United States Adams, El Niño: Lauren Snouffer (soprano), Josefina Maldonado (mezzo-soprano), Davóne Tines (bass-baritone), Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, Nathan Medley (countertenors), Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (director: Lisa Wong), Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus (director: Jennifer Rosza), Cleveland Orchestra / John Adams (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 18.11.2022. (MSJ)
Like any profitable artist, John Adams has some works which have confirmed extra well-liked than others. If El Niño, his 2000 oratorio, lags behind his extra acquainted works like Harmonielehre (heard on the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival this summer time (assessment click on right here) or Scheherazade.2 (assessment click on right here in 2018), it isn’t for lack of invention. The piece comprises a few of his finest writing, however it’s within the context of a giant work for large forces, together with no fewer than three countertenors. It just isn’t daily that such forces can be found, thus impeding the chance of the piece being carried out.
It just isn’t straightforward, both, to attract a bead on who the audience is. Adams has known as it his Messiah, describing it as an try to jot down a contemporary Christmas story oratorio, which could properly enchantment to the populace of a conservative ‘red state’ like Ohio. Yet the texts that Adams and theater director Peter Sellars gathered take a self-consciously progressive stance, ensuring to incorporate feminine factors of view. The texts additionally join the Christ baby (‘El Niño’ in Spanish) to the South American climate phenomenon identified by that identify, which has develop into a distinguished affect on North American climate within the age of worldwide warming. Many of the texts are, due to this fact, from South American writers. You thus find yourself with a piece which could be seen, on the floor, to have a decidedly liberal bent to it. That truth, the final unfamiliarity of the work and spreading the potential viewers throughout three performances resulted in a somewhat gentle turnout right here.
More conceptual hurdles come from the try by Adams to make the work cowl two fee requests, one for a choral work and one for an opera. The result’s an oratorio with some extremely operatic moments which can be carried out as a reflective, choral opera. In the tip, it isn’t actually one or the opposite, additional decreasing its means to be plugged into the same old programming slots.
Thank goodness Adams introduced it anyway. To dismiss El Niño can be a giant mistake. It took a while for that realization to emerge as I listened. The first half of the lengthy work (virtually two hours, not together with intermission) is the extra contemplative, oratorical half. I discovered myself respecting it greater than loving it, charmed by the inventive selection at hand a lot of the narrative responsibility to a trio of countertenors (Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, and Nathan Medley), intertwining in beguiling, at occasions sinister method. This deployment allowed the countertenors to harmonize, break up aside to symbolize numerous characters and reunite as a inventive reflection of the holy trinity idea.
Bass-baritone Davóne Tines movingly embodied Joseph on this first half along with his highly effective however wealthy voice, with Mary being break up between heat mezzo Josefina Maldonado and gleaming soprano Lauren Snouffer, who grew in energy as her excessive notes warmed up. Both orchestra and refrain had been spectacular within the often-difficult writing. The music was basic Adams, not as dissonant as his music has develop into in recent times, and nonetheless dominated by the motoric gestures of minimalism.
By the tip of the primary half, I had respect for the work, if not precisely love. While nothing was lower than properly finished, it felt self-conscious and discursive. I used to be afraid the second half could be extra of the identical.
It wasn’t. The second half of El Niño strikes from the dutiful earnestness of the primary half into full dramatic narrative. The dramatic component is launched with the low male voice now portraying a jealous King Herod, intent on killing any potential rival. Tines tore into the Herod materials at full tilt, impressed by Adams at his most compelling, each as composer and conductor. The contemplations held at an emotional arm’s size within the first half all of a sudden turned in-your-face fury. The vitality didn’t sag when the countertenor trio gave voice to the Three Kings of lore, with Adams reminding us that they’re particularly adoring the Christ baby in defiance of Herod’s orders, framing their devotion with intense unease.
When Herod’s slaughter of the youngsters of Bethlehem is tied to a contemporary South American poem in regards to the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico, it really works seamlessly. In the later pages of the second half, Adams’s musical portray of the miracles of Jesus comes throughout as a musical equal to the South American literary model of magical realism. The look for the primary time within the work of a refrain of youngsters doesn’t come till the ultimate quantity, and the impact is transferring.
Lisa Wong’s Cleveland Orchestra Chorus was in nice kind, singing in each English and Spanish (texts and translations excellently projected in supertitles above the stage). The Cleveland Children’s Chorus was charming and disarming of their lyrical flip on the finish of the piece. Tines was unforgettably ferocious as Herod, nevertheless it wasn’t the one star second: the opposite was Snouffer’s jaw-dropping tour-de-force within the operatic ‘Memorial de Tlatelolco’, a dramatic aria which hit like a kick to the intestine. This is the second time we’ve got heard Snouffer in Cleveland this season (she additionally soloed in Mahler’s Second, assessment click on right here), and he or she is clearly one to look at. Maldonado was a contrasting balm together with her wealthy vocal lyricism so darkish and wonderful.
The three countertenors had a hypnotic power when woven collectively, but distinctive voices when break up aside. Bubeck has a clarion voice, deployed with utter assurance. Cummings flowed with a lighter, brighter coloring whereas Medley gave the trio a cuddly, shaded heat. The orchestra was spectacular, bringing humanity and divinity to the sometimes-intractable minimalist riffs. Acting concertmaster Peter Otto had an excellent solo flip with the manic arpeggios that emerge from one lyrical part, maybe a nod from Adams towards the solo violin music of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, the piece that broke minimalism into the classical mainstream.
The contemplative first half, with its many charming although diffuse moments is, on reflection, the required setup for the operatic second half of El Niño. The payoff is definitely worth the wait, one thing clearly mirrored by the viewers, who had applauded somewhat briefly on the finish of the primary half however rapidly went into an prolonged cheering ovation after the second. Adams continues to problem as a composer, however it’s good to see him tending to his legacy to ensure a few of his less-famous gems additionally get a listening to.
Next up, how a few Cleveland efficiency of Fearful Symmetries? Thirty-one years in the past, after Adams’s first look with the Cleveland Orchestra the place he carried out choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer and Harmonielehre, I barged my method into the inexperienced room after the live performance to ask him if he would convey Fearful Symmetries again a while. At that point, 1991, he was uncertain. ‘Wouldn’t they simply run me off if I performed that right here?’ Adams stated, trying round on the ornate trimmings of Severance Hall. And maybe they might have. Three a long time later, Adams is the dean of American composers, and western tradition has caught up along with his edgy model. Fearful Symmetries is a ferocious (and in the end transcendent) mix of popular culture satire, minimalist insanity and symphonic savvy. It is time for it to be heard right here.
Mark Sebastian Jordan