Opera review: “Silent Light” by Paola Prestini

Listen to the cicadas singing long enough and you might begin to impose your own music on theirs, infusing it with the mysterious rhythm of the day’s emotions. The sounds of nature may have nothing to do with our struggles, but for those in the midst of human conflict, they become a soundtrack to our thoughts and feelings, reflecting how we let’s integrate the natural world into our inner struggles.

Paola Prestini’s first full-length opera at the National Sawdust begins and ends with a chorus of cicadas; the rhythms of the natural world and daily life guide him and frame seas of emotion buried beneath an otherwise peaceful exterior. Based on the film of the same name by Carlos Reygadas, Silent light is a portrait of a Mennonite marriage at a breaking point. Johan, middle-aged and otherwise devoted, is having an affair with another woman, Marianne. He wants to stop, but his bond with Marianne is only slightly stronger than his guilt. His wife Esther knows everything and watches with silent despair and suppressed anger. Johan’s attraction to both women and the inevitable choice he feels he must make between them takes all three characters to surprising places. The opera ends with a mysterious resurrection which, instead of resolving the tension, restores and consecrates it.

The characters live in an isolated community, whose emotional language is constrained, seeming almost foreign to chatty, therapeutic outsiders. Vavrek’s libretto is appropriately restrained, but he was clearly struck by a line from the film. Johan wants to stop time, to keep the two women in his life. It’s Marianne who tells him: “It’s the only thing we can’t do.” » This phrase frames the opera, but the final moments call into question the veracity of Marianne’s words. The clock do turn back, but perhaps not for Johan’s sake.

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Reygadas’ film presents a typical melodramatic situation but, through its setting and characters, poses a fascinating question: what is melodrama without expressiveness? Without explosive conflicts or even much speech, its Silent light forces the characters’ passions beneath the surface, diffusing them into the bodies of the actors and then into the landscape itself. The absence of hyperbole seems antithetical to the typical rhythms of opera, but Prestini and librettist Royce Vavrek rise to the challenge offered by their sources. Furthermore, Prestini draws on Reygadas’ work to ask another intriguing question: what is opera when the voice is no longer the most important instrument but only one instrument in a more vast ?

Long before hearing a musical note, we hear the sounds of everyday life: first it is a chorus of cicadas that surrounds the audience. Then we hear bowls clattering on tables, milk pouring into a glass, and quiet chatter as the women divide up breakfast chores. The opera relies heavily on live sound effects, designed by Sxip Shirey and performed by Nathan Repesz. These sounds are also essential to The sound of Silent Lights landscape like the chamber orchestra. But even these sounds are put into context with other senses: We even smell bacon frying as the actors cook on a working stove and watch them eat scrambled eggs and pancakes. Later, acrid metallic smoke fills the air in a scene in a mechanic’s shop that blurs the audience’s vision and invades their noses.

Director and designer Thaddeus Strassberger puts National Sawdust’s intimate (read: cramped) space to the test with a sleek, striking set constructed almost entirely of unfinished plywood, from the floor to the walls to the furniture. A raised platform hides a puddle of water, the reflections of which splash on the wooden wall at the back of the stage. More than one actor gets completely soaked in that pool or from the rain. Intrigued and elliptically produced, this opera leaves much unsaid and much invisible; many moments shown in the program simply do not occur on stage. By turns, it’s both fascinating and frustrating; this places much of the dramatic exposition in the program and sometimes deprives the actors of the opportunity to do more than watch intently.

As Johan, baritone Daniel Okulitch carried his guilt and love with a visceral heaviness in his tall figure but sang with a well-honed ease. Julia Mintzer delivered an intense performance, her elegant and expressive face allowing us to penetrate the tides of emotion contained in Marianne’s watchful eyes and her dark, seductive mezzo-soprano caressing each word. Brittney Renee as Esther was fascinating, with a present and powerful soprano sound. Neither Johan nor the audience could hide from her gaze, which judged, pleaded, lamented and loved with all the rich veins of emotion that underlie the foundations of a marriage. Margaret Lattimore, as Esther’s long-suffering mother, struck a powerful note, her disgust toward Johan balanced by a palpable love for her daughter. Anthony Dean Griffey, as Johan’s confidant, sounded loud and brassy, ​​as metallic as the welding equipment we meet him in.

Prestini’s score moves seamlessly between environmental sound and music, combining jazz and country influences with an otherwise very contemporary musical language. Ensemble NOVUS, here led by an energetic Christopher Rountree. Some of them are very successful; a sexy, sinister number dominated by grooving drums and trombone was both surprising and memorable. His choral work is very convincing; Silent light was written in part with the Trinity Church Choir, who sang with clear, crisp expression. It is among them that Prestini’s writing is strongest; at different times, contemporary harmonies meet hymns in beautiful and surprising ways. These moments allow the chorus to tackle the unspoken passions of the main characters. At other times, however, I longed for more variety in the vocal lines, which featured a lot of repetitive declamations, and for more sensitivity in the orchestral parts. At its worst, the score strove to flatten, rather than broaden, the opera’s emotional palette and make the more familiar melodramatic elements of its structure less than fresh. However, as a lyrical experience, Silent light fascinates with its slow and unique rhythms.