San Francisco Classical Voice

Kent Nagano

Philippe Manoury, a French composer practically unknown in the U.S., was represented here by a recent opera, 60th Parallel in concert performance with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra last Wednesday. It was an impressive American premiere. The Symphony under Kent Nagano performed with great effectiveness and the nine solo singers were marvelous. The music had moments of great beauty and power but the surreal text by Michel Deutsch was mysterious, and dreadfully banal.

Initially, the situation of the plot seems promising. Eight passengers, some without names, and a stewardess find themselves stranded because of a howling snowstorm. They are stuck in an airport somewhere south of the Arctic Circle, six hours from Paris, six hours from Miami. It is 3:00 a.m. and everything is closed. There is some discomfort, but not too much. An offstage voice announces pertinent messages in English, then in French; one knows the dilemma is of international nature.

Practical questions soon arise in the audience's mind. Where are they really going? Where are they coming from? Why? Who are they, really? These, one quickly discovers, are issues irrelevant to the drama. As the program note states: "...the work resonates with the existentialism of Sartre in its suggestion of absurd and futile endeavors, of impotence and isolation, of the inability of people to grasp the true nature and meaning of their lives". Nine cyphers sitting in a lounge.

Unlike Sartre (his play No Exit is mentioned) these characters are not realistic characters but mouthpieces. At most they are one-dimensional. Their relationships are hardly comprehensible. Two are women, Anja and Maria, who might or might not be lovers. Two are protagonists, Rudy Link and Wim Kosowitch, involved in a manhunt and a murder investigation, yet revelations of subsequent horror seem to be unimportant. One character, Dr. Wittkop, obsessively gives lectures on Albert Einstein's brain - dipping into German, of course. Why? Don't ask. As the program notes make it clear, these personalities and their intrigues are purposively unclear; to appreciate everything one must listen to the music. It's the music that reveals what's beyond "the tip of the iceberg", says the program.

The music is very good. In its genesis, this opera began with a nameless orchestral prelude, originally composed for another work that was never completed. As it now appears, the prelude sets the tone: dark, ominous, threatening. It is massive, powered with violent figures--the howling storm. It begins with electronic sounds, wonderfully crafted to support the mood and figurations in the orchestra. This promising color sustains the menacing mood of much of the opera; only the words let it down. Against an almost hysterical pounding in the orchestra, the singers in declamation resembling the gentilities of Debussy, speak of abstract matters: "One is certainly sure of nothing...a world of things seemingly false....who is true? Who is false?" The disparity between heavy, meaningful music and verbal banalities continues; the eyes glaze over.

It all sounds very French (Last year at Marienbad springs to mind). It must signify something, the music is so strong and scary. If only one could understand. Eventually it becomes clear that it's all illusion; one eventually avoids the text and listens to the power of the music. Manoury derives many of his musical passages from other sources; notwithstanding his own gifts he dips into the repertoire of composers long gone. No one can miss the gloss on Ravel's La Valse An interlude late in the opera recalls Die Nacht with its giant black moths from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire: ostinato rumblings in the bass, now with plaints in the flute and twittering in the strings: this ghostly suggestion accompanies the fitful sleeping of the passengers. The music is very effective, regardless of its origins; Manoury always rewrites to fit his own perspectives.

Fortunately, all is not a mismatch between stage and orchestra; musical moments occasionally fulfill dramatic situations. Anja, the lesbian with an unrequited desire for Maria, sings a sort of aria about hopeless love, a fragment of clearly expressed sentiment relatively rare in the opera. The music rises to her emotional eloquence with tremolo strings and fluttering woodwinds in descending figures. Sylvie Braitman was very persuasive in the part, singing with a slight tremolo that evoked the memory of a French chanteuse.

When one of the anonymous passengers turns on a portable radio, the synthetic sounds of acid rock evolve into something truly monstrous. Leslie Stuck was a collaborator in all such electronic effects; he contributed the "computer environment". His magical sounds were magnificent, uilized both in the original performance (1997) at the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris (while he was working at IRCAM) and in Berkeley. (At present he is Technical Director at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College).

Finally, Link accuses Kosowitch of murder. Nagano pulled the orchestra into a powerful climax with violent chords from the strings. The scene grows in anger and strength and the opera becomes alive. The singers now can portray characters that seem psychologically believable. Gary Aldrich successfully became the angry accuser, Rudy Link; Kevin Burdette snarled with convincing menace as the villain, Wim Kosowitch. Wim kills Rudy and disappears.

Unfortunately, the plot also disappears. Seven characters remain stranded in the airport. Even though a voice on the loudspeaker kept up a hopeful announcement "Final Call," nobody leaves. Nobody does anything. The text descends into nihilistic abstractions. Maria sings: "A sensation of emptiness. You know, there at the bottom of your stomach... Anja, this horrible sensation of emptiness..." Perhaps this expressionistic opera would succeed as video or a movie, lots of lighting effects and menacing closeups. As an evening at Zellerbach it was an uneasy evening in the theater: musically successful as an exercise in horror, but with a story hardly worth thinking about.

(Marvin Tartak, a pianist noted for contemporary music, teaches a course in Opera at City College of San Francisco. He has written program notes for the San Francisco Symphony and Opera, has also has edited two volumes of Rossini for the Fondazione Rossini, and is soon to embark on a third.)

©1999 Marvin Tartak, all rights reserved