Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'Voyage' finds music's new worlds Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 14:37:03 EST Message-ID: \SE D;LIFE;MUSIC \HD 'Voyage' finds music's new worlds \BY Octavio Roca \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT NEW YORK NEW YORK - Ambitious, often ravishing even if not always successful, "The Voyage" is one of the most fascinating spectacles of our time. Now in repertory at the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center, the new opera by Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang represents a hard-won victory for new American music in a theater not known for championing progress. It is also a fabulous show. "The Voyage" was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World. As in other Glass works, its dizzying structure is thematic but not linear. It is less pointed and decidedly less poetic than Mr. Glass' recent "Hydrogen Jukebox," but then the librettist for that was the exuberant Allen Ginsberg. Mr. Hwang's libretto for "The Voyage," however, does have its striking verbal images and provides moments of ineffable beauty. It also manages to be both original and responsible in dealing with the Columbus controversy at a time when bashing the great explorer is the ignorant public's favorite sport. To cite one example among many, Mr. Hwang describes meeting of two cultures this way in the chorus' closing lines of Act 1: "Will we one day find ourselves loving the stranger? / Yes, I suppose that love and that hate / Mingle like blood between the sheets / When two worlds meet." The two worlds are not those of Europe and America, but of an alien culture newly arrived in a spaceship and the primitive inhabitants of our planet in the year 50,000 B.C. This "Voyage" is nothing if not ambitious, describing the spirit of adventure and progress from time immemorial through the age of Columbus to the year 2092. The are literary echoes along the way of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," Ken Russell's "Altered States" and other science fiction classics. There are also a lot of surprises and not a little humor. The opera is organized like a symphony for voices, introduction and allegro followed by the haunting adagio of Act 2 then the futuristic scherzo of Act 3 capped by a powerful epilogue. Those who still think of minimalism as the shower of arpeggios and pulsating rhythms made famous by Mr. Glass' early works are bound to be surprised by the unabashedly romantic suggestions of melody and the melancholy of the vocal lines. These are not always effective: A vocalise for the Ship's Commander, powerfully sung by Patricia Schuman, brings Act 1 perilously close to the camp territory of Yma Sumac - an impression not helped by Quinny Sack's trashy choreography. But each act surpasses the last. The slow arias for Columbus in Act 2, together with the Epilogue for Columbus and Queen Isabella, mark a miraculous new development in American music. Rarely has the natural language of human anguish been used as touchingly as in this music. If only for these passages, Philip Glass must be considered the equal of Monteverdi and Janacek in putting the rhythms of everyday speech to the service of the most sublime musical drama. It is good to hear Tatiana Troyanos in contemporary music again, especially in such fabulous voice. Her portrayal of Isabella is one of the triumphs of David Pountney's exhilarating direction. Timothy Noble sounds fine but looks too old and fat to play the young explorer effectively; his diction is poor, though it might play better in a smaller house. Glass veteran Douglas Perry, too, is defeated by the Met's acoustics and isn't as effective in the libretto as the score promises. Still, Bruce Ferden conducts with passion and the blend of these voices with what is now one of the world's finest orchestras is an aural experience that can have few peers. Perhaps the Met's voyage to the future of opera has only just begun. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM