a great opera brought into the repertoire
by Douglas Messerli
Meredith Monk Atlas / at the Disney
Concert Hall, June 11, 2019, directed by Yuval Sharon
One might imagine that an opera with a plot
that is more like a travelogue than a coherent narrative or story, whose set
consists of a giant space-like orb, and songs without words primarily made up
of what critic Bonnie Marranca has describe as encompassing “glottal effects,
ululation, yodeling, speech song, and animal sounds” would be something one
would not desire to sit through for several hours. Moreover, even the Joseph
Campbell-like mythological adventure at the heart of Meredith Monk’s Atlas is
not only vague (based somewhat on the life of adventurer Alexandra David-Néel)
but, at moments, is downright hokey, with the small band of travelers and their
spirit-guides encountering troupes of agrarian, artic, and desert dwellers
before finally spiraling off into space that often combines a kind of silly
symbolism with outright fantasy. Unlike Marranca, I am not a great admirer of
the Modernist Symbolism.
Yet, sitting at Disney Concert Hall last night, both my theater-going
companion, Deborah Meadows, and I agreed that we might have wished it would go
on for even a bit longer, perhaps like one of John Cage’s Europeras.
The
first major production of Monk’s Atlas since its 1991 premiere at the
Houston Grand Opera, this Yuval Sharon-directed work might not even have been
imagined as possible given Monk’s reluctance in this and in other works to
produce performance scores, her own deep involvement in the work (in the
original she played the central heroine), and her reliance on a group of
performers with whom she had worked for years sharing her special brand of
vocalization, choreography, and theatricality.
Nearly everything about this work succeeded. First there was the set
design by Es Devlin, which stunned everyone in its imposing and eerie presence
even upon entering the hall. His huge, 36-foot spacecraft orb not only served
as a canvas to Luke Halls’ projections of earth, moon, and extraterrestrial
space, but through moving panels and retractable steps, served as a living
quarters at times for the group of travelers on their way to and from their
several journeys.
Beautiful choreography by Danielle Agami articulated Monk’s own vision
of the relationship between music and body as did the sound by Mark Grey.
The space itself had been utterly transformed, as four front rows of
seats of the theater had been removed in order to create a small pit wherein
the LA Phil New Music Group, conducted by Paolo Bortolameolli, sat.
And then, most obviously, there was the glorious music both from
orchestra and on-stage. Consisting of 25 short vignettes, the singers trace the
early years of Alexandra (Milena Manocchia) living at home in Illinois with her
parents (Kathryn Shuman and Jimmy Traum) to her (now sung by Joanna
Lynn-Jacobs) numerous travels with fellow companions Cheng (Yi Li), Erik (John
Brancy), and eventually the more self-centered Franco (Dylan Gentile) along
with two spirit guides (Miguel Zazueta and Kelci Hahn).
In their voyages they encounter not only the different communities I
describe above, but fascinating and horrifying figures that challenge each of
them: a Hungry Ghost (Sharon Kim), an Ice Demon (Jessica Beebe), and a Lonely
Spirit (Juecheng Chen).
By
voyage’s end—after an absolutely glorious Out of Body Chorus, sung near the
orchestra pit, an older but surely wiser Alexandra (Ann Carlson) returns home
to quietly unpack her accumulated possessions.
And as for its lack of a coherent “story,” well we all know the story
though the experiences of our lives, the necessities of packing and leaving
home. Even at my rather advanced age, I still have numerous dreams of planes,
trains, and other forms of transportation which I’m using to take me away from
and back home.
And most of us who have read the Odyssey will already know this
story. Indeed, the mother in this opera, a bit like Penelope, is constantly
knitting throughout the first scene. And the female hero must undergo some of
the very same challenges that the Greek hero encounters. Only, as this version
makes clear, it is only as an entire world community working together that we
all are to survive our wanderings through life.
A
lesson, apparently, that this new version of Monk’s great opera reveals to us
through Sharon’s reinvention of her work. I hope that, before I die, I can see
it again many a time.
Los Angeles, June 12, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and
Performance (June 2019).
No comments:
Post a Comment