Wuorinen's Brokeback Mountain

When it first appeared on DVD I'd read an in depth review of Charles Wuorinen's new opera, its critic asking if a composer known primarily for writing "dense, angular, and discordant music," could adapt his style to fit this story. His answer was a resounding, "no," citing a complete lack of tenderness or any sense of warmth between its two central characters. I finally was able to find the time to watch it and found the question to be, at least from my perspective, entirely irrelevant as I don't believe it was necessary for the composer to adapt his style for any reason whatsoever; this is the musical language in which he speaks, and he speaks it very well.

Despite the romance at its heart, I don't see Brokeback Mountain as simply a gay romance, and while I admired Mr. Lee's film, feel Proulx's story to be more of a period piece tragedy, set in a time not so long ago where simply being queer could (and obviously did) get people killed.

These two men, particularly Ennis, live in perpetual fear of being discovered which results in a chilling denial of who they are. They inhabit a world that more frequently than not, terrifies the hell out of them. Wuorinen captures this world, as well as these boys and their myriad emotions, with chilling conviction and an almost painful expressiveness.

Where Jack (a marvelous portrayal from Tom Randle) imagines the pair starting a life and owning a ranch together, Ennis is almost completely paralyzed by his fear, to the point of inaction, as he watches his life dissolve before his eyes, impotent, angered and rendered incapable of doing a goddamn thing about it. Again, Wuorinen's score conveys all of this as it cuts, brilliantly, to the bone with an appropriate, tragic gravitas.


More than one critic has asserted the opera's creators never allow any tenderness between the two men, either musically or dramatically. I disagree. To cite one example; their last night on the mountain opens with Jack standing alone, Ennis coming up from behind him, enveloping him in his arms, singing tenderly (including part of his wordless vocalise heard earlier). Here, he expresses his disappointment at having to leave Jack for the mountaintop, before finally being convinced to spend one last night together. The staging here makes for great theatre and is filled with symbolic implications for all. The tenderness is interrupted as we watch as the tent lifted off of them and witness the stage transform into the disjointed jumble that will be their lives for the next four years (and much of the rest of the opera).


While the score is in his typically angular and frequently dense style, Wuorinen does provide beautiful moments which break up the harshness. While some feel such moments are too few, they serve precisely what the composer and Ms. Proulx saw as their project; creating a different beast entirely than that of Mr. Lee's touching film, much closer to the original short story. This works against the opera for those who prefer the film's sentimentality. One such moment is Jack and Ennis' final meeting. Infinitely touching, we witness their frustration, growing into anger, before transforming into an ultimate sense of accepted foreboding; a realization that grief and loneliness shall be the only future they will share. Here, orchestra, singers, staging and libretto join together so masterfully I confess I was, as Ennis later admits, "choked with love." It's what (for me) opera is all about.



The remaining cast, are fully committed to their (often) minor roles, with Heather Buck standing out as Ennis' young, frustrated wife, who over the course of their marriage reaches the point of no return. It's a tough sing with a lot of high notes and almost from the beginning, a fever pitch intensity. As Lureen Hannah Esther Minutillo, has a sometimes oddly accented English, but convey's her characters coolness and ambition convincingly. With probably the least amount of stage time, Jane Henschel turns in a touching portrayal of Jack's mother, her cameo feeling like a genuine star turn.



The final scene finds Ennis, alone at the mountain, caressing their two shirts, Jack having secretly held onto them for 20 years. Pouring out his grief, Ennis admits his great love in as shattering an emotional climax as any Greek tragedy. One senses this man will be alone for whatever days he has left, this sentiment confirmed by his closing line, as those two shirts, along with any dreams or hopes that may have been, float away, upwards towards the peaks of that mountain. "It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you. Only you . . . Jack, I swear." Here, after listening to all the density of orchestral layers building on top of one another, Wuorinen wisely ends the opera, with Jack holding one final note, unaccompanied, ending the opera in silence. The effect is heartbreaking storytelling of the highest order.

Towards the end of one review its author wrote:

"Thus, we are left with the message that love between men is no different from an encounter in a rough-n-ready porn flick, where grunts, slaps and lots of gritty sounds take the place of warmth, tenderness, and open-hearted embrace."

I felt no "porn" sensibility of any stripe at play here, the gentleness expressed between the dual protagonists felt throughout, a shocking counterpoint against the brutality of their realities. That warmth extended, too, through the final curtain as Mr. Okulitch, basking in a sea of applause, awaits his partner to join him, the two sharing a big embrace (how often do we see artists hugging during bows?) and a warm ovation.

I can see how Wuorinen's score, led here by Titus Engel, might be tough for some audiences to warm up to, but it is, in its often brutal way, beautiful, with the sense of the mountain felt strongly throughout the entire opera.

I'd like to believe this score, and this fascinating production by Ivo van Hove, will be seen again on other stages, but whether that happens or not, am grateful for the commitment of Mr. Mortier the Teatro Real for producing it and the resultant DVD.

Hours later, I'm still a bit rattled by the experience, something I find the best of art always does to me.

Britten Gloriana: Barstow's Missed Opera-tunity

The performances are nothing short of astonishing and I was moved - powerfully so. Still, in the end, I have to admit to being somewhat let down. I loved this Opera North production - the casting, the direction, everything about it. I even - to a lesser degree - enjoyed the backstage moments, costume changes, pranks, etc. But the ending, which Britten ensures to pack a huge emotional wallop (and isn't that what we most love about opera?) is diffused by having the heroine taking off her wig, makeup before her dressing table as we hear the unseen audience going wild and the stage manager calling cast names for curtain calls. It's really something of a let down.

Ultimately I fear I'll probably not return to this "film" all that much as when I want to see or hear Gloriana - I want the composer's vision. It's a pity, too, as apparently the director - Phyllida Lloyd - is responsible for both the outstanding stage production (apparently one of Opera North's most successful) AND the film adaptation.

In a DVD extra, Lloyd's remarks angered me a little. She talked about how over 9 years this production had been revived three times and grew in every way - audience appeal, stage drama, etc. and how she wanted a document of it and give something to a film viewer that a live audience could never get - hence all the backstage business and camera shots from above looking down - (dazzling really). BUT - she's not a fan of live operas filmed from the stage. She states "people don't understand what a terrible shortfall of joy there is for the viewer" of televised live opera from the stage, going on to tell us that what she's done is preferable to the "flat and static experience" of watching taped live performances of opera. WHAT THE EFFFF?

Apparently Ms. Lloyd is unfamiliar with the boom of live performance opera DVDs - growing more each year. Apparently she's not seen the hundreds of performances we all here rave on about routinely. She goes on to insult practically all other directors before her (not by name of course) but rather by stating how "surprised" she is that no other directors have addressed this "static" issue. Oh really? I'd like to hear her tell that to Hans Hulscher's face, or Brian Large, Yves-André Hubert, Horant H. Hohlfeld, or any of the other directors who have made so many operas come alive on small screens in our living rooms. Really, the audacity, woman!

She then goes on to state that what she's actually doing is letting the television viewer see both the public and private life of Elizabeth and Essex, by allowing us to go backstage with the singers to the private areas that the general public will never see. Sorry, her argument is shot to hell (in my opinion) because we're NOT seeing Essex and Elizabeth but rather Tom Randle and Jo Barstow and the rest of the cast as we watch them eating candy bars and drinking tea or bottled water in the wings, dressing rooms and tunnels.

My blood really turned to the boiling point when the conductor agrees, stating this was their vision from the beginning as they thought this through "with a lot of healthy disrespect for the opera . . . because really one of the worst things you can do for any live opera is to put it on film or television. Kills it dead. Three people will watch and they'll turn it off after half an hour. It's rather like the worthiness of reading prizewinning books right to the end . . . not many people know what happens in the last third of ANY of the great books ever written." Say what?

He defends cutting the opera to a 90+ minute film because people wouldn't want to watch the whole thing and if you want to see the whole opera and hear all of the music, then you "should go see on the stage."

Believe it or not, I actually respect that they're being so adamant in their belief of the film but find it a missed opportunity and a a pity they could not believe in their production enough to make a film of the entire work, feeling the necessity to trim and pre-digest so severely so that we common lunks could "get it."

It's a fascinating piece of film, to be sure, but I really feel the producers missed an opportunity to memorialize a landmark production of one of Britten's greatest works and one of Josephine Barstow's greatest roles.

Rod Gilfry Astounds as Messiaen's St. Francis

Messiaen spent eight years creating Saint Francois d’Assise, his only opera and one he probably understood that (for an host of reasons) would prove something of a trial for both performer and audience. But, man of faith that he was, he also must have sensed that, for anyone willing to go along with him for the ride (and it is as inexorable one as any I've been on) - there is much to love, and yes, rejoice in. Now, after 25 years, the work has finally made it onto commercial video and the three disc set for OpusArte could not be more welcome than they are right now.

As much as I love Messiaen the beginning of this score has always been something of a tough row to hoe. I have a mild impatience at the sameness of the orchestration with which Messiaen begins, a seemingly endless, unrelenting twofold ‘smear" created by the striking of a loud chord, followed by a downward glissando: Yahhhhhhhh---da! This sort of falls into a universal rhythm that returns throughout the opera: a couple of sung (often unaccompanied) words, followed by that "yaahhhhhhh-da!" This effect is then punctuated by a fury of wild rhythmic punches from the entire orchestra, winds, brass, bells, strings, percussion - all of it comes blasting past your ears at once. Ah, but if we stick with it we find a "miracle" just waiting to happen - and happen it does. Having heard this score many times over the past 25 years, my reaction has almost always been the same: prickly annoyance until Messiaen and his forces beat me into submission resulting in one of those "aha!" moments. (How very religious!)

In the title role, Rod Gilfry provides his own miracle. It is one of the greatest assumptions of a role I can recall witnessing. I never once felt Gilfry to be playing Francois so much as inhabiting entirely Messiaen’s vision of the beloved saint, and making him his own. While other Francois (including Jose van Dam, the creator of the role) have been equally firm of voice and capable of singing this remarkably difficult music, Gilfry crosses a line they did not. Into this often austere music, he injects a Francois as full of joy as he is contemplation and seeking, his face a remarkable mask, mirroring seemingly endless expressions – not one of them false or forced. Through voice and visage he practically "beams" Saint Francis out to us.

Firm of tone, equal in almost all registers, Gilfry’s delivery of Messiaen’s own text mixes the "matter of fact" declamation of his predecessors, tempered with a beauty of sound combining elegance with great emotion. I believed in Francois and his journey . . . in his every effort to humble himself to the greatest degree possible, to rid himself of every fear and doubt so as to be brought closer to his God. It is a remarkable journey.

We see his first weakness when, to his great embarrassment he admits his repulsion for lepers. He prays God to purify him . . . change him, so he may learn to love the lepers. That prayer is answered by the arrival of the pathetic, suffering Leper to whom Francois immediately offers comfort and peace to. While The Leper howls of his pain, Francois shares how suffering is a trial so we may, in some small way, comprehend the suffering of Christ, making His sacrifice and love all the greater. The Leper continues, sharing the suffering he endures at the hands of other monks. The Angel (Camilla Tilling) appears from high above the stage, her pure and gentle message: God loves him. Francois interprets the Angel’s message for him: Your sorrow is in your heart, and God is far greater than your heart." Here is some of the score’s first, "traditionally" beautiful music and Messiaen could not possibly have used it to finer effect – the result is overwhelming.

The Leper thanks Francois for his kindness but Francois admits, "I have not loved you enough" and, raising the diseased wretch’s head to his own, kisses him, encircling him in his arms. Here, Gilfry's face radiates pure love and tears well in his eyes – and suddenly: The Leper is healed. I found myself so completely overwhelmed a break was necessary before continuing with Act II.
Though Act II runs just shy of two hours, its three scenes played out almost before I realized they were over. The first two scenes are dominated by the presence of The Journeying Angel and his interactions – dazzling and beautiful – with Frères Massée, Elie and Francois. The 3rd scene (Tableau 5) is the famous "sermon to the birds" and here the stage becomes filled with color, children, puppets on a set filled with crudely made trees of 2X4s on which Frères Massée, Francois and the children write the names of (and draw) the birds of which they sing. The children take to some fanciful street art which later creates a magical special effect at the end of the scene.

Director Pierre Audi sets the massive stage alive - placing the enormous Hague Philharmonic center stage, set among acres of scaffolding, platforms and an enormous open dome above the stage from which the chorus sometimes sings, (and which fills magically with stars upon Francois' death). Stacks of of wooden crosses separate the orchestra from the central playing area, a raised platform between all the scaffolding. Angelo Figus' costumes are elaborate takes on ancient liturgical looking robes, of stunning yet crude construction and looking of skins and feathers. Each Monk’s is rich with color, tied with wrist-thick ropes and envelop each brother like a living sarcophagus. Upon receiving his stigmata, and in preparation for his death, the barefoot Francois sheds his final robe (rich, black) to finish the "opera" clad only in a simple white gown, symbolic of his attainment of grace and purity. It’s a simple, yet powerful effect.
As a great fan of Tom Randle. it was especially nice to see him cast in the important role of Frères Massée, injecting (along with the children) a bit of levity into some otherwise very lofty proceedings. His voice still marvelously expressive and he remains (for me) one of the very best actors to be found in opera.

Not as beautiful of voice as Randle, but also marvelously expressive is Hubert Delamboye as The Leper. His transformation scene is powerful and the sense of joy shared by him and Francois upon it one of the opera’s most powerful and emotional scenes.

Smooth voiced, Henk Neven is affecting as Frère Léon, as is Donald Kaasch Frère Elie (if a bit wide of vibrato).

Maestro Ingo Metzmacher does the near impossible keeping together the massive forces of the cast, the Hague Philharmonic and De Nederlandse Opera Chorus in what can only be deemed as an absolutely thrilling reading of Messiaen’s magnum opus. The wildly divergent sounds they are required to achieve – muscular, bold, provocative come through loud and clear, but they also provide many moments of truly rapturous beauty. This is evident nowhere more so than the final chorus, - staged magnificently. As Francois "disappears" the chorus rises to the front, like witnesses of a medieval pageant – but also providing the voice of God – as a blazing, golden light suffuses everything, and the stars twinkle above all through the dome – a window to heaven – in what is perhaps the loudest crescendo in all of western music. The effect created here is truly otherworldly. breathtaking and sui generis – feeling both like a coupe de theatre - and a holy rite.

I must again single out Rod Gilfry’s performance. Onstage for four plus hours (and in all but one scene) he provides consistently beautiful singing, a commitment and intensity that is – from start to finish – nothing short of remarkable. He IS Francois.