Peter Child: Reviews: Embers Composed 1984, a chamber opera based upon the play by Samuel Beckett. Baritone, mezzo-soprano, flute and alto flute, clarinet, violin and viola, 'cello, percussion, and piano. APNM. Excerpt from (The Boston Globe, May 4, 1985) A character in Samuel Beckett's radio play "Embers" muses at one point: "Could a horse be trained to stand still and mark time with its four legs?" And in a terrible altercation Ada demands, "Did you put on your jaegers? Have you them on?" - to which her husband Henry replies in a scream "I don't know!" Like a great deal of Beckett, "Embers" is plotless, bleak, absurd, cryptic, and funny in spasms. The characters are in reduced circumstances. They babble a great deal. Possibly they are insane. It's remarkable that in his operatic settings of "Embers," premiered by Theodore Antoniou's Alea III this week, Peter Child has been able to make the music "go," to sustain itself as it does - the text is challenging almost to the point of being intractable. He has written neither too little (thinness matching thinness) nor too much (smothering the Beckettian quality). For instance, sometimes what the orchestra (an instrumental sextet) does is unnoticeable, sometimes just barely noticeable, sometimes its simple, bare ostinators are less simple and bare than they seem, but outright catchy. The monotonousness of it is highly accomplished, not a bit monotonous at all - and very Beckett-like thereby. Henry is the fellow with the problems with his jaegers and with his
dead father; the role calls for ordinary speech, stylized speech, and
singing, in all of which David Ripley acquitted himself most
impressively. Joanne Wangh was pert and cutting as his wife Ada. It
helped that the writing for voice put a high value on intelligibility,
and the score had a seamlessness and momentum that buoyed the voices
along. David Wich's direction worked by suggestion - a large sandbox
stood for the beach, an empty fish tank for the sea. It wasn't that
far away from radio.
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