly personal questions about my beliefs.
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