Crossing
Composed,
written, and conducted by Matthew Aucoin
Directed by
Diane Paulus
Starring Rod
Gilfrey (Walt Whitman), Alexander Lewis (John Wormley)
Brooklyn
Academy of Music Howard Gilman Opera House
October 8,
2017
Matthew
Aucoin (b. 1990) is a millennial poet, conductor, and composer now making a big
splash for writing full length operas and orchestral pieces at a tender age. He
has already conducted the Chicago Symphony, been an assistant conductor at the
Metropolitan opera, and composed/written four operas at age 27, drawing
comparisons to Mozart (Aucoin supposedly played the score of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro by memory at the
piano at age 11). Crossing (2015), an
impressively conceived, written, composed and paced one act opera, received its
New York debut this past weekend in a large venue with major publicity,
attesting to the rapidly advancing career of this young man. What I heard and
saw was the work of a composer with an excellent talent for drama, verse, and orchestral
color, but still developing a unique compositional voice.
The opera
depicts an imagined interaction with poet Walt Whitman with a ward of suffering
Union soldiers near the end of the Civil War. The main interaction is between Whitman
(a solidly dramatic Rod Gilfrey) and a tortured young man, John Wormley, who
harbors secrets, mainly that he is actually a wounded Confederate posing as a
Union soldier in order to get medical treatment. This imagined incident, with
text derived from Whitman’s poetry, provided ample opportunity for character
development and compelling interaction, and the opera libretto was dramatically
convincing. Crossing centers on the
conflicted emotions of both protagonists. Whitman is simultaneously dreamy,
idealistic (about the United States), and repressed---is he volunteering in
this ward out of compassion, or lust for the young men? Wormley is equally
conflicted---appreciative of Whitman’s attention, perhaps sexually attracted,
yet also repelled by these attractions; grateful for his care, yet willing to
betray the location of the hospital to Confederates. The tortured Wormley is a
very compelling character, with both text and angular music that captures his
conflicts. Aucoin’s experience as a poet and as a composer clearly helps him to
write clear and beautiful English that flows well when set to music, not a
given in modern operas. Aucoin easily passes the “why are they singing?” test,
again not a given in new operas and musicals. His focus on two characters, with
only a couple others singing contrasting pieces, was admirable, and apparently
followed some ruthless paring down from an initially over-populated and diffuse
libretto. This reveals a keen dramatic sense, and willingness to sacrifice one’s
composed children in the interest of the drama of the full piece.
So far so
good. My main problem with
Crossing
was that I found it more admirable than compelling. Despite the excellent text,
dramaturgy, and conception, it never really took off for me. Some of this was
the derivative nature of Aucoin’s music. There were passages of minimalism
(Adams, esp.), used effectively at dramatic moments, but at other times I
thought of Barber and Menotti. But I think the larger problem is one not unique
to Aucoin, and that is the inability or unwillingness to write an aria. Aucoin
brings much more interest to his orchestral color (the chamber orchestra had strings,
winds in pairs with two percussionists) than to his vocal writing, and Whitman’s
music in particular had a certain bland baritonal declamatory style. These
reminded me of some of the long Wagner monologues from
Tristan or
The Ring, but
without any subsequent climactic passages to add fire. The soldier Wormley’s
narrations are more dramatically pungent and emotive, yet still lacking in
music that sticks in one’s memory. Virtually every new opera I have seen from
the past 30 years is lacking in memorable melody, mostly relying on sustained
quasi-recitative. Composers of modern music can certainly provide great melody/aria,
as the operas of Shostakovich and Messiaen reveal. Arias are not just pleasant
diversions—they create clear climaxes and geographic foci for the audience.
Absent them, the opera just motors along, sometimes reaching peaks via dynamics
or plot, but never really overwhelming one emotionally in the way Wagner or
Puccini can. Opera first developed as recitative-only, as composers of the 1500’s
were excited to set drama to music. The great composers after Monteverdi
learned to mix aria with recitative, sometimes overdoing the arias (Handel,
some Mozart, early Verdi), risking the cessation of plot development when the
prima donnas came out and sang their tunes. But later Mozart and the composers
of the nineteenth century, led by Wagner, then late Verdi, learned how to
balance this and use the aria to great dramatic effect, creating true music
dramas. It is interesting that contemporary composers have retreated to the
technique of the 1500’s in writing all-recitative operas. Is this because they
have no melodic gift, or because melody is spurned in modern compositional instruction?
Adams and Glass create excitement via minimalistic orchestral repetitive figures,
a device mimicked by Aucoin here, but this is not an adequate replacement for
the aria. For me the musical highlight of
Crossing
was the lone aria, a moving spiritual-style narration about slavery (“I was
born of a man’s thousand slaves”) with colorful minimalist accompaniment,
beautifully sung by Davone Tines—a beautifully effective millennial mixing of
styles associated with different ethnic groups. This excellent aria best
demonstrated Aucoin’s gifts as a composer and ear for the emotional power of
music, and I hope he goes more in this direction in the future. Overall, it was
exciting to attend a new work by this talented young composer, and I hope he
will continue to progress and develop a more unique compositional voice that can
match his dramatic and poetic skills.
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