Douglas J Cuomo's Multi-Stylistic Chamber Opera "Arjuna's Dilemma"

One version of the "complete composer" of the 21st century is one who is bi-musical; that is, the composer deftly incorporates the vocabulary and syntax of a great number of styles, both in and outside of contemporary classical music per se. I've been covering several such "post-modernists" on these pages, and today we turn to yet another.

Douglas J. Cuomo's chamber opera Arjuna's Dilemma (Innova 697) not only fits the bill in this regard; it gives the music lover much of interest from the listening point of view. The libretto is based on the Bhagavad Gita and the poetry of Kabir. The opera focuses on the principal character's quest for a deep knowledge of what is, which is in keeping with the subject matter of the B. Gita.

The libretto in turns makes it natural to incorporate and adapt South Asian musical elements to the operatic idiom, and Cuomo does that well. Those stylistic strains further combine into a unique and convincingly blended stew of Garbarekian jazz elements, a dash of minimalism, a contemporary choral idiom and chamber instrumentalities that evoke a straightforward sort of simplicity one associates with Virgil Thompson's operatic scoring. That is, they evoke it in the sense of "being in a lineage that includes" as opposed to "derives their existence from...". And there is also an oblique reference to vernacular song that also seems in the lineage of works like Robert Ashley's Atlanta. And then there's the pioneering Carla Bley work Escalator Over the Hill for a lineage of multi-stylistic operatic works that look to South Asian forms as part of the whole. (And I can't really omit Ravi Shankar's movie scores as having some relevance in the overall lineage at hand.)

A well-balanced ensemble prevails. There are two principal singers, a four-voiced chorus, and a small chamber group. The latter includes tabla master Badal Roy and tenor saxophonist Bob Franceschini, both of whom have some prominent roles to play in parts of the score.

The point of it all though is that the music hangs together despite the stylistic disparity, and it does so in memorable ways. It is such a rich mix in fact that as I write this I listen to the music for the fifth time, and I am still getting new insights in the process. I think perhaps another five times and I'll truly begin to digest all that is going on.

The libretto in itself contains some true wisdom. It's something one should experience for oneself. That's true of all music of course, but description does not equal the actual experience. Maestro Cuomo has fashioned a vital work that demands your attention, then rewards it with much of merit. I suspect I'll spend some number of years to fully appreciate this one.

Two Operas by Michael Nyman

British composer Michael Nyman got my attention several years ago with his music.

So when I had the chance to review two later Nyman operas, I was filled with anticipation. I refer to the new 4-CD set just released on Michael Nyman Recordings, providing full versions of Man and Boy: Dada and Love Counts.

Man and Boy centers around the moving story of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, who in real life was persecuted by the Nazis for his "anti-Aryan" Merzbow art and escaped Germany in the early '40s. The story of Man and Boy picks up when he has entered England as a refugee. He strikes up a friendship with a young boy he meets at a bus stop. The boy collects discarded bus tickets, a rather pointless hobby. Schwitters too is interested in gathering these particular castoffs of everyday life for a new Merzbow collage. Schwitter's eventually courts the boy's mother, a widow as a result of the Nazi V-Rocket "Sputterbug" bombings. That's the basic premise of the plot. An underlying theme is the contrast between the monstrous cultural unreason of the Nazis versus the benign unreason of Schwitter's art. The fragility and tenuous nature of existence in the face of Nazi savagery and the need to try to continue on with life in spite of its utter disintegration also provide important thematic elements.

The music and libretto conjoin quite nicely. The cast and orchestra are totally convincing in their realization of the work. The music combines a kind of '40s dance hall quality with restless passage work and melodic cells that repeat and develop in time. It all works very well and reaffirms that Nyman has gone his own way to produce a music that is accessible yet movingly "post-modern," a term I use with reluctance but in the sense of a combination of disparate elements to achieve a new synthesis. There is the music-dance hall element, some of the minimalist tendencies, conventional tonality, orchestration that touches on a sort of neo-classicism, and some old-time jazz and pop references. The end result is most assuredly Nyman Music, just as Charles Ives' various juxtapositions produced music that bore the inimitable stamp of his musical personality.

The second opera, Love Counts, has similar qualities. It too has the various combinations of "high" and "low" musics Nyman-style. It may not be quite as compelling as Man and Boy: Dada, but it certainly has plenty of redeeming qualities and a quirky plot typical, it would seem, of Nyman's preferred subject matter. Space does not really permit a long discussion of the virtues of this work. It doesn't quite strike me as reaching the level of Man and Boy, but it is nonetheless nice that it is included as a companion piece in this set.

These are superlative performances that will undoubtedly not be rivalled for a long time to come. Nyman should not be ignored. He is an important composer and these two works are quite excellent examples of why that is so.

Britten and The Beggars Opera, A New Recording

I've admired the operas of Benjamin Britten on a number of levels for many years. I particularly like how the music translates dramatic moments of the plot in ingenious ways. An example, The Turn of the Screw has a scene where the young lad who is being haunted and endangered by a malevolent ghost is practicing scales upon the piano. Britten uses this opportunity to create a mini-concerto for piano and orchestra, with the scalular passages and orchestral accompaniment going increasingly off the tonality. It underscores the unsettled, latently venomous atmosphere present and the increasingly evident psychological instability of the boy. But it does so in a way that puts the compellingly personal stamp of Britten's musical mind upon it.

Of all the Britten works, however, his adaptation of Gay's The Beggars Opera may be the least characteristic. The original version of the work was a great success in London from the moment of its debut in 1728. It enjoyed a long run, with numerous performances both in England and America throughout the century. Gay wrote the libretto and cobbled the music from popular song and a number of borrowed melodies by composers of the time. The subject matter dealt in a sometimes bawdy manner with what used to be termed the lumpen proletariat, pickpockets, thieves, corrupt lawyers and "loose wenches," as the phrase went then. Britten's revival took the music more or less as it was presented in the original but recomposed, reorchestrated, and rescored the instrumental parts.

We have a new recording of the Britten adaptation, with soloists and Christian Curnyn conducting the City of London Sinfonia (Chandos). The two CDs comprise the complete opera, including the somewhat lengthy spoken dialog.

The cast captures well the roguish tenor of the characters and the common folkway roots of much of the music. The real hero of this opera to me is Britten himself. His orchestrations and rearrangements are spiced by modernistic dissonances and chamber orchestral touches worthy of repeated listening. Maestro Curnyn does a fine job bringing out the various nuances of the score.

If you love Britten this will give you more of it to enjoy. On another level the opera itself has much historical interest. Those not familiar with Britten might best look elsewhere for an introduction, such as his best known work Peter Grimes. Nonetheless, there is plenty to enjoy in this new version and the adaptation itself.

Is "Nixon in China" A Masterpiece?

When John Adams' Nixon in China premiered in 1987, it caused a sensation unusual in the annals of 20th century opera. And yet there were sceptics, myself included. Nixon? In China? It seemed a bit cheeky to center the subject matter on America's most discredited President.

The recording came out. I bought the excerpts edition and listened carefully. And still I could not make up my mind. What was the music all about? There were moments of questionable dramatico-musical taste, such as the aria that involved a rather banal repetition of the obvious. "I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung," Madame Mao sang a few times. Well yes. That you are.

Adam's score was in the minimalist camp, but that minimalism was different than Reich, Glass, Riley. It was less trancy, less driving rhythmically and more of a series of shifting ostinatos and repetitions of motives that were not always very interesting in isolation but more in the way of development figures that never found their way back to some sort of recapitulation. Or so it seemed. Was the banality deliberate? I think it might have been.

And after all, Nixon in China was and is a grand opera for the modern era, complete with historical tableaux. Yes, OK, history. It dramatized a signal event in the life of American-Chinese diplomacy and was one of the most important signs of thaw in the long, weary Cold War that enveloped the globe in 1972.

Twenty-two years later we have a new recording of the complete opera, conducted by Marin Alsop in a live setting with soloists, chorus and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (Naxos).

It is a fine interpretation, filled with energy. Robert Orth's Nixon role is well sung, though perhaps not as dramatically Nixon-like as the original performance from James Maddalena. But the singing is all quite good and the orchestra under Alsop brings a spirited enthusiasm to the table that the original version may have had in less abundance.

But what about the opera itself? I find myself gravitating toward the first and third acts, both musically and dramatically. In both instances, but especially in Act Three, there is the theme of reflection in the midst of what all participants know is a media event, but ultimately capital H history. The reminiscing of Nixon and Mao on their pasts, Mao in a revolution that had not always gone as he would have wished, Nixon lost in the memories of his war years, facing death on one hand and flipping burgers for the servicemen on the other, have a poignancy. The actors on the historical stage have a frailty that is belied by all the pomp and puffery that surrounds them. The earlier, simpler days were better. This feels empty to them.

Adam's score manages to convey both the pomp and the individual reflection in interestingly contrasting orchestral textures. In the end history dissolves into the dreams of the principal participants. This may be the climax of their political fortunes. They seem to know it and have a certain feeling that their lives have taken on the very dream quality that their early dreams and aspirations only prefigured.

Ultimately whether Nixon in China is a masterpiece with a capital em will be the verdict of those 100 years from now. We don't entirely matter. For me, twenty-two years from the first performances, I feel that the opera is much better than we had any right to expect of it then. It has its flaws, true. But it has musico-dramatic moments of great power. History is not for the participants what it is for the spectators. The big circus, when all is said and done, has as its pivotal events the actions of a few key figures who aren't quite sure what they have been brought to do or why. Nixon never shows his hand, but he is not really sure what the cards are for in the first place.

Alsop's interpretation captures that mood very well. I'm not sure the original de Waart recording was quite as successful in that regard.

Masterpiece? Who knows. Does it matter just yet? Enjoy the opera now and leave posterity for the future.