More evidence that American opera is having a moment:

Now in its eighth year, Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative (WNO, AOI) provides a unique and valuable opportunity for emerging composers and librettists to create new work in a mentored environment, with the added bonus of being able to see that work realized on a Kennedy Center stage with the resources of WNO and its Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program (which provides similar opportunities for young singers). The results are usually three roughly twenty-minute works along with a more developed hour-long chamber opera by a more established but still young composer (Missy Mazzoli and Mohammed Fairouz were recent participants). The programming gives the event the feel of a mini-festival, but his year AOI only presented shorter pieces, using the other slot later in the season for the world premiere in March of composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson’s Blue at the Eisenhower Theater.

Blue’s prominence on WNO’s schedule is great for Tesori and Thompson (and for contemporary composers in general), but it creates a bit of a hole in AOI’s program that makes it feel like less of an event than the program deserves. This year it arrived as two back-to-back hour-long performances held on a Friday night (January 10). Not much buzz can be built about the current state of emerging talents in American Opera with that kind of scheduling. The result seems to send a mixed signal from WNO about AOI’s importance -- a curious move from a company which in recent years has become a leading advocate and presenter for contemporary American opera. Don’t give up now, WNO - everyone else is just starting to follow your lead, and some, like Opera Philadelphia, are blazing their own trails in exciting ways. 

This year’s participants were mentored by composer Laura Kaminsky, known primarily for her opera As One, which has received a tremendous number of productions since making its debut at 2014’s American Opera Projects at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Kelley Rourke, who among other things has collaborated with numerous composers including John Glover and Ben Moore, serves as the current dramaturg for  WNO, and translates many operatic classics into English for Glimmerglass; and finally, conductor Anne Manson, an AOI veteran who’s been in the pit at SF Opera, New York City Opera, and Royal Opera Stockholm among others. (It’s worth noting the American Opera Initiative does in fact actually resemble America in the way it represents the nation’s racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, a challenge that somehow still escapes most of the country’s major opera and classical music organizations). 

Performed on this year’s program were, in order, Woman of Letters, music by Liliya Ugay, libretto by Sokunthary Suvay; Admissions, music by Michael Lanci, libretto by Kim Davies; and Night Trip, music by Carlos Simon libretto by Sandra Seaton. As it turned out  the program got better as it went along -- Night Trip was not only the true standout off the three works, but it felt like a significant artistic achievement in its own right, which is no easy accomplishment for a twenty-minute, semi-staged opera.

Woman of Letters is about Sonya, a daughter of immigrants who must tell her widowed father she’s been accepted to a school in Europe, and intends to go. It begins with a light wind motive for the young woman (soprano Marlen Nahhas), then introduces another more somber one dominated by strings in a minor key for the father (bass Samuel Weiser). Unsurprisingly, dear old dad, beaten down by life in America,  is unwilling to let her go. Ugay’s music quickly and effectively delineates the differences between the characters, and with the arrival of Sonya’s friend Dara (soprano Alexandra Nowakowaski, delightful here), an aspiring opera singer, shows considerable skill in writing for the voice, even if she hasn’t yet fully  found her own. Dara enters the scene and spools off her lyrics in an explosion of Mozart and Rossini-inspired coloratura like a child waving soap bubbles around a room. The effect is entertaining, if jarring, but ultimately feels like a gimmick intended to pander to the audience. There’s no doubt about how it all ends, and it feels like an operatic version of the old after school specials on television. The upshot, and it’s considerable, is Ugay’s obvious musical sensibilities and her understanding of how to flesh out characters through music. Svay’s libretto created distinct characters and captured the nuances of the relationships between them, but given the time constraints in which she has to tell their story, was barely able to scratch beneath the surface. I wonder what she could do with a larger format.

Admissions is a comedy from librettist Kim Davies and composer Michael Lanci, with a ripped-from-the-headlines plot that makes it seem more like a skit than an opera, albeit a very funny one. Davies has well-honed comedy chops, and her libretto, chock-full of topical jokes based on recent celebrity scandals and text messaging slang, elicited a steady stream of hearty laughter from the audience. That’s not easy to do, and Admissions generated more laughter in its twenty minutes than most film comedies can squeeze out in ninety. Lanci provides a Glass-like pulse to keep it all bouncing along nicely, but it feels like both artists are creating an operatic amuse bouche without giving us much of a clue as to whether they can deliver a full meal. Based on Admissions, the smart money would guess yes, but Davies will have prove she can create LOL jokes that are based on more than the latest headlines on Buzzfeed. When she does, watch out - she and Lanci might just make comedic American operas a thing. The cast making it all come alive was bass William Meinert, mezzo Amanda Lynn Bottoms, tenor Matthew Pierce, and Marlen Nahhas, all ably delivering Davies goods in fine form.

Night Trip is the piece people will keep talking about for some time, and its achievement is notable on several levels. First, let’s acknowledge that one day, and it’s probably going to be soon, Rehanna Thelwell is going to be a star singer. I’ve seen very few young singers in Young Artist programs who can walk out on a stage, open their mouth, and own the room the way she can. The ones who come to mind from the past dozen or so years are Nadine Sierra, Ailyn Pérez, Heidi Melton, Leah Crocetto, and Pene Pati, Thelwell is that good, so pay attention to her.

Carlos Simon’s score begins in a jazz-infused mood, reminiscent of the best kinds of film scores in how they use a few quick strokes to tell us the time, place, and mood of what we’re watching. Simon quickly sets Night Trip in 1958 Chicago, where things bop along nicely on the surface, but something ominous percolates underneath it all. Two veterans (baritone John Conyers and tenor Joshua Blue) have come to pick up their niece Conchetta (Thelwell) and drive her down to Tennessee. Along the way an incident with a racist gas station attendant (Meinert) leads to another with policeman (baritone Samson McCrady). The results are predictably tragic, but what transpired in the intersection of Thelwell’s voice, Simon’s music, and Sandra Seaton’s transcendent lyrics was anything but, and left the audience enthralled and cheering. Give us more of all of them, please, and kudos to Simon and Seaton for not only rising to the challenge of creating a dramatic work that does everything it needs to in just  twenty minutes, and for creating an opera that unequivocally succeeds within those extreme limitations. That is a level of artistry we don’t often get to experience. Bravo.

Production photos by Scott Suchman, courtesy of Washington National Opera.

Top photo: Rehanna Thelwell