Most of today’s opera companies stage productions according to what’s known as the stagione system, where a single opera remains onstage for the duration of its run, as opposed to the repertory system, where several productions run simultaneously. Despite the significant additional cost and logistical challenges, the Met Opera has long been a repertory house, where on any given week during the season you can see three, even four operas.
But last week, the Met temporarily turned into a stagione house with a rare mid-season revival of Mason Bates‘ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which opened the season back in September. February is typically when the Met is on their winter hiatus, but responding to “popular demand”, they decided to bring Kavalier & Clay back with the original cast and production team for a limited run of four performances (in five days!)
One noticeable difference last week was in the orchestra pit, where conductor Michael Christie, music director of California’s New West Symphony and former music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, made his long-overdue Met debut. (Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who led the fall run, returned for the final performance on Saturday.) Christie, who became a strong advocate for contemporary opera while he was music director of the Minnesota Opera, conducted the world premieres of both Kavalier & Clay (at IU’s Jacobs School of Music) and Bates’ previous opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (which won a Grammy), so there could hardly be anyone better qualified to lead these performances.
Whatever perceived shortcomings Kavalier & Clay may have had from a musical perspective, it certainly didn’t make much difference to the ticket-buying public: last Tuesday’s house was chock-full, with the entry line snaking all the way out onto Josie Robertson Plaza. (Apparently, Kavalier & Clay is this season’s top-selling opera at the Met.) And for good reason: this is a gripping, plot-driven opera with well-drawn characters and plenty of stage action, with a libretto by Gene Scheer based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
For those who aren’t familiar with the novel, the story is set during World War II, when Jewish refugee and artist Joe Kavalier (baritone Andrzej) flees his native Prague for Brooklyn, where he teams up with his cousin Sam Clay (tenor Miles Mykkanen) to develop a comic-book franchise, The Escapist. Meanwhile, Joe falls in love with fellow artist and Jewish children’s activist Rosa Saks (mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce) while Sam falls for actor Tracy Bacon (baritone Edward Nelson), who voices the Escapist on the comic’s radio show. Although the comic becomes successful, it isn’t enough to prevent the deaths of his parents in the concentration camps and his sister from being torpedoed by a German U-boat. Subsequently, Joe and Tracy both enlist and sail for Europe while Sam stays behind with Rosa, now pregnant with Joe’s child. Eventually, Tracy is killed in action, Joe returns to Rosa and his young daughter, and Sam heads to California where he plans to start a new life as a television writer.
Across his numerous orchestral scores, Mason’s musical signature is a merging of electronic music – he occasionally performs as a DJ – with acoustic instruments. On the surface, it sounds like a questionable idea, but Bates employed the electronic elements sparingly for maximum effect, such as a floor-rattling bass drop when the Escapist comes to life in Joe and Sam’s imagination. For the scenes in Prague, Bates combined the exotic sounds of mandolin and plectrum with eerie synth drones. And, for the NYC scenes, Bates managed to write some convincing swing-era jazz, evoking the classic 1940’s bands of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, bursting with saxophones and snare drums.
All in all, this was 3 hours of expertly-crafted music in service of a fast-moving, emotionally gripping story, expertly performed by the Met orchestra and chorus in a dazzling production put together by Broadway veteran Bartlett Sher. Sure sounds like opera to me, even if it might not be as boundary-pushing as some other contemporary opera onstage this season. That’s always been the great thing about the Met: there’s something there for everyone.
More pics on Instagram.