Sing Theory
Efforts to combine multicultural musings, pseudo-philosophy and theoretical physics into an opera leads to some unfortunate situation calculus.

What: Preview of New Operas at the Manhattan School of Music
Location: Greenfield Hall at the MSOM campus
Date: 3/18/2007
Cost: $15
Bohemian Factor: eh.
Geek Factor: Music geeks present, though rather well integrated.

I love physics. I love opera. Each of these fields attracts their own spectrum of followers in the world of geekdome. I don’t actually believe there’s any deep quality that organically binds these two interests together, although no doubt they both elicit affection from those who see intellectual inquiry and epicurean passion as two sides of the same coin… but that’s mere speculation on my part.

When the two are combined, the results can be sublime or, well, unfortunate.

As incorporating science into the performing arts becomes trendier and trendier, I find the best results take place when art showcases the grand and obsessive passions that have surrounded the most important discoveries of our time, rather than attempting to lecture an audience that can better pursue scientific pedagogy in other places.

One such performance-cum-lecture took place when the Manhattan School of Music presented “From Page to Stage,” a series of new opera previews from Encompass New Opera Theatre and American Opera Projects. The former presented several scenes from “The Theory of Everything,” apparently the brainchild of the company's artistic director and the opera’s librettist and director.

Really, I have to let this one speak for itself:

• In 1987, I read an article in The New York Times about an astounding new physics theory postulating the simultaneous existence of at least ten dimensions, known as superstring theory. Pushing the envelope of the mind to embrace multiple dimensions, sister universes, and the possibility that everything from our bodies to the farthest star, is made up of vibrating strings, fascinated me.
• During this time... I read metaphysical literature, Eastern philosophy, science, and poetry. Turkey was one of the places that resonated deeply within me, the ancient city of Ankara with its Hittite Museum, and Istanbul...
  
• Upon returning home, it came to me in the middle of the night: Act I, Scene 1, a Planetarium. Thus began The Theory of Everything...A series of dramatic events catapult a scientific and metaphysical search into other dimensions and alternate universes

If you are starting to have doubts as soon as you get to the phrase "Pushing the envelope of the mind" to say nothing of Turkey, then perhaps you share my encouragement to all would-be artists who have artistic revelations “in the middle of the night” to take a good, hard look at the idea in the morning. Yes, Turkey is great, ten dimensions are dandy, but by the time Dominic Inferrera’s Brazilian professor was singing about an obscure tribe in Peru that “sees the universe as a seamless web of interconnected threads” in a freshman physics lecture, I was thinking about how nice it would be to hear that lovely voice take on Mozart’s “La Ci Darem La Mano" instead. (It also reminded me, perhaps somewhat mean-spiritedly, of a Tom Stoppard play when a character asks, "Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing `When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you." )

As our Brazilian professor explains how holograms work and gets into trouble with the school's administrators for imparting holistic gobbledygook to young minds instead of Newton’s laws (C'mon people, didn't they show “Dead Poets Society” in Brazil?) I couldn't help but root for the bad guy when someone sang back “You sound like a cult follower.”

If it makes your eyes role during the actual singing, it probably is not good subject material for an opera.

Happily, “The Summer King” and “The Golden Gate” had more promise. But while the composers and librettists are gifted, and the Manhattan School of Music’s young voices agile, lovely and game for the experiment they were taking part in, the short vignettes seemed dramatically skewed out of context. The former is about one of the first African-American baseball stars, but the character that inspired the story seemed to have no sung role, leaving the audience with only the melodic company of various narrators assuring us of his awesome gifts (Guess you had to be there). The Golden Gate, a sort of San Francisco/Generation X version of Pushkin's novel “Eugene Onegin” is entirely narrated….not really ever a good idea in opera, in which too much ironic distance can amount to ridiculousness. Good humored, overpopulated with someone’s idea of yuppie-hipsters, and sporting enough casual hook-ups to assure us of its modernity, I wasn’t convinced there was any single conflict that really deserved the audience’s emotional investment. (Not atypical of the lyrics, but a keeper nonetheless: “It’s a Waste/To be Chaste.” I'm sure it sounds more poetic in Russian)

“Well,” said the evening’s moderator, attempting to identify the key ingredient that will bring youth into the country’s opera houses. “Opera should be about fun!”

Happily, one of the artists meekly amended:

“Actually, I think opera is about passion.”

I don’t doubt what Peter Gelb would say.