"Doctor Atomic" Explodes on Stage

By -

"Doctor Atomic" opened at the Met on Monday to rave reviews. John Adams opera premiered in San Francisco back in 2005, but the original production by Peter Sellars, who was also responsible for the libretto was not the one to open in New York. British film director Penny Woolcock was given control over the Met's production and seems to have brought out more nuances and depth than the previous production.

Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times writes, "The impressive baritone Gerald Finley, who created the daunting lead role unforgettably, brings his portrayal to the Met, grown even richer, more vocally visceral and emotionally nuanced...But the big news may be the work of the conductor Alan Gilbert, in his overdue Met debut. The performance he draws from the Met orchestra and chorus is a revelation. This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music. Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density. Mr. Gilbert exposes the inner details and layered elements of the music: obsessive riffs, pungently dissonant cluster chords, elegiac solo instrumental lines that achingly drift atop nervous, jittery orchestral figurations."

Not all explosions are good. Keith McDonnell of MusicOMH writes, "Adams' harmonic language has shifted a long way from the repetitive chord ostinatos that made Nixon in China such a beguiling work but as he has failed to find a distinctive voice to replace them with all of the music he has provided is utterly nondescript and immediately forgettable. This was soundtrack music of the worst kind that delineated neither character nor atmosphere - the two fundamental ingredients of operatic musical language."

David Finkle of TheaterMania feels much the same, "during much of the opera's latter stretches, Adams' inspirations flag. He conjures passages of bad-weather music and running-for-cover music that wouldn't be out of place as thriller-movie underscoring...Adams, Sellars, and Woolcock may require a return to the drawing board for Doctor Atomic to become a fully explosive piece of work. "

There is even reason to suspect U.S. physicist Robert Oppenheimer (the person whom this story is based) wouldn't care for the production. This isn't Mr Adam's latest work (A Flowering Tree, 2006 and Fellow Traveler, 2007), but it is one that will likely stand the test of time being both topical and musically edgy (even if not everyone likes its edges).

Ok, not everyone thinks this new production is better - or even that the opera is completely formed. One thing it does do right: it puts microphones on the vocalists. Mr. Adams uses amplification and electronics in the orchestra, so he requests the singers and chorus use body microphones, the achieve the right balance. Earlier this year a Wagner production had to replace both the lead male and female twice during the first two weeks due to vocal fatigue. There are points during the "Doctor Atomic" where the volume of sound is huge. Forcing vocalists to sing over that is ridiculous and pointless. We have the technology; we should use it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more