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This Issue: Inside This Issue Staging the Folk: New York City’s Friends of Old Time Music by Ray Allen Celebrating Randy Weston by Jeff Taylor and Hank Williams Music and Identity in Mel Brooks’s The Producers by Katherine Baber In
Search of Aaron Copland: Review by Wayne Schneider |
American
Opera: An Evening with James P.
Johnson by Jeff Taylor
Minnita Daniel-Cox
and Lonel Woods in James P. Johnson’s The Dreamy Kid Photo by Peter Smith, courtesy of University of Michigan
Theater and Dance Composer and pianist James Price Johnson (1894-1955) may be one of the most under-appreciated creative minds in American music. Though he has been acknowledged for decades as one of the most important figures in the history of jazz piano, and his popular songs—especially “Charleston,” a virtual anthem for the 1920s—are still part of the national consciousness more than fifty years after his death, his impact on American culture has yet to be fully assessed. His improvised jazz performances survive in dozens of thrilling recordings (most of which have been reissued on CD), and the songs in sheet music and renditions by legions of jazz performers. Yet like many African American musicians of his generation, Johnson also made forays into compositional forms more strongly aligned with the European concert hall. And as is suggested from his own comments made in a 1953 conversation with Tom Davin (the entire interview has now been published for the first time in the Italian journal Musica Oggi) the impulse came partly from firsthand exposure to the works of great European composers. As a teenager with a strong singing voice, he was once auditioned by Frank Damrosch (brother of Walter) for the chorus in Damrosch’s production of Haydn’s The Creation, and he recalled other contact with European art music during his early years in New York: I used to go to the old New York Symphony concerts; a friend of my brother’s who was a waiter used to get tickets from its conductor, Josef Stransky, who came to the restaurant where he worked. I didn’t get much out of them, but the full symphonic sounds made a great impression on me. That was when I first heard Mozart, Wagner, Von Weber, Meyerbeer, Beethoven and Puccini.1 It may have been this early exposure to opera, as well as his awareness of Gershwin’s landmark Porgy and Bess of 1935, that led him to compose two one-act operas in the late 1930s: The Dreamy Kid and De Organizer. Of these two, only the latter was ever been performed and then only once (at Carnegie Hall in 1941, under the auspices of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union). The scores survived only in bits and pieces. In 1997, James Dapogny at the University of Michigan discovered a partial score of De Organizer in Michigan’s Eva Jessye Collection (Jessye herself was a well-known African American choral director, who had, among many accomplishments, conducted the choruses in the original Porgy and Bess production). With the help of additional material provided by Johnson’s grandson Barry Glover, Dapogny painstakingly pieced together a complete score for De Organizer, which was performed at Michigan in a concert version in 2002. Johnson had always envisioned his two one-act operas performed together in a single evening, and after his restoration of De Organizer, Dapogny set to work on The Dreamy Kid, for which there existed a partial draft of the entire opera and orchestrations for the first 150 bars of the work, which proved invaluable in gauging Johnson’s intentions for the entire piece. On 23 and 25 March 2006 at the University of Michigan, both of Johnson’s one-act operas were performed together for the first time, as the composer had always hoped. The event was a remarkable collaboration between Dapogny (who even manned the piano during De Organizer), orchestra conductor Kenneth Kiesler and his gifted student ensemble, director Nicolette Molnár, and a superb cast of singers from the Michigan School of Music’s opera program. The Dreamy Kid, based on a 1918 play by Eugene O’Neill (there is, incidentally, no evidence Johnson and O’Neill knew each other), was presented first. With a cast of only four singers, this was by far the more complex of the two pieces, with long swathes of continuous recitative and arioso passages, and few set pieces or identifiable tunes—one exception being a touching lullaby for the bed-ridden character of Mammy, beautifully sung by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Gray. The work has its shortcomings both in dramatic structure and musical details, where a consistent lack of modulation often creates a monochromatic effect. Yet, the piece shows how well Johnson knew the operatic tradition, and was able to turn it to his own ends. The Dreamy Kid is not a “jazz” opera nor a musical theater piece with high-art pretentions, but something unique, with a vocal language all its own. It makes one ponder what Johnson might have been capable of had he enjoyed more financial support and public acknowledgment, and had not been plagued by ill health in his later years. A rousing performance of De Organizer, with its libretto by Langston Hughes, was presented after intermission. Though the subject matter (the ill-fated organization of the early sharecropper’s unions) is serious, the piece is of an entirely different musical character, with tuneful jazz and blues-based choruses and solo arias, and one set piece (“The Hungry Blues”) that is well known to jazz fans, having been recorded by Johnson in a three-minute version in 1939. The successful realization of these two pieces owes much to Dapogny’s lifelong love of Johnson’s music, and his experiences as composer, pianist and bandleader working primarily in pre-1940 jazz idioms. Certainly it is hard to imagine anyone better qualified to bring these obscure works to the public. As he told Detroit Free Press writer Mark Stryker about his work on De Organizer, “I tried to channel James P. Johnson. I don’t hear anything here that I think James P. Johnson couldn’t or wouldn’t have written.”2 The result may be quite different than what Johnson actually intended—we’ll most likely never know how he himself would have worked out the complete scores for both pieces—yet the spirit of this great musician was undeniably captured in this wonderful evening, and the presence of Johnson’s daughter and grandson in the audience only added to the occasion. Hopefully the resurrection of these works (and their planned recording) will help audiences appreciate Johnson as far more than “The Father of Stride Piano.” —Jeff Taylor Notes 1 Tom Davin, “Conversations with James
P. Johnson,” Musica Oggi 23 (2003-04): 73. 2 Mark Stryker, “A Giant’s Lost Legacy.” Detroit
Free Press (1 December 2002). American Opera:
Dreisler’s Tragedy Transformed By Bruce C. MacIntyre Brooklyn College and The
Graduate Center, CUNY
Nathan Gunn as
Clyde and Patricia Racelle as Roberta in Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy Photo by Ken Howard, Metropolitan Opera Composer Tobias Picker and librettist Gene Scheer have created an inspired and gripping opera based on the 1925 Theodore Dreiser novel, An American Tragedy. The work was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on 2 December 2005 and is Picker’s fourth opera, following his successful Emmeline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Thérèse Raquin. The opera betrays influences from his former mentors Wuorinen, Carter, and Babbitt, as well as from Gershwin, Barber, Bernstein, Sondheim, and Copland in the more effusively lyrical moments. At times, even tinges of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Berg appear in its compelling orchestrations. Overall, Picker’s music is “easy” on the ears and often melodramatic where it needs to be. Not surprisingly, several critics rank him among the finest Neo-Romantic composers of our time. This was Gene Scheer’s Met debut as librettist. A songwriter as well as lyricist, Scheer has written many acclaimed songs (e.g., “American Anthem” used at President Bush’s 2005 inauguration) as well as the libretto for Picker’s Thérèse Raquin. Word has it Scheer’s children’s opera The Star Gatherer (music by Steven Paulus) will soon be receiving its premiere. In An American Tragedy Scheer and Picker have succeeded in transforming a major American naturalistic novel into an effective two-and-a-half hour musical drama for a large opera house. Such a task was not easy. The novel’s 101 chapters fill more than 800 pages to tell the story of Clyde Griffiths’s attempt at earning a living at his uncle’s shirt-collar factory in Lycurgus, NY, and of his secret love affair with one of the workers, Roberta Alden, who becomes pregnant and whom he eventually drowns after falling passionately in love with a wealthy debutante, Sondra Finchley. Many wonderful moments and minor characters of the original novel necessarily had to be set aside. Most of Dreiser’s feisty multi-faceted social commentary on the lone individual’s struggle to “make it” and on the inequities between classes in Pre-Depression America also had to be removed or could only be suggested in the libretto. Thanks to the Scheer/Picker team’s use of hymns and an added church scene in Act II, some of Dreiser’s cynical view of the Christian establishment does come through. Unlike the 1951 movie adaptation of Dreiser’s work, A Place in the Sun, Scheer and Picker have remained quite true to the novel. The principal characters have kept their names, and the dialogue and arias nicely bring out the idiosyncrasies of each role. Some changes, however, were obviously necessary. Except for Clyde’s soliloquy arias in the second scene of each act (“A motorcar”; “It will not take too long”), the novel’s ever-present inner voice (Clyde and often Dreiser himself) is almost totally absent. We get to know the operatic Clyde and his flaws primarily through what he says to others. With opera’s time constraints, each of Clyde’s love affairs blossoms much more rapidly than in the novel. Certainly operagoers who read (or re-read) the novel before attending a production will appreciate more fully the quirks of each character. Scheer and Picker have turned the three-book novel into a two-act opera, the second act of which begins in the middle of the second book, with the already pregnant Roberta longing for Clyde, who now loves Sondra. The opera then quickly moves through Clyde’s drowning of Roberta in an Adirondack lake, his trial and guilty verdict, and his ultimate execution. In cinematic fashion Picker uses continuous music throughout, despite the division into a prologue and fifteen scenes. Several melodies, dissonant chords, rhythms, and textures become familiar through their reappearances in the course of the opera. For example, the opening dissonant chords of the overture return when the utter tragedy of Clyde’s plight is emphasized. Especially effective is the descending three-note motive that connects Clyde’s “I promise” at the end of Act I with the start of Act II, when Roberta anxiously awaits his return, as well as with the later trial scene when the motive is set to the spectators’ echo of the D.A.’s “He hit her.” One of Clyde’s favorite lines, “You are so beautiful,” appears in three different contexts (first with Sondra, then at the lake, and finally recalling Sondra in the courtroom) and fascinatingly accentuates the subliminal association. Taking advantage of the Met’s superb musicians, the orchestration is attractively lush and multi-hued, responding to the characters and situations without becoming overly melodramatic. Sometimes the orchestral texture thins to just two exposed lines suggesting the poignant intimacy of chamber music. Every instrumental part demands the utmost virtuosity in rendering Picker’s “ear-tickling” accompaniments and short intermezzi for scene changes. As in Emmeline, Picker writes marvelously mimetic “machine music” for the noisy factory and for Gilbert’s racing motorcar. The unexpected dissonant tutti fortississimo chords that introduce the murder scene on the calm lake are both shocking and tragic. Other fine orchestral tone-paintings include the vaudeville theater, social dancing (foxtrot) at the birthday party, the serene waters of Big Moose Lake, the tensions of the courtroom, and the loneliness of Clyde’s prison cell. The cast for the premiere was first-rate, led by Dolora Zajick as Elvira, with Susan Graham as Sondra, Patricia Racette as Roberta, and Nathan Gunn in the complex role of Clyde. As several reviewers noted, Zajick’s performance of the heart-rending mother’s role was “colossal,” bringing down the house at every performance. Such gifted dramatic singers alone made the production worth seeing. Challenging, mostly syllabic vocal lines set the pervasive dialogue in Scheer’s libretto. Picker tailored each role to the singer’s voice. Somewhat manneristically, the principals often employ their highest tessitura at the ends of phrases, usually with a melody that rockets up to the singer’s highest pitches. Such tonal heights usually reflect the character’s elevated emotional state, but when the singer seems to strain to reach the notes, the high pitches can be more distracting than effective. Nonetheless Picker never forgets what works in great opera or musical theater. He successfully mines the musico-dramatic potential of the solo aria, the rapturous love duet, the dynamic ensemble, and the Greek chorus. At least eight times the action stops for a brief aria that concludes with a climactic, applause-inducing cadence. These “set pieces” or songs—mostly newly devised for the opera and not in the novel—deepen each character’s persona. In the opera’s touching prologue the boy Clyde, alone, sings the old hymn “’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus” before he is joined by his mother and other children. Two of the arias are Clyde’s soliloquies, mentioned above. Then there are Sondra’s magnificent paean to New York City (“New York has changed me”) and her seductive invitation for Clyde to visit her that summer (“We have a cottage on a lake”). Act II opens with Roberta, alone, reading her first worried letter to the absent Clyde (“Today I pretended you’d be here soon”). Later, Elvira invokes her motherly trust and Christian faith as she movingly urges her son Clyde to tell the truth at the trial (“You did nothing to deserve this”). In the final scene Clyde sings a short, hymn-like prayer confessing his wrongs and seeking Jesus’s help (“Lord Jesus give me peace”)—a gripping allusion to the prologue’s hymn-singing child Clyde, who now reappears to accompany the condemned man’s walk to the electric chair. The voices end on a unison C, a key of “light” and understanding. Picker perfectly sets the texts of these arias, allowing every word and tone to be heard and to tell. Each of Clyde’s meetings with a girlfriend leads to a duet. Early in the piece Clyde and Roberta meet in a riverside park and learn more about each other (“Out for a walk?”), concluding with their first good-night kiss. Later, when Clyde responds to Roberta’s news of pregnancy, Picker offers a “deconstructed duet” that moves from serene harmonization (“You have to marry me”) to an agitated, angry repartee (“All right! I will marry you then”) that brings down the curtain. At the start of Act II Clyde’s rapturous love duet with Sondra (“We should go dancing tonight”) dramatically evolves into a “love-triangle” trio, as the lonely Roberta adds her concerns from another level of the stage. Then both women—in melodic unison!—ironically use the same words: “I feel like I’ve been waiting a whole life waiting to be desired by someone like you.” In the middle of the church scene Clyde and Roberta meet privately for a brief, tense duo (“No more waiting”), as he promises to meet and marry her, and she reasserts her love and anticipates their departure and marriage—all while fragments of themes from happier times recur. There are other passages where Picker makes such striking use of an ensemble of singers. For example, in the Act I scene outside the Empire Vaudeville Theater, as Clyde is falling in love with Roberta, the young Clyde (again singing a hymn) and his mother Elvira “enter his conscience” and create a quartet, as they warn Clyde of the devil’s temptation to sin. Later, before he takes Roberta to bed, the already conflicted Clyde participates in a potent trio (“Clyde, you stir my deepest memories”) with both Roberta and Sondra, who each think fondly of him from their separate stage locations. Such sublime moments always maximize the realization of opera’s potential. In some ensembles a chorus augments the drama, either as participants or as commentators. As noted above, other children join in the hymn-singing during the prologue. At the end of the opera’s first scene a chorus lauds the capitalistic successes of businessman Samuel Griffiths and compares him to millionaires like Vanderbilt, Astor, and Dupont. In the second act, as members of the Griffiths family and Sondra react to news of the murder and Clyde’s involvement, a chorus sings excerpts from the published letters of the late, lovelorn Roberta. And at the murder trial the chorus augments the scene’s tension by serving as the angry, vocal spectators and jury. The production was further enhanced by Francesca Zambello’s effective staging and Dunya Ramicova’s elegant period costumes. Adrianne Lobel, in her Met debut as set designer, was particularly creative with the three-tiered, sparsely decorated stage levels and occasional projected backdrops that visually supported the story’s passion, jealousy, anger, and despair. An
American Tragedy is a superb
opera that one hopes will stay in the repertoire because of its dramatic
story and masterful music. Tobias Picker remains among America’s finest
composers, and we can only look forward to his future contributions to opera. Astonishingly, this was only the fourth world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera since James Levine
assumed musical leadership in 1971.
We can be thankful, then, that the
company has announced another premiere for next December: Tan Dun’s The
First Emperor. (Note: For more on Picker’s works, see www.tobiaspicker.com)
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