Leonard Bernstein, possibly the greatest American-trained musician of all time, had many connections to D.C. His one indisputable masterpiece – West Side Story – premiered at the National Theater before opening on Broadway; he was good friends with JFK and Jackie, visiting the White House regularly; he guest-conducted the National Symphony Orchestra on numerous occasions and made a few recordings with them; and his last show (and biggest commercial flop), 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was an historical survey of US Presidents. In 1970, he was riding high after a celebrated decade as music director of the New York Philharmonic, and accepted a personal request from JFK’s widow to write an expansive multi-media work for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. A half-century later, the Center commemorated it with an opulent, full-scale production (in the Concert Hall rather than the Opera House, as an NSO offering).  

Mass – A Theater Piece For Singers, Players, and Dancers is a dizzying, dazzling, delirious, dumbfounding piece of nearly two hours that defies classification, one that you cannot imagine anyone else to have written. Although following the formal outline of the traditional Catholic mass, Bernstein (who, of course, was Jewish) injected highly eclectic tropes, interludes, and meditations throughout.  The text is a mish-mash of Latin, Hebrew, and English, along with too-clever-by-half Broadway verses courtesy of Bernstein’s colleague Stephen Schwartz (who’d just scored a big hit with Godspell). The original choreography was by the great Alvin Ailey, redone here with many nods to him by Hope Boykin.  

The length, complexity, and cost of mounting a full production has limited the work’s reach (it calls for a principal singer -- the “Celebrant,” 12 smaller solo roles, a troupe of dancers, a full chorus, and a children’s chorus with three soloists; the orchestra includes electric guitars and a drum kit; and the technical production team in the program listed 13 names, not counting four producers; and the Concert Hall Stage had to be specially built out to accommodate the action, eliminating close to 100 seats). There are three commercial recordings besides the composer’s own, but the music alone is certainly inadequate to appreciate the vision of the work. I say all this because opportunities to see it fully mounted again anywhere or anytime soon are unlikely, making these performances especially notable.

A formal “review” of a performance of an extravaganza of this sort is all but impossible, and I say this as someone who attended the opening run of the show 50 years ago. There is literally nothing easier than picking out flaws -- the derivative nature of much of the music, the cheesy lyrics, the hard-to-follow dramaturgy onstage, and on and on. But the sweeping artistic vision that produced all of it still hangs together with remarkable cohesion; and the work, which at the time seemed such a product of the 1960’s counterculture, has actually aged quite well. The crisis of faith the Celebrant goes through is a shopworn device but no more so today than back then. And many of the social-commentary lines do still bite. Alison Moritz’s stage direction kept the eyes moving at all times, even when it wasn’t clear what exactly was going on. The build-up to the climactic breaking of the chalice was a stunning mélange of music and dance.  

The principal drawback of the show was the amplification, which I simply can’t understand. When you think of works like Wagner’s Tristan, Strauss’s Elektra, Puccini’s Turandot, or Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth, and realize that the singers were meant to be and usually were heard over a ginormous orchestra, you despair at the laziness of modern productions where everyone and everything is at the mercy of some guy running a sound board at the back of the hall. No, I couldn’t hear every word back in 1971 when it was done in the Opera House without everyone having body mikes, but at least what I heard was natural music; the result of careful rehearsals with balances controlled by the conductor. At times during the Thursday performance, I had to hold my ears (sitting towards the rear of the hall), and at other times, you couldn’t tell who was singing since the sound came, undifferentiated, from speakers up above. I wonder; did they even try to do the piece acoustically? 

That aside, I repeat, this was an exceedingly rare opportunity to see the piece, and the Kennedy Center has to be commended for the resources they put into the production. In 1971, it ran for ten performances, enabling at least some recoupment on a massive investment; this time there were only three.

Photo by Scott Suchman.